Origin | Washington, D.C., United States |
---|---|
Genres | Indie rock |
Years active | 1993–1998 |
Associated acts | The Walkmen, The Childballads |
Members | Stewart Lupton (deceased) Tom Frank Paul Maroon Matt Barrick Walter Martin |
Jonathan Fire*Eater was an American, New York City-based indie rock band, originally from Washington, D.C., United States. The line-up was Stewart Lupton (vocals), Tom Frank (bass), Paul Maroon (guitar and pedal steel), Matt Barrick (drums), and Walter Martin (organs, keyboards). After the band's break-up, Maroon, Barrick, and Martin went on to form The Walkmen.
Sep 11, 2017 - Mr. Cheeks - 2001 - John P. Kelly Year: 2001 Audio Codec: FLAC (*.flac) Rip: tracks+.cue Length: 00:55:29. Mr cheeks john p kelly rar.
- 2Discography
History[edit]
Jonathan Fire*Eater was formed from a childhood band called The Ignobles. All the members of Jonathan Fire*Eater attended high school at the D.C. private school St. Albans School. Lupton, Martin, and Barrick formed the Ignobles in junior high school. Maroon joined as the guitarist and Ryan Cheney signed on as the vocalist. Lupton played bass. In 1993, the members went to college, mostly in New York City, and Jonathan Fire*Eater was formed with Cheney departing and later joining The Cunning Runts and Lupton taking over vocal duties. St. Albans alum Tom Frank joined as a new bassist.
Jonathan Fire Eater Tremble Under Boom Lights
In 1995, they released their eponymous debut on Tucson, Arizona's Third World Underground Records, which featured 'Christmastime, Halloween', 'To The Tigers', and other tracks. Later that year, a self-titled EP on PCP established their reputation with the frenetic tracks 'The Public Hanging of a Movie Star' and 'When Prince Was a Kid'.
In 1996, the five-song mini-album Tremble Under Boom Lights was released by the Medicine label, featuring well-produced offers like 'The Search for Cherry Red' and 'Give Me Daughters'. Reviews were positive, with Allmusic.com describing Tremble as 'a ferocious record' despite its 'minor flaws.'[1] By this time, the band was receiving considerable media and industry attention. They were courted by Calvin Klein to model and opened for Brit Pop stars Pulp and Blur. As Lupton said in a 1996 New York Times Magazine profile, 'Right now the record companies are sort of circling like vultures.'
In early 1997, Jonathan Fire*Eater signed with David Geffen's nascent DreamWorks music label. Their major label debut, Wolf Songs for Lambs, was released by DreamWorks in 1997 to tepid critical response. Not long after the album's release, tensions between Lupton and the other members and a general wariness of mainstream success led to the band's breakup. They played their last show at the Central Park bandshell on July 28, 1998.
Jonathan Fire*Eater was once called 'possibly the most hyped young group that nobody has ever heard of'.[1]
Maroon, Barrick, and Martin later went on to form The Walkmen and Lupton has pursued his music career through his band The Childballads, who put out their debut album in January 2007. The latter has toured with Cat Power and the Kills. In 2009 he released an EP in a new band, The Beatin's, which he formed with Carole Wagner Greenwood. Titled A Little Give And Take, the limited edition vinyl included Lupton's poetry and the duo's art and writing. Tom Frank pursued a career in journalism as T.A. Frank.
Stewart Lupton died on May 27, 2018 at the age of 43.[2][3]
Discography[edit]
Jonathan Fire Eater Inpatient
Albums[edit]
- Jonathan Fire*Eater (album, 1995, Third World Underground)
- Wolf Songs for Lambs (1997, DreamWorks SKG)
Singles, EPs[edit]
- 'Jonathan Fire*Eater' (EP, 1995, PCP)
- 'Give Me Daughters' (1996, Deceptive)
- 'Tremble Under Boom Lights' (1996, Medicine)
- 'These Little Monkeys' (1998, Deceptive)
- 'When the Curtain Calls You' (1997, Deceptive)
References[edit]
- ^Lackluster Set Douses Hype Fueling Jonathan Fire Eater: Los Angeles Times, December 6, 1997. Retrieved on May 29, 2018.
- ^'Jonathan Fire*Eater's Stewart Lupton Dead At 43'. Stereogum. 28 May 2018. Retrieved 29 May 2018.
- ^'Jonathan Fire*Eater's Stewart Lupton Dead at 43'. Retrieved 2018-05-29.
Jonathan Fire*Eater’s story is unfortunately all too common in the music business: band releases strong EP, band signs to major label, band releases major label debut, band is never heard from again. DreamWorks released Wolf Songs For Lambs on the heels of mountains of buzz, only to see the record fizzle despite critical acclaim. Yet it’s hard to imagine Jonathan Fire*Eater failing in 2007. In the blog era, the Washington, D.C. band’s brand of carnival organ-driven garage rock would surely find fast popularity through word of mouth; nowadays, bands with fewer hooks and more abstract approaches to rock music easily sellout clubs and find their songs playing on teenage TV dramas.
“When The Curtain Falls For You” begins the album, acting like a declaration of principles. It fades in with a slinky guitar playing mysterious minor and major chords, followed by a martial beat on snare. Then comes Stewart Lupton singing “What do children do with these colors so hallow/ Yes, I know their will is true” in a Mick Jagger bark. This is followed by a glorious mess of organ, which, mixed with the aforementioned ingredients, creates something resembling organized chaos.
Indeed, “When The Curtain Falls For You” is the record’s strongest track, but it’s followed by 13 other songs that go down like vodka at a dirty burlesque. The garage rock of “No Love Like That” recalls ? and the Mysterians, while “These Little Monkeys” steadily thumps like a cross between Motown and This Year’s Model-era Elvis Costello. Meanwhile, “The Shape Of Things That Never Came” (a reference to Ornette Coleman) is yet another song that should have been a hit.
Instead of having hits, however, Jonathan Fire*Eater broke up shortly after the album's release, while three of its members – organist Walter Martin, drummer Matt Barrick, and guitarist Paul Maroon – formed The Walkmen. It’s easy to recognize Jonathan Fire*Eater’s influence on that band’s breakthrough record, Everyone Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone, with its reverb-heavy production and cocksure percussion. That record manged to find an audience (thanks to an 8.7 rating on Pitchfork and an appearance in a Saturn commercial); Wolf Songs, on the other hand, makes its presence felt in cut-out bins. What a difference five years makes.
Stewart Lupton, the magnetic singer for 1990s New York rockers Jonathan Fire*Eater, has died at 43. A family member confirmed to Pitchfork that Lupton passed away on Sunday (May 27), with no official cause of death revealed at press time. Fronting a band made up of his childhood friends from Washington, D.C., Lupton captivated audiences with his punk-inspired howling vocals, a drawling mix of Mick Jagger swagger and Iggy Pop attitude.
Credited with inspiring the New York rock renaissance of the early 1990s, the group with the uniquely punctuated name formed in 1993 while Lupton was a student at Washington's private all-boys St. Albans School, a prep academy whose alumni include former Sec. of State John Kerry, Ok Go singer Damian Kulash, NFL great Odell Beckham Jr. and actor Jeffrey Wright. Joining up with bassist Tom Frank, guitarist Paul Maroon, drummer Matt Barrick and organ player Walter Martin, the band coalesced as Jonathan Fire*Eater while most of the members were in college in New York.
Their self-titled debut came out in 1995 on tiny Tucson, Arizona, label Third World Underground Records, followed shortly after by a self-titled EP. With Martin's signature wheezing, 1960s garage rock-sounding Farfisa organ and Lupton's dramatic, goth punk vocals yelps and croons, the group began to gain notice quickly, mostly thanks to the growth on their 1995 five-song album Tremble Under Boom Lights, which featured one of their signature songs, the spooky, rattling 'The Search for Cherry Red.'
Word of their intense live shows and Lupton's charismatic stage presence helped stir up interest from major labels, leading to a signing with then-nascent Dreamworks SKG label, which released Wolf Songs for Lambs, an album that didn't quite capture the electric feel of the group's post-punk mix of rattling blues, high-energy lo-fi rock and Nick Cave-like nihilism. After years of being tabbed as the next big thing, the album would prove to be the band's swan song, as they broke up after playing a final New York show in July 1998. While their moment in the spotlight was brief and intense, the group was credited with helping to inspire the next wave of New York rock bands that rose up in the early 2000s, including the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Interpol and The Strokes, among others.
Barrick, Martin and Maroon went on to form another early 2000s New York rock staple: The Walkmen, while Lupton tried his hands at a number of musical projects that never put him back in the same white-hot spotlight. He released the debut album by his group The Child Ballads in 2007, came back two years later with a new group, The Beatin's.
Lupton's cousin, Sarah Lupton, posted a tribute on Instagram, writing, 'Thank you so much for your tributes to this beautiful artist. I love hearing what he meant to other people.. My cousin, the inimitable Stewart Lupton. An inspiration through the ages. Through my ages. I remember clinging to your leg in a princess costume. I remember flipping through @seventeen, seeing your face and saving the issue in a special stack on my bookshelf. I remember the thrill when you told me you liked my music choice on the day we buried grandad. I remember @catpowerofficial at @930club and my first night in NYC with you guiding the way - a Times Square blur all the way to Redhook. Had no idea where I was but trusted you to lead me. You have led me in such profound ways, even in distance, even in silence, even without knowing or meaning to. Your overwhelming, gut-wrenching genius even you don't understand. It has been a strong beacon of inspiration since I was a child. Sometimes it confuses you, and me. But I always stand in awe of you. I celebrate you, cuz. Because you give more to me and so many others than I think you know.'
A post shared by Sarah Lupton (@slupster) on
The Kills' Allison Mosshart and Ted Leo were among those paying tribute to Lupton as well, with Leo writing, 'In DC in the 90s, in NYC in the 00s, he was always such an affable, kind person, and a talent I admired,' and Mossheart saying, 'He was a singer, a performer, a poet, a talent beyond comprehension, a beautiful soul, a heart the size of a planet.'
![Jonathan fire eater Jonathan fire eater](https://consequenceofsound.files.wordpress.com/2018/06/gorillaz-the-now-now-stream.png?w=350&h=350&crop=1)
Stewart Lupton. In DC in the 90s, in NYC in the 00s, he was always such an affable, kind person, and a talent I admired. And though I rarely saw him. was someone I always felt like was “there,” like I would always see him again. This also breaks my heart. https://t.co/rfOlV6P8ju
— Ted Leo (@tedleo) May 29, 2018A post shared by Alison Mosshart (@amosshart) on
Watch a performance of 'When the Curtain Calls for You' below.
![Jonathan Jonathan](https://image.isu.pub/091113170206-922476d9b7164de3b0d1b99fa88f2980/jpg/page_1_thumb_large.jpg)
Indie rock band Jonathan Fire*Eater’s lead vocalist Stewart Lupton died on Sunday at the age of 43, a family member confirmed to Pitchfork. No official cause of death has yet been released; in a statement to The New York Times, his family said it stemmed from a “desperate attempt to escape the voices that so tormented him.” The band formed in 1993 and helped shape New York’s revived rock scene years before it exploded in the ’00s. They broke up in 1998. After the split, Lupton’s bandmates—Paul Maroon, Matt Barrick, Walter Martin—formed the Walkmen with Hamilton Leithauser and Peter Bauer.
Lupton met his future bandmates in the early ’90s while attending St. Albans School in Washington D.C. Initially, he, Maroon, Barrick, and Martin joined forces as the Ignobles with vocalist Ryan Cheney helming their songs. They soon relocated to New York’s Lower East Side, prompting Cheney’s departure and a new name. When they formed Jonathan Fire*Eater, Lupton took over vocals and their former classmate Tom Frank stepped in as bassist. Their self-titled debut album arrived in 1995, and helped propel them to a level of fame that included opening for Blur.
The band’s growing reputation fueled a bidding war among several labels, but they eventually signed a deal with Dreamworks SKG and their sophomore album, Wolf Songs for Lambs, followed in 1997. Despite their seemingly sure-fire success, troubles within the band eventually became too great. “There’s a prefabricated danger some bands cultivate, but ours seemed more like a sentence,” Lupton told The New York Post in 2005. “It was a double-edged sword that we wielded for a brief moment and then fell on.” Jonathan Fire*Eater disbanded in 1998.
While three of Lupton’s bandmates went in a new direction as the Walkmen, he moved back to D.C. to study poetry at George Washington University. He eventually formed a new band, Child Ballads, which toured briefly. In 2009, he released the EP, A Little Give and Take, under his new collaborative project with Carole Greenwood called the Beatin’s, but he remained largely out of the spotlight.
Jonathan Fire*Eater has been credited with paving the way for the Strokes, LCD Soundsystem, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and many other bands instrumental to fueling New York’s rock scene in the ’00s. (“Oh yeah, they had an enormous influence on me,” said Karen O in Meet Me in the Bathroom.) In the wake of Lupton’s death, Walter Martin has penned a tribute to his former bandmate—find it here. The Walkmen also shared a statement: Find it below.
Stewart Lupton, the magnetic singer for 1990s New York rockers Jonathan Fire*Eater, has died at 43. A family member confirmed to Pitchfork that Lupton passed away on Sunday (May 27), with no official cause of death revealed at press time. Fronting a band made up of his childhood friends from Washington, D.C., Lupton captivated audiences with his punk-inspired howling vocals, a drawling mix of Mick Jagger swagger and Iggy Pop attitude.
Credited with inspiring the New York rock renaissance of the early 1990s, the group with the uniquely punctuated name formed in 1993 while Lupton was a student at Washington's private all-boys St. Albans School, a prep academy whose alumni include former Sec. of State John Kerry, Ok Go singer Damian Kulash, NFL great Odell Beckham Jr. and actor Jeffrey Wright. Joining up with bassist Tom Frank, guitarist Paul Maroon, drummer Matt Barrick and organ player Walter Martin, the band coalesced as Jonathan Fire*Eater while most of the members were in college in New York.
Their self-titled debut came out in 1995 on tiny Tucson, Arizona, label Third World Underground Records, followed shortly after by a self-titled EP. With Martin's signature wheezing, 1960s garage rock-sounding Farfisa organ and Lupton's dramatic, goth punk vocals yelps and croons, the group began to gain notice quickly, mostly thanks to the growth on their 1995 five-song album Tremble Under Boom Lights, which featured one of their signature songs, the spooky, rattling 'The Search for Cherry Red.'
![Jonathan Jonathan](https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--B7XvcT17--/c_fill,f_auto,fl_progressive,g_north,h_264,q_80,w_470/k9ejhgt8s1vtm1dmc0ps.jpg)
Word of their intense live shows and Lupton's charismatic stage presence helped stir up interest from major labels, leading to a signing with then-nascent Dreamworks SKG label, which released Wolf Songs for Lambs, an album that didn't quite capture the electric feel of the group's post-punk mix of rattling blues, high-energy lo-fi rock and Nick Cave-like nihilism. After years of being tabbed as the next big thing, the album would prove to be the band's swan song, as they broke up after playing a final New York show in July 1998. While their moment in the spotlight was brief and intense, the group was credited with helping to inspire the next wave of New York rock bands that rose up in the early 2000s, including the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Interpol and The Strokes, among others.
Barrick, Martin and Maroon went on to form another early 2000s New York rock staple: The Walkmen, while Lupton tried his hands at a number of musical projects that never put him back in the same white-hot spotlight. He released the debut album by his group The Child Ballads in 2007, came back two years later with a new group, The Beatin's.
Lupton's cousin, Sarah Lupton, posted a tribute on Instagram, writing, 'Thank you so much for your tributes to this beautiful artist. I love hearing what he meant to other people.. My cousin, the inimitable Stewart Lupton. An inspiration through the ages. Through my ages. I remember clinging to your leg in a princess costume. I remember flipping through @seventeen, seeing your face and saving the issue in a special stack on my bookshelf. I remember the thrill when you told me you liked my music choice on the day we buried grandad. I remember @catpowerofficial at @930club and my first night in NYC with you guiding the way - a Times Square blur all the way to Redhook. Had no idea where I was but trusted you to lead me. You have led me in such profound ways, even in distance, even in silence, even without knowing or meaning to. Your overwhelming, gut-wrenching genius even you don't understand. It has been a strong beacon of inspiration since I was a child. Sometimes it confuses you, and me. But I always stand in awe of you. I celebrate you, cuz. Because you give more to me and so many others than I think you know.'
A post shared by Sarah Lupton (@slupster) on
The Kills' Allison Mosshart and Ted Leo were among those paying tribute to Lupton as well, with Leo writing, 'In DC in the 90s, in NYC in the 00s, he was always such an affable, kind person, and a talent I admired,' and Mossheart saying, 'He was a singer, a performer, a poet, a talent beyond comprehension, a beautiful soul, a heart the size of a planet.'
Stewart Lupton. In DC in the 90s, in NYC in the 00s, he was always such an affable, kind person, and a talent I admired. And though I rarely saw him. was someone I always felt like was “there,” like I would always see him again. This also breaks my heart. https://t.co/rfOlV6P8ju
— Ted Leo (@tedleo) May 29, 2018A post shared by Alison Mosshart (@amosshart) on
Jonathan Fire Eater
Watch a performance of 'When the Curtain Calls for You' below.