17 Pygmies

post-punk

17 Pygmies officially began in 1982 when then Savage Republic member Jackson Del Rey (aka Philip Drucker) began jamming in a garage with keyboardist and guitarist Michael Kory (Radwaste) and drummer, soon to be singer, Debbie Spinelli from Food & Shelter and Radwaste. The group's first composition was an odd, kind of surf-a-delic, Emerson Lake & Palmer inspired cover version of the theme music to David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia. Since no one was around to say stop, the band quickly devolved into a kind of spooky instrumental and 80's style techno-pop band, and by the time the Pygs, as they were now known to the five people including the band members who knew them, started covering Brazilian sambas (and just before the release of their first EP) Robert Loveless, now a member of Savage Republic, signed on as bass player/keyboardist. That Hatikva, EP quickly led (minus Kory, who left to pursue an alternate path to obscurity) to 1984's full length LP “Jedda By The Sea. Jedda was an album short on the letter h but long on musical innovation and is still considered a post-punk masterpiece by those same five people including the band members who though Hatikva” was worth releasing. Next came 1985's Captured In Ice which interestingly contained the non-hit Chameleon which made a very influential list called the 100 greatest unknown techno songs. All this obscurity led to several personnel changes (the only permanent idiot,,,er band member is Del Rey) which of course