Beef

There are at least five bands named Beef: from the UK, the Netherlands, Spain, Japan, as well as a rapper from the US, as follows in chronological order: 1) The English band: Formed around 1988 in Greater London, Beef released their first album, "Living In A Hee Hee Wey" (LOS002), together with an EP "Stop The Pigeon" (Rat001) and a single "Lazen Hags" (Rat003)) taken from the album, in 1989. The album received some lukewarm reviews and was given airtime on stations in the UK, BeNeLux and Germany, but generated limited sales.

There are at least five bands named Beef: from the UK, the Netherlands, Spain, Japan, as well as a rapper from the US, as follows in chronological order: 1) The English band: Formed around 1988 in Greater London, Beef released their first album, "Living In A Hee Hee Wey" (LOS002), together with an EP "Stop The Pigeon" (Rat001) and a single "Lazen Hags" (Rat003)) taken from the album, in 1989. The album received some lukewarm reviews and was given airtime on stations in the UK, BeNeLux and Germany, but generated limited sales. A second album "Low Slung Town" (Rat009) was released in 1991 after which the band disappeared into thin air. 2) The Spanish band: An indie-rock band from Sant Feliu de Llobregatby (Barcelona), Beef was started by former Bach Is Dead member, David Rodriguez in 1993 and has since become one of the foremost groups in the Spanish indie scene.

Beef’s first album, “Beef Songs,” was released in 1994 on a fledgling label founded by Servando Carballar and went largely unnoticed due to insufficient and poor promotion. Carballar’s label soon went under and Beef, free of any ties, was signed to the label Acuarela (then a sub-label of Elefant Records) and the EP “Beef Sings” (comprising material recorded before “Beef Songs”) was released in 1995. David Rodriguez then began to rehearse with his current band: Juanjo (also in Stereorent), Joanra (now in Love Of Lesbian) and Blas (also in Penuria); and gave the first live show with this line-up. In March 1995, Acuarela records got Beef a deal to work with the well-known producer Kramer, who had previously worked with Sr. Chinarro and Galaxie 500 amongst many others.

The band moved to New York in March 1995, and with Kramer’s help they recorded their second album, “Beef Tongues,” which received critical acclaim and reached #1 in the Spanish charts. This album was reissued on Elefant Records in 1999 as “Sings Tongues,” bundled with the tracks off the first album. By 1996, Beef were fully under the Elefant label and their next EP, “Adult Oriented Rock,” was released and voted "Best EP of 1996" by critics. 1997 sees Beef releasing its third album, the acclaimed “Fi Qasr Sheikh Al-Dabant,” which introduced a new side to their particular ironic vision of rock: mutant dance tracks like “Martínez” and dandy instrumentals such as “Belmondo” live together in harmony with shots of fleshy rock and other eccentricities in a poignant album in which the band, with charming naïveté, considers their most commercial record. Its 1998 follow-up, “España a las ocho,” features a sound more characteristic of Beef with cameos by Mark Cunningham and a free mixture of guitars, samples, humour and avant-garde extravaganza which has characterized the band from their beginning. Beef released their fifth album, “Misery and Lies,” in January 2000. The album was produced by Wharton Tiers, legendary producer of some of the best American noise acts of the last 20 years including Sonic Youth. The result is Beef’s most rock-oriented album, leaving aside the avant-garde and concentrating more on guitars. In May 2002, after a short hiatus, Beef released its sixth album, entitled “La Bohème.” The album was recorded in Pere Serrano studios, produced by the band and mastered in NYC by Wharton Tiers.

With this album, Beef offered us one of their best collections of songs, all with a very solid sound and very catchy lyrics. “La Bohéme” makes clear the excellent phase Beef are going through. Beef make a big statement with this album: you can play guitar rock in 2002 without being retro or without having prejudices against any other genre. Under the spanish label El Ejército Rojo they released “Victoria principal” in 2005 and the EP "La Transición" in 2006 featuringsongs from "Victoria principal" plus extra songs. http://www.losbeef.net/ 4)The Japanese band: The Japanese Beef is a punk rock band, made up of members Yosuke Okada, Yuichiro Okuwaki, Takahiro Kaminaga and Tatsuya Kawada. Visit http://www.myspace.com/beefbugger for more info. 5) Beef is the name of a rapper from Woodland Hills, California 6) Beef is also a Dutch reggae band: They recorded a reggae version of Krezips 'I Would Stay', wich was written by a member of Beef. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License and may also be available under the GNU FDL..