prongs.org/ministry
Welcome to the oldest and most informative Ministry site on the net. 1994 - 2012
- Song Download: Motor - Death Rave
- Soon to be released: Fix: The Movie and Barker's Fix This!!!
- Wax Trax Retrospectacle page with pictures.
- Paul Barker's Flowering Blight project has been released in Nov. 2008. Read more.
A lot in the Chicago music scene would not have been possible without Jaime Duffy. Last year's Revolting Cocks performance for the Wax Trax! Records Retrospectacle event would not have been possible without Jaime's technical and musical help (he was not only the guitarist for this but also the one who coordinated everything within the band). Though he is most known for his work on Acumen Nation, he has tremendously helped on Ministry's Filth Pig and Lard's Pure Chewing Satisfaction as well as many other albums from the Industrial scene. He was a very hard working and caring individual and it was not uncommon to bump into him while out and about in Chicago.
Sadly, on June 21st 2012, he passed away. Our condolences to his family and close friends. Here's an interesting piece written by Jim Marcus (Die Warzau).
To enter in the drawing to win one of 6 copies of the Fix: The Movie DVD, you must answer all three questions from the link below, and pass on your email address (no, it will not be used for marketing purposes).
Fix The Movie Giveaway
It has been quiet on the Ministry end of things, however, some interesting news...
April 10th 2012 is the date on which the much awaited Fix: The Ministry Movie is to be
released. Directed by Douglas Freel, the documentary, which includes interview snippets from Biafra, Buzz, Maynard, Reznor and Davis just to name a few, consists of footage which chronicles a lot of what went on during Ministry's Filth Pig tour. It is a very fascinating documentary to watch.
We have started a page on Fix: The Movie which includes stills from the documentary, as well as more information.
This site, along with the distributors of the movie, will be giving away 6 copies. Stay tuned for the trivia question....
Fix This!!!
Available in conjunction to the movie will be Paul Barker's new record, Fix This!!!. This album features guests such as Chris Connelly, Ogre, Taylor Momsen and Puscifer. When asked for details on reSpite, the track which features Ogre on vocals, Barker sent this to us:
"I talked to Ogre about this fresh idea I had: make a generic thrash metal record and sing about current lame political woes using sesame street lyrics, but I still have all my teeth and wanted songs with a little more bite than that. After many hilarious phone calls a deal was struck: I write the music and he writes and sings the lyrics.
So I sent Ogre a rough song I wrote. Unfortunately, our schedules didn't allow us to track together, so he and Mark Walk sent me finished vocals and I finished the mix.
Not nearly as much fun as being together in the studio, but fun nonetheless. All 1's and 0's- very modern. "
These tracks are available for download now over here.
Ever since I started this website in 1994, I could have never imagined a weekend such as this past one. It was the Wax Trax! Records Retrospectacle: 33 1/3 Year Anniversary event and included performances from Front 242, My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult and former members of KMFDM and Revolting Cocks. Not only were the musical performances spectacular (LA Weekly hailing the performance of Revco tunes as "what may very well have been the greatest shows of the band's history."), but the atmosphere was incredible. The actual show, in front of a sold out crowd during all three nights, was simply superb. The sound and visual effects were extremely powerful.
After years of reading their posts, I met many people from the Prongs message board including Bisquitodoom, who helps manage this site. There were many that have been frequenting this site for over a decade that I finally have met, such as John Crawford and Jim Ballard (both of whom have contributed pictures of the event in recent days).
It was an absolute pleasure to meet Doug Freel, the creator of the FIX movie, and his wife, both of whom are very upstanding characters with many interesting stories, as well as Paul Barker, Chris Connelly, Luc Van Acker, and Duane Buford (the backstage roster of bands performing listed "The Real Revco"). Members also performing Revolting Cocks tunes who had not before, both Jaime Duffy and Dan Brill, were also outstanding people. Without their hard work, the performance would not have been as smooth as it was. It was about 10 years since I last met Richard 23 (Front 242) and his energy levels and humor is still on par with what they were back then. He performed No Devotion on the last night with Barker & co.. The families of band members were in attendance, including Paul Barker's wife, who stopped by to say hi to Prongers prior to the shows.
There were many highlights during the weekend but definitely one that stood out was Paul Barker playing bass on stage with The Blue Ribbon Glee Club (Chicago's Premier Punk Rock Choir). Together, they performed Pailhead's "I Will Refuse" and Ministry's "Everyday is Halloween".
Another highlight was during the Ministry FIX movie premiere which took place at the Music Box on April 16th 2011. Not only was the movie brilliant and received superb reception (their room was over capacity), but Dave Frey (Al Jourgensen's manager from Silent Partner Management), was reportedly caught capturing / streaming the world premier of FIX on his cell-phone, and therefore, ejected from the theater.
A euphoric atmosphere amongst all existed throughout the weekend, particularly from the bands, not only from meeting each other again after a long time, but also because they would be performing together. Backstage, prior to the event starting, as I was sitting with Connelly, Luc Van Acker came over and expressed his excitement on having to perform with Connelly again after all these years - that was when the sheer excitement and happiness amongst all really hit me.
A huge thank you is in order to Julia Nash who put all this together. Everyone involved with the weekend festivities were very appreciative of her efforts and how awesome she was to work with. Thank you Julia. As with any production of this size, there are many people not directly seen and who must also be thanked for their time and efforts. This will definitely be a weekend which will be talked about for a very long time; I certainly think that it could not have been any better.
This site has a new page, Wax Trax Chicago: Retrospectacle Live, which has more information on the weekend with links to the following picture galleries:
I have also created a thread on the message board which shows posts linked to various media samples from the weekend. If you have any more pictures, videos or information which you would like to share, please email us.
I was fortunate enough to recently watch, FIX, the long awaited Ministry documentary. I felt that the documentary was very well put together and extremely entertaining. One is constantly kept interested by the interview snippets from Biafra, Buzz, Maynard, Reznor and Davis to name just a few. What I liked most about the documentary was that the message was not entirely about Ministry, in that it showed a lot of the backstage antics that one is always curious about: how the crew and the band relate to one another, how band members relate to one another even getting annoyed (Korn's Davis having a bus of his own on tour), how they lure women in backstage, and even the stalker stories were fascinating. In addition, it was surreal to witness how drug induced Al was for a lot of the documentary. Very surreal. We have all heard the stories, however, through the camera, we can watch all this firsthand. The documentary makers never held back as all was shown.
Al's sense of humor was shown particularly in the scene where he described his encounter with Johnny Depp at one of the shows. Though perhaps not humorous, the very obvious display of paranoia from Al's drug use was intriguing, and it shown in great detail in the scenes where he is showing off the bullet proof vest. Another scene has Al discussing how he will wear a top hat so a sniper will not know where the top of his head exactly is.
There is ample exciting concert footage, interview snippets and backstage antics packed into this film and there honestly is never a dull moment while watching this.
I recommend FIX, but not as someone who has followed Ministry over many years, but as someone who is fascinated by the music industry, the world of musicians and how they relate to their surroundings.
The Chicago Sun-Times has posted a review of the FIX documentary which is being premiered in Chicago on Thursday, April 7th, at the Music Box.
Wax Trax! Records is throwing a party on April 15-16 2010 at Chicago's Metro concert hall. The lineup for the "Wax Trax! Records Retrospectacle: 33 1/3 Year Anniversary" will include Front 242, My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult and Rights of the Accused. En Esch, Guenter Schulz and Raymond Watts will focus on the music of KMFDM.
Luc Van Acker, Chris Connelly, former Ministry member Paul Barker and guests will perform the music of the Revolting Cocks.
Tickets ($60 two-day pass; $500 VIP tables) go on sale at noon Saturday via etix.com and will benefit Center on Halsted.
[Discuss]
At Backstage Auctions, from October 31st to November 6 2010, Al Jourgensen will be auctioning off some Ministry memorabilia. Most notably items from amps and road cases for guitars to microphone stands, pins, jackets, rings, sunglasses, gloves, hats and boots from the early 1980s until 2008. What is interesting is that master recordings from the early Ministry days will also be auctioned off.
You can read more at MusicStack.
[Discuss]
Viewing pictures has been fixed over on the Pictures Gallery. You can use the arrow keys to navigate through the pictures.
Concrete, Bulletproof, Invisible and Fried: My Life As A Revolting Cock, the book authored by Chris Connelly, is back in print and can be ordered from amazon.com for $12.
Discuss
Seems the RSS feed was broken but this has been fixed. There will be more page updates coming soon including a revamped pictures section.
There is also another unofficial Ministry forum that has just been started by members of another forum. You can check it out over at ph4pb.com. It is not affiliated with this site in any way.
In addition to that, there is the Ministry subsection on the Litany forum. What this site is to Ministry, Litany is to Skinny Puppy. The site, which resides on prongs.org, is run by a friend of mine, Corey Goldberg, who I had the privilege of hosting when he dropped by Chicago when on tour with Skinny Puppy, a few months ago.
In case you did not know, the oldest Ministry forum is right here on this site.
When you collect live shows, sometimes surprises show up in unexpected places. Most of the post-Lollapalooza 92/93 tour had a pretty standard setlist. Sure, there were occasonal variations, but they were mostly of the "change the song order" variety. I was recently given a copy of the first date of the US leg of the tour, and while the main show had nothing out of the ordinary, the band breaks out 2 songs in the encore that hadn't been played live for several years - one of which has never been played live again. The first of these, Man Should Surrender, is up for download on the sound page. Other than this performance, this song was only played on the 1990 tour. The vocals on that tour were done by Joe Kelley. Three guesses who it is this time. Not sure if this was played again this tour, but this was the first US date, so it was probably not played before this and definitely wasn't played for at least the next 3 shows. Anyway, hope you enjoy this rare gem!
It has come to our attention that Wax Trax! Records co-founder Dannie Flesher has passed away. It goes without saying that his great contribution enabled us all to see and hear bands such as Ministry, Revolting Cocks, Front 242, and much, much more.
Dannie died on Sunday night from pneumonia, he was 57 years old and was living in Hope, Arkansas.There is an article by the Chicago Tribune on this.
Firstly, I hope the site redesign is to your liking. The design was done by myself while the logo was done by Lawton. In fact, Lawton and I worked hard together on the official site for fixtheministrymovie.com.
This is a documentary to be released in 2010 and features old footage of Ministry backstage and onstage. The documentary includes interviews with the likes of Trent Reznor, Dave Navarro, Jonathan Davis, and much, much more.
From fixtheministrymovie.com, you can not only watch the trailer, but you can also download an exclusive new track released by Flowering Blight (Paul Barker) by registering. The track is called Heroine's Habit and is superb.
We will keep you posted on here regarding the documentary as more news comes out.
Discuss
New song up for download on the sound page. This is a live version of What He Say from the same show as the version of Work For Love featured not to long ago. The date and location of the show are unknown, but it's most likely from early 1984 and is oneof the early shows after the departure of several members of the With Sympathy tour lineup. It's from a soundboard source and is by far the best sounding recording of a show from 83/84. Enjoy!