Antis
Encyclopedia
Antis is a Lithuania
n postmodernist rock
band
. The name is the Lithuanian word for "duck
" and is also slang for a false mass media
sensation.
, there was an alternative music
explosion in Lithuania. Before then all "western low quality music" was officially forbidden with lists of proscribed bands including Ramones
, AC/DC
, and Alice Cooper
. Antis was a politically motivated band that played proscribed music in several styles including ska
. They also wrote their own songs with jaunty horns and witty ironic lyrics.
Algirdas ‘Pablo’ Kaušpėdas founded Antis in 1984 as a joke to entertain attendees at a New Year
party that he organised for the architects' union in Kaunas
. The band's performance was such a success that word of it spread all over Lithuania.
In January 1986 a horn section
from Vilnius joined the band and Petras ‘Sniegius’ Ubartas (another architect who was a composer, trumpeter and guitarist) took over the musical leadership of the band so that Pablo could concentrate on lyrics and promotion. Antis was invited to play at the semi-underground festival at Vilnius University
and at similar events.
stars Aquarium
and Bravo. The subsequent publicity turned Antis into a national sensation and they became known as one of the best rock bands in the whole of the former Soviet Union. Antis grew to such popularity that their audiences numbered hundreds of thousands. They toured most of Europe
and the United States
.
Algirdas Kaušpėdas designed a dramatic live show with painted faces, besuited musicians, motorbikes, and spaceship models on stage. The band made three video clip
s, which were later used in the 1986 musical film
Kažkas Atsitiko (Something Happened). Kaušpėdas' lyrics were sharply critical of the Soviet regime; an appealing stance for many people during Perestroika
. Personnel changes improved the band's musicianship and their music became more sophisticated. Early Antis was heavily influenced by Talking Heads
. One of their biggest hits was a cover version
of a Men at Work
song. Later Sniegius added sounds derived from the work of Frank Zappa
.
At the end of 1986 Antis recorded their eponymous debut album at Melodya's Vilnius
studio. The LP was released in 1987 and became one of the best-sold records in Lithuania. Their second album was recorded in 1988 in the CCS studio in Warsaw
. The band planned to release this independently but Melodya objected and the ensuing litigation delayed release by a year. The last recording session took place in a Vilnius studio in 1988. Those songs with some selected numbers from the Warsaw session appeared as Anties Dovanėlė (Antis' Present) in 1989.
.
In 1990 Algirdas Kaušpėdas quit music for politics and then returned to architecture. The rest of the band continued rehearsing and composing, and auditioned some new vocalists but Pablo proved to have been the heart of the band, so they broke up. Some members left the music business and others joined other projects. Kaušpėdas manages a design company and is still an important figure in Lithuanian music and culture.
) contained all the songs that had not been released on the Melodya albums. The final album Geriausios Dainos was a 'best of' compilation, released on CD and MC formats by Zona/BMK in May 1995.
Algirdas Kaušpėdas, formed the Antis Orchestra briefly in 1996 using past members and session musicians to recreate the Antis sound for three open-air concerts as part of the Lituanian Rock March. Most of the original members also reformed briefly in 2003 to promote the release by Zona of most Antis recordings on four CDs (Kažkas atsitiko, Antis, Ša! and Dovanėlė) and a box-set
Visa Antis.
Lithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
n postmodernist rock
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
band
Musical ensemble
A musical ensemble is a group of people who perform instrumental or vocal music. In classical music, trios or quartets either blend the sounds of musical instrument families or group together instruments from the same instrument family, such as string ensembles or wind ensembles...
. The name is the Lithuanian word for "duck
Duck
Duck is the common name for a large number of species in the Anatidae family of birds, which also includes swans and geese. The ducks are divided among several subfamilies in the Anatidae family; they do not represent a monophyletic group but a form taxon, since swans and geese are not considered...
" and is also slang for a false mass media
Mass media
Mass media refers collectively to all media technologies which are intended to reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit their information electronically and comprise of television, film and radio, movies, CDs, DVDs and some other gadgets like cameras or video consoles...
sensation.
Establishment
In 1986 in the last days of the Soviet UnionSoviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
, there was an alternative music
Alternative rock
Alternative rock is a genre of rock music and a term used to describe a diverse musical movement that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1980s and became widely popular by the 1990s...
explosion in Lithuania. Before then all "western low quality music" was officially forbidden with lists of proscribed bands including Ramones
Ramones
The Ramones were an American rock band that formed in the New York City neighborhood of Forest Hills, Queens, in 1974. They are often cited as the first punk rock group...
, AC/DC
AC/DC
AC/DC are an Australian rock band, formed in 1973 by brothers Malcolm and Angus Young. Commonly classified as hard rock, they are considered pioneers of heavy metal, though they themselves have always classified their music as simply "rock and roll"...
, and Alice Cooper
Alice Cooper
Alice Cooper is an American rock singer, songwriter and musician whose career spans more than four decades...
. Antis was a politically motivated band that played proscribed music in several styles including ska
Ska
Ska |Jamaican]] ) is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1950s, and was the precursor to rocksteady and reggae. Ska combined elements of Caribbean mento and calypso with American jazz and rhythm and blues...
. They also wrote their own songs with jaunty horns and witty ironic lyrics.
Algirdas ‘Pablo’ Kaušpėdas founded Antis in 1984 as a joke to entertain attendees at a New Year
New Year
The New Year is the day that marks the time of the beginning of a new calendar year, and is the day on which the year count of the specific calendar used is incremented. For many cultures, the event is celebrated in some manner....
party that he organised for the architects' union in Kaunas
Kaunas
Kaunas is the second-largest city in Lithuania and has historically been a leading centre of Lithuanian economic, academic, and cultural life. Kaunas was the biggest city and the center of a powiat in Trakai Voivodeship of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania since 1413. During Russian Empire occupation...
. The band's performance was such a success that word of it spread all over Lithuania.
In January 1986 a horn section
Horn section
In music, a horn section can refer to several groups of musicians. It can refer to the musicians in a symphony orchestra who play the horn . In a British-style brass band it refers to the tenor horn players. In popular music, it can also refer to a small group of wind instrumentalists who augment a...
from Vilnius joined the band and Petras ‘Sniegius’ Ubartas (another architect who was a composer, trumpeter and guitarist) took over the musical leadership of the band so that Pablo could concentrate on lyrics and promotion. Antis was invited to play at the semi-underground festival at Vilnius University
Vilnius University
Vilnius University is the oldest university in the Baltic states and one of the oldest in Eastern Europe. It is also the largest university in Lithuania....
and at similar events.
Gaining popularity
At the Lituanica’86 festival Antiss performance overshadowed those of the headline Russian rockRussian rock
Russian rock refers to rock music made in Russia or in the Russian language. Rock and roll became known in the Soviet Union in the 1960s and quickly broke free from its western roots. According to many music critics, its "golden age" years were the 1980s , when the Soviet underground rock bands...
stars Aquarium
Aquarium (group)
Aquarium or Akvarium is a Russian rock group, formed in Leningrad in 1972 by Boris Grebenshchikov, then a student of Applied Mathematics at Leningrad State University, and Anatoly Gunitsky, then a playwright and absurdist poet.-History:...
and Bravo. The subsequent publicity turned Antis into a national sensation and they became known as one of the best rock bands in the whole of the former Soviet Union. Antis grew to such popularity that their audiences numbered hundreds of thousands. They toured most of Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
and the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
Algirdas Kaušpėdas designed a dramatic live show with painted faces, besuited musicians, motorbikes, and spaceship models on stage. The band made three video clip
Video clip
Video clips are short clips of video, usually part of a longer recording. The term is also more loosely used to mean any short video less than the length of a traditional television program.- On the Internet :...
s, which were later used in the 1986 musical film
Musical film
The musical film is a film genre in which songs sung by the characters are interwoven into the narrative, sometimes accompanied by dancing. The songs usually advance the plot or develop the film's characters, though in some cases they serve merely as breaks in the storyline, often as elaborate...
Kažkas Atsitiko (Something Happened). Kaušpėdas' lyrics were sharply critical of the Soviet regime; an appealing stance for many people during Perestroika
Perestroika
Perestroika was a political movement within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during 1980s, widely associated with the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev...
. Personnel changes improved the band's musicianship and their music became more sophisticated. Early Antis was heavily influenced by Talking Heads
Talking Heads
Talking Heads were an American New Wave and avant-garde band formed in 1975 in New York City and active until 1991. The band comprised David Byrne, Chris Frantz, Tina Weymouth and Jerry Harrison...
. One of their biggest hits was a cover version
Cover version
In popular music, a cover version or cover song, or simply cover, is a new performance or recording of a contemporary or previously recorded, commercially released song or popular song...
of a Men at Work
Men at Work
Men at Work are an Australian rock band who achieved international success in the 1980s. They are the only Australian artists to have a simultaneous #1 album and #1 single in the United States . They achieved the same distinction of a simultaneous #1 album and #1 single in the United Kingdom...
song. Later Sniegius added sounds derived from the work of Frank Zappa
Frank Zappa
Frank Vincent Zappa was an American composer, singer-songwriter, electric guitarist, record producer and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, orchestral and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed...
.
At the end of 1986 Antis recorded their eponymous debut album at Melodya's Vilnius
Vilnius
Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania, and its largest city, with a population of 560,190 as of 2010. It is the seat of the Vilnius city municipality and of the Vilnius district municipality. It is also the capital of Vilnius County...
studio. The LP was released in 1987 and became one of the best-sold records in Lithuania. Their second album was recorded in 1988 in the CCS studio in Warsaw
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
. The band planned to release this independently but Melodya objected and the ensuing litigation delayed release by a year. The last recording session took place in a Vilnius studio in 1988. Those songs with some selected numbers from the Warsaw session appeared as Anties Dovanėlė (Antis' Present) in 1989.
Disbanding
Anties gave their final tours in the second half of 1989 and early 1990 including the appearances at festivals in Italy, Austria, Germany, France and USA, where they participated at the NY New Music Seminar and played at the CBGBCBGB
CBGB was a music club at 315 Bowery at Bleecker Street in the borough of Manhattan in New York City.Founded by Hilly Kristal in 1973, it was originally intended to feature its namesake musical styles, but became a forum for American punk and New Wave bands like Ramones, Misfits, Television, the...
.
In 1990 Algirdas Kaušpėdas quit music for politics and then returned to architecture. The rest of the band continued rehearsing and composing, and auditioned some new vocalists but Pablo proved to have been the heart of the band, so they broke up. Some members left the music business and others joined other projects. Kaušpėdas manages a design company and is still an important figure in Lithuanian music and culture.
Aftermath
In 1994 Zona/BMK released two Antis MCs. The EP Bjaurioji Antis (Ugly Antis) included the earliest amateur recordings from Kaunas, before the arrival of the horns. Retas Paukštis (Rare BirdRare Bird
Rare Bird was a progressive rock band founded in 1969. They were formed in England, but had more success in other European countries than they did at home. They are mostly remembered for the haunting, organ-based track "Sympathy"...
) contained all the songs that had not been released on the Melodya albums. The final album Geriausios Dainos was a 'best of' compilation, released on CD and MC formats by Zona/BMK in May 1995.
Algirdas Kaušpėdas, formed the Antis Orchestra briefly in 1996 using past members and session musicians to recreate the Antis sound for three open-air concerts as part of the Lituanian Rock March. Most of the original members also reformed briefly in 2003 to promote the release by Zona of most Antis recordings on four CDs (Kažkas atsitiko, Antis, Ša! and Dovanėlė) and a box-set
Boxed set
A box set is a compilation of various musical recordings, films, television programs, or other collection of related items that are contained in a box.-Music box sets:...
Visa Antis.
Resurrection
After 17 years of silence (the last album was released in 1990), the band released Ančių dainos (Songs of Ducks) on 16 December 2007. Initial album sales beat the expectations and became best-selling album by Antis.Members
- Algirdas KaušpėdasAlgirdas KaušpedasAlgirdas Kaušpėdas , is Lithuanian rock musician, the leader of Lithuanian rock group Antis, architect and one of the Sąjūdis iniciators.-Biography:...
- Petras Ubartas
- Vaclovas Augustinas (keyboards, vocal) (born 1959) played in Saules laikrodis before joining Antis. Since 1992 he has been chief conductor and artistic directorArtistic directorAn artistic director is the executive of an arts organization, particularly in a theatre company, that handles the organization's artistic direction. He or she is generally a producer and director, but not in the sense of a mogul, since the organization is generally a non-profit organization...
of the Vilnius Municipality Choir Jauna muzikaJauna muzikaJauna muzika is a chamber choir in Vilnius, Lithuania, formed in 1989 by composers Remigijus Merkelys and Algimantas Gurevičius. The members of the choir are professional musicians - graduates and students of the Lithuanian Academy of Music. Depending on the repertoire being performed, the number...
. - Linas Buda (Drummer) (born 1962 in Kaunas) played in Roko laboratorija before joining Antis. In 1988 he joined the jazz quartet Sasnauskas.
Discography
- Kažkas atsitiko (1986)
- Antis (1987)
- Ša! (1988)
- Anties Dovanėlė (1989)
- Visa Antis (2003) (compilation)
- Ančių dainos (2007)