Battered Wives was a Canadian

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 punk rock

Punk rock

Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...

 band from Toronto

Toronto

Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...

, active during the late 1970s. The group was spawned on Queen St.
It consisted of Toby Swann (guitar, voice), Colin Fox (drums, mayhem), and Robert Stewart, (bass, voice). The whole idea being to turn it up to ten and saw the knobs off. Colin got deported from Canada for various reasons and the band lost a lot of it's momentum...... Until Toby reformed it with a new line-up.

The reformed Battered Wives consisted of Toby Swann (guitar and vocals), Larry "Jasper" Klassen (bass and vocals), John Gibb (guitar) and Cleave Anderson (drums), and released their first eponymous album in 1978. This spawned the hit single

Hit single

A hit single is a recorded song or instrumental released as a single that has become very popular. Although it is sometimes used to describe any widely-played or big-selling song, the term "hit" is usually reserved for a single that has appeared in an official music chart through repeated radio...

s "Daredevil," "Suicide," "Lover's Balls", and "Uganda Stomp (Bomp Idi Bomp)", that poked fun at the Uganda

Uganda

Uganda , officially the Republic of Uganda, is a landlocked country in East Africa. Uganda is also known as the "Pearl of Africa". It is bordered on the east by Kenya, on the north by South Sudan, on the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, on the southwest by Rwanda, and on the south by...

n dictator Idi Amin

Idi Amin

Idi Amin Dada was a military leader and President of Uganda from 1971 to 1979. Amin joined the British colonial regiment, the King's African Rifles in 1946. Eventually he held the rank of Major General in the post-colonial Ugandan Army and became its Commander before seizing power in the military...

.

Their second album was released in 1979 and titled Cigarettes. They acquiesced to complaints from the public, because their name was shortened to merely 'Wives' for this album. The most notable song from this album was "New Wave Robot," and Cigarettes won a Juno

Juno Award

The Juno Awards are presented annually to Canadian musical artists and bands to acknowledge their artistic and technical achievements in all aspects of music...

 for best record design.

They released Live On Mother's Day in 1980, inserting the 'Battered' back into their name. This album was marred with law suits from various record companies and didn't really see the light of day, despite the fact that it was probably the best of all three. Then, the group broke up. Anderson worked with Blue Rodeo

Blue Rodeo

Blue Rodeo is a Canadian pop and country rock band, which was formed in 1984 in Toronto, Ontario. They have been signed with Warner Music Group since their debut album Outskirts in March 1987...

, replaced by Patrick Mooney. Swann went solo, releasing a cover

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 "Over the Rainbow" on his 1981 album Lullabies in Razorland. Klassen is still working as recording artist in Toronto.