Agitpop

about

Agitpop is an art punk band from Poughkeepsie, New York. The band was formed in 1981 and began touring widely in 1983. They released four records on the Comm3, Twintone and Rough Trade labels. Its members include Mark LaFalce, John deVries and Rick Crescini. The band was a pioneer in the underground music community and known for their unusual song styles, instrumentation and lyrical content within the rock genre. The shows attracted many celebrated members of the New York arts scene including the Pop Art era photographer Billy Name. The portmanteau Agitpop is derived from agitprop and is a conjugation of ‘agitation pop’, a now well defined label that describes how popular music asserts political ideas and views. The band members were enamored with the idea and the origins of the word from the Russian Revolution and used the repetition and philosophy of it within pop culture. Agitpop as a term can be applied to the name of the band itself, but also translates well into the character of the songs themselves. Agitpop members have often described there approach to music as ‘a unique brand of fractured pop, derived from the dismantling of rock as we knew it. At the time Agitpop was making their first records, the description worked as a default definition of the approach to music the band was taking. Keeping with description and adhering to the needs of the times to re define rock music, they were consequent and therefore no one else sounded like them. The live shows were a natu