Great wiki by
foetusized
In his past lives,
PIG war lord
Raymond Watts was known variously as Raymond Scaballero in
Foetus, an icy addition to
Psychic TV, a savage PA destroyer in
Einstürzende Neubauten, and a founding catalyst of
KMFDM. Watts began his arrest record in London where he was most likely pissed off about something and doing sound manipulations, loops and live sound for Psychic TV. He soon crashed into Einstürzende Neubauten (probably in a strip bar) and escaped the smug complacency of the English music scene by moving to Hamburg, Germany and setting up his Building Site studio in a bunker of munitions factory, where he invited in artists including
Sprung aus den Wolken,
Die Haut, and
christiane f. In his pursuit of a cutting edge music scene he sought out like-minded souls to create terrorism instead of tonality. Playing on European/American Neubauten tours, he quickly earned a reputation for destroying PA systems -- the security guards sent by the PA companies to protect the gear were not amused. Between their security thugs and ones hired by Watts to protect him from them, most nights ended up bloody, tense and occasionally on fire.
While collaborating with Neubauten's "gritter" twins:
Blixa Bargeld and
FM Einheit, Watts lived in the red light district next to a brothel, in amongst the sleaze of the Hamburg docks. Watts heard about
Sascha Konietzko who was doing bizarre work with vacuum cleaners, and after drinking him into submission, dragged him and his tall, pale cohort
En Esch down the stairs into the freezing Building Site studio, where they locked themselves into Watts' "frozen cesspit" with 20' steel sheets and other garbage, emerging with the debut
What Do You Know Deutschland?
As one of the architects of the
KMFDM sound, Watts went east to plow through the entrails of the German avant garde, planting the seed of his new experiment while KMFDM moved to America. The mutant was born out of the blood and piss in a basement studio opposite the Berlin Wall and became the 1988 debut album
A Poke in the Eye. In addition, Watts was recruited by Foetus (Jim Thirwell) to be in his first live band, and after a European tour which involved disappearances, catholic school girls, and worms, Thirwell stayed on the produce the 12"
Shit for Brains. Watts said he'd buy the next round and went to the US to record
Steroid Maximus with Thirwell, and also did sound for
Crime & the City Solution.
When the wall came down, Watts split his time between London and Tokyo, looking for a new alien habitat after Berlin's pleasure dome exploded. PIG morphed with various collaborators and Watts started working with Japanese musicians, turning his attention to
Schaft, which became a huge hit there. The Watts system emerged as an elastic style of working with refuse and collaborating with pariahs: one man's trash is another man's treasure, darling.
Long-time PIG fan
Trent Reznor came to see him around '91/'92 at a tiny club in Camden, England and introduced himself to the unimpressed Watts who was surprised that this fellow knew most of PIG's scattered discography. PIG was invited to open
Nine Inch Nails' European tour in '94 -- complete with real pig heads on stage that were a load of fun after a few days' decomposition. Later, in 1995, Reznor's Nothing label released his fourth album,
Sinsation.
In the mid 1990s, Konietzko ran into Watts again and they worked on the
Sin, Sex & Salvation EP, which led to Watts returning to the fold for
Nihil, the most successful KMFDM album to date, which included the Watts-penned hit
Juke Joint Jezebel. Watts also appeared on the band's Symbols album, doing vocals on the delightfully-titled
Spit Sperm and
Unfit, while KMFDM's
gunter schulz and
Sascha Konietzko appear on the 1997 release
Wrecked, furthering their incestuous relationship.
Still bigger in Japan than the rest of the world, PIG released his sixth album,
Genuine American Monster, there in 1999. Finally, in 2002, PIG found a new American home with the Metropolis Records label, who had that year recently released the album
Attak.
Pig
Crime & the City Solution