Marion Coutts
| Marion Coutts | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1965 (age 51–52) Nigeria |
| Nationality | British |
| Known for | Film, video, sculpture, installation, books |
| Notable work | The Iceberg: A Memoir |
| Spouse(s) | Tom Lubbock |
| Website | marioncoutts |
| Musical career | |
| Genres | Post-punk |
| Instruments | Vocals, trumpet, percussion |
| Years active | 1986–1995 |
| Labels | Demon Radge, Konkurrel, Alternative Tentacles |
| Associated acts | Dog Faced Hermans |
Marion Coutts (born 1965) is a British sculptor, photographer, filmmaker, author, and musician, known for her work as an installation artist and her decade as frontwoman for the band Dog Faced Hermans. In 2014 she published her critically acclaimed memoir, The Iceberg.
Marion Coutts was born in Nigeria and raised in the United Kingdom. Her parents were Salvation Army ministers with whom she traveled extensively. The church they attended had a strong musical tradition that encouraged young girls to play brass instruments, and at age 10 Coutts started playing trumpet for a large Salvation Army band.
Coutts' family lived in London and then Scotland where she stayed on to attend college, earning her BA in Fine Art at Edinburgh College of Art from 1982 to 1986.
While attending college, Coutts joined an improvisational musical project called Volunteer Slavery. Named after an album by Rahsaan Roland Kirk, the group consisted of three men and three women who "mostly banged on things," including guitars, oil drums, and other percussion. Coutts played trumpet and another woman played sax, and their first gig was a benefit in support of the UK miners' strike. The group persisted for a year-and-a-half without writing any formal songs, though a demo tape was recorded and has resurfaced on the internet.
In 1986 three members of Volunteer Slavery wanted to continue on as a more serious band, and Coutts expressed interest in being their vocalist. They named themselves Dog Faced Hermans, after an obscure reference in a Frankenstein film, and began paring down their music into shorter, faster songs that still maintained some of Volunteer Slavery's experimental elements. In addition to writing and singing lyrics, Coutts played cowbell and added her trumpet, giving the group a distinctive sound.
The Dog Faced Hermans toured the UK and released a few records until moving to Amsterdam in 1989. During this period, Coutts spent a year in Poland on a British Council Scholarship to attend the State School for the Arts in Wroclaw Poland. In 1990 she rejoined her band in the Netherlands, and the group went on to release four more albums. They toured Europe and North America before disbanding in 1995 with various members scattering into new projects around the globe. Coutts returned to the UK to concentrate on her art.
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