Sugar Babydoll
| Pagan Babies | |
|---|---|
A promotional shot of the band. From left to right:
Janis Tanaka, Kat Bjelland, Deirdre Schletter, and Courtney Love. |
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| Background information | |
| Also known as | Sugar Babydoll |
| Origin | Portland, Oregon, and San Francisco, California, U.S. |
| Genres | |
| Years active | 1985 |
| Associated acts |
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| Past members |
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Pagan Babies were a short-lived American rock band formed by Kat Bjelland and Courtney Love in 1985. Love had initially conceived the band in Portland, Oregon with Bjelland under the name Sugar Babydoll, and the group was joined by bassist Jennifer Finch upon their relocation to San Francisco. The group would through several lineup and name changes before recording a four-track demo under the Pagan Babies name with drummer Deidre Schletter and bassist Janis Tanaka.
Courtney Love had originally come up with the name and idea for the band in the early 1980s when she was a teenager in Portland, but aborted the project and moved to San Francisco in 1982 where she had a brief stint as a singer for Faith No More. Upon returning to Portland in 1983, Love met Kat Bjelland at the Satyricon nightclub. Both Love and Bjelland were frequent visitors to the rock club, known in the 1980s as a hub for punk rock shows and rock musicians.
According to Bjelland, after the two had met, Love, who was looking to form an all-female rock group, "fell to her knees" and begged "please, please be my guitarist." In June 1985, Bjelland and Love were joined by Suzanne Ramsey and bassist Jennifer Finch in San Francisco, and the group went by the name 'Sugar Babydoll, a variation on a prior idea, Sugar Babylon. "We were going to make the most obnoxious music in the world," Love said in 1998. "However, I had a doctor who gave me a hundred sedatives a week. So we ended up making this faux Cocteau Twins music, but I didn't really have the voice, and I was singing in a register that was way too high for me."
Bjelland recalled her time in the band in a 1994 interview, commenting: "I’d quit the Venarays by this time and me and Courtney were trying to get a band together. We needed a bass player, so when we found Jennifer we formed Sugar Babydoll, Sugar Babylon, Sugar Bunny Farm or whatever it was called. We went through a few names, and we only played a couple of shows. It was the smallest thing I’ve ever done musically."
After the departure of bassist Finch, Bjelland and Love recruited Janis Tanaka to play bass, and through Tanaka found a drummer/pianist, Deidre Schletter. The band soon began rehearsing in friends' bedrooms, and played numerous covers and some originals during their jam sessions. During this time, the group went by the name Pagan Babies.
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