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DIRTY LOOKS EUROPE.COM | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Unofficial European Site |
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Biography
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With a combination of Accept-like riffs, AC/DC-like attitude, and Kix-like fun, from 1984 - 1996 Dirty Looks were the ultimate no-frills in your face bar band. From the ashes of Erie, PA's cover-band Crossfire, Danish-born vocalist/guitarist Henrik Ostergaard and fellow Crossfire band-mate and bassist Jimmy Chartley traveled to San Francisco to form Dirty Looks in 1984. Fellow Crossfire bandmade Boyd Baker would join them a year later. While in California and upon their return home to PA, the group had a revolving door membership, yet managed to release an EP and three independent (and hard to find) albums. After the song 'Oh, Ruby' from INYOURFACE, began to receive airplay from Z-ROCK (a massive rock station in Dallas, TX) and its affiliates. Requests poured in for the song and major labels such as EMI, Electra, Chrysalis, and Atlantic came calling. For their major label debut Dirty Looks consisted of Paul Lidel (guitar), former Harpo-bassist Jack Pyers (bass) and Gene Barnett (drums). The resulting album, Cool From The Wire, In 1987 the band signed to Atlantic Records and EMI Publishing and released their first major label resulting album, Cool From The Wire in 1988. Produced by Max Norman (Ozzy Osbourne, Megadeth, Lynch Mob), it is still regarded by many as one of the best hard rock albums of its time. Twenty years later, Cool From The Wire continues to sell online and in record stores all across the globeproved to be one the greatest hard-rock albums ever released and found it's way onto the Billboard charts while getting substantial air-time on MTV for the video 'Oh Ruby'. For the follow-up album, there were conflicts with original producer Beau Hill and the original recordings for Turn Of The Screw were scrapped, but the re-worked album would be the group's most successful release reaching even higher on the Billboard charts. The solid album of outtakes, Bootlegs was released in 1991, then the group broke up in 1993 following the release of the awesome Five Easy Pieces, with Ostergaard forming Rumbledog, Lidel hooking up with Dangerous Toys (and later Broken Teeth) and Perry resurfacing in Jake E. Lees' Wicked Alliance (and later with hardcore legends Prong) Ostergaard began recording under the Dirty Looks moniker again in 1994 to record the under-rated Chewing on the bit album. Following another Rumbledog release in 1995 with Jassen Wilber (bass), Ron Sutton (drums), Mike Ondrusek (guitar), and Mike Smith (guitar, later to Limp Bizkit), Ostergaard had two more releases as Dirty Looks in 1996 . With the personnel above minus Ondrusek and adding singer Gabriel Scott Robison, Ostergaard took a back seat in the vocal department and formed the Burning Orange project who released an album before calling it a day in 1996. Since then, Ostergaard has been retired from the music business to focus on family life... ... Until
2007. Next >> |
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