Hornets Attack Victor Mature

The Hornets Attack Victor Mature is a fictitious band inspired by a headline that ran in a Los Angeles newspaper in the early 1980s (the Hollywood star had been harassed by a swarm of crazed wasps while playing golf), the faux punk group was cited in numerous publications as a genuine act that was taking the L.A. music scene by storm. Reports of Hornets Attack Victor Mature concerts and other HAVM news ran in the industry trade publications Record World and Billboard, and the group was cited in Oui magazine (then published by Playboy Enterprises), Trouser Press and the Village Voice. (Music editor Robert Christgau, in his essay for the 1981 Pazz & Jop music poll, gave Hornets Attack Victor Mature "the newly established Poly Styrene Best Name Award.")

It wasn't long before word of Hornets Attack Victor Mature spread among music cognoscenti the world over -- even though there was no music to listen to! In the mid-1980s, REM began using the moniker for stealth gigs in small venues. On February 12, 1985, the band booked themselves into Athens, GA's Uptown Lounge under the HAVM pseudonym, claiming to be a new group from Nashville. In an interview several years later, REM's Peter Buck recalled: "We sent a press release that said [the group's sound] was a combination of Jerry Lee Lewis and Joy Division, and God knows how we got the date.... I figured anyone who'd pay a dollar to see a band with a name that silly is our kind of person."Reports of Hornets Attack Victor Mature records, and its legendary concerts, continue to circulate to this day.