The Battered Wives

Battered Wives was a punk rock band from Toronto during the late 1970s.

Battered Wives consisted of Toby Swann (guitar and vocals), Larry "Jasper" Klassen (bass and vocals), John Gibb (guitar) and Cleave Anderson (drums), and released their first album (eponymous) in 1978. This album was the one from which most of their hits come. Such are 'Daredevil', 'Suicide,' Lover's Balls,' 'Freedom Fighters,' and perhaps their best known hit, 'Uganda Stomp (Bomp Idi Bomp)', that poked fun at Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. Their second album came out in 1979. It was called "Cigarettes" and apparently also demonstrated that they had acquiesced to complaints from the public, because their name was shortened to merely 'Wives' for this album. One song from this album is 'New Wave Robot,' and while this album had some following, it had not nearly as much as the one from the previous year. This album won a Juno for best record design. They then released "Live On Mother's Day" in 1980, inserting the 'Battered' back into their name. Then, the group broke up, each member going his own way. Anderson worked with Blue Rodeo, replaced by Patrick Mooney. Upon breakup, Swann went solo, releasing a cover of the Judy Garland hit 'Over The Rainbow' on his 1981 album "Lullabies In Razorland". Klassen is still working as recording artist in Toronto.

Some things that made this band stand out were :

#The picture of a woman's lips with a fist imprinted on it as their logo, and
#The number of groups that kept protesting at concerts about the band's name and what it apparently advocated.