Waingast: The Improbable Rise of the All-Girl Band From Wales
Written by Rhys Ffrangcon-Davies
Tuesday, 01 April 2014 01:00
As the reader is doubtless aware all-female Welsh band Waingast first met as juveniles in a Caerphilly reform school in autumn 2008. Each had been incarcerated for various crimes, usually drug-related, both minor and grievous. Raised in foster homes they had been brought together by social workers who had discovered via DNA testing that they were half-sisters. Sian IzBeleevn, Bronwen BraynzFayl, Gwyneth GalTroll and Rhiannon Cedors – each then 14 became inseparable after learning of their blood ties.
Unsubstantiated reports claim their biological father is Dai Gruffud – purportedly a former roadie for Chumbawumba, who accepted the calling of work with the mentally ill as a sideline. A mental hospital orderly, he was alleged to have sired the members of Waingast illegitimately in clandestine trysts with patients at an asylum for criminally insane women near St.Asaph in the late summer of 1993. Gruffud disappeared shortly after it was discovered that he had been using the inmates of the asylum detox wing as a harem.
Bronwen, Gwyneth, Rhiannon and Sian – perhaps scarred by the knowledge of their parentage, perhaps reveling in it formed Waingast as a girl-gang. They hung out in the music room of their reform school haphazardly learning to play instruments. Later sent together to a poorly run foster home in Newport they went out to music clubs there by night skipping school during the day. Via drug-couriering, prostitution and theft they acquired gear. They found rehearsal space in an abandoned cheese factory.
Vocalist Sian, guitarist Gwyneth, bassist Bronwen and drummer Rhiannon are reticent about their early gigs around the mean streets of Newport but witness accounts provide testament. They were booed and pelted with pub snack food by whatever punters didn’t walk out on their sets. A show-goer shot one of those sets on her smartphone in December 2012 which went viral after being uploaded online. This coincided with a a music industry-wide talent search for a very special musical project.
Different record companies had contributed money to fund Phuntasticka – a label to sign, develop and produce bands with the most repulsive music imaginable. The cynical – perhaps even devious ploy by the music industry was intended to curb illegal downloading by creating awful product to turn into music files, misidentify it under the names of popular recording artists and their songs then upload them to pirate websites.
The first band signed to the label was Waingast in January 2013. Production on the band’s debut album began immediately after the band was flown to a mysterious recording studio in Langley, Virginia. Audio engineer Rusty Schlatter had previously worked for the CIA creating sound via computer to be used to torture suspected Taliban in interrogations. He applied his expertise to molding Waingast’s style with the results immediately uploaded to file sharing sites after haphazard mixing.
Serendipitously they were discovered just as they were banned from even the most rundown rock venues in all of Newport. Waingast was also spirited out of Wales just as an investigation into the grisly murder and dismemberment of a club sound guy was begun. Multiple witnesses claim one of his final acts had been to subject the band to a tirade in which he bluntly told them they were ‘a bunch of boozy-floozies who can’t play for shit’.
The Waingast sound had initially been constructed via brazen theft of compositions stolen from easy-listening & adult contemporary acts then played as heavy metal with a such a lack of proficiency as to emerge completely unrecognisable. A classic example is ‘Naughty Sauce’ – their most famous song which is just a heavily distorted version of ‘Love Will Keep Us Together’ by the Captain & Tennile. Schlatter’s new arrangements added polish.
Illegal downloaders soon began receiving a nasty surprise when they hit ‘play’ on pirated files. They had stolen the dischordant, shrill, nausea-inducing tracks which would comprise ‘Sheep-Licker’ – Waingast’s debut album. Hidden messages would later be discovered when the album was played backwards. Those that listened carefully could hear threats and warnings about penalties for illegally burning and distributing music.
Unexpectedly the ‘music’ developed a large following via the file sharing sabotage tactic which had mutated into an accidental, counter-intuitive marketing campaign. Listeners were able to find out who had crafted these misidentified tunes by scrawling down song lyrics and then googling them leading them to the lyrics portion of the Waingast website.
Phuntasticka, having gauged the stunning popularity of the music from comments (failing to diagnose it as sarcasm) on webforums scrambled to sign Waingast to a long-term deal and a summer 2013 tour of North America was hastily arranged to support the album which was hurriedly remixed. A disaster of epic proportions was once again unleashed as yet another record company had failed to properly gauge the tastes of music listeners.
Waingast insisted upon sticking with their band name and the album title ‘Sheep-Licker’ despite protests from Phuntasticka about lewd connotations of each. But a compromise was reached on the iconic cover depicting a sheep grazing on a lush Welsh farm. Waingast had wanted something hardcore. A parental advisory warning label was applied for the controversial lyrics.
Phuntasticka pre-purchased two million copies of ‘Sheep-Licker’ via dummy corporations to automatically give the album multi-platinum status before the July beginning of the tour. Having Warehoused millions of copies of ‘Sheep-Licker’ CDs in anticipation of the tour there were plenty to be had at the stores they were shipped to across North America.
Shameless Phuntasticka public relations people gave royal treatment to music journalists at the tour’s opening press conference in New York City. But the real gifts were supplied by the band during the interviews. When veteran rock journo Erica Mustfield asked what they thought of critics who had already given ‘Sheep-Licker’ negative reviews Bronwen replied ‘We hate ’em, Erica’. Press in attendance misheard her and dutifully reported that the band had said ‘We hate America’.
Another question asked of Sian about her cheating former fiance Newport Mexican restaurant owner/notorious drug distributor Jesus Cordoba elicited the response ‘Jesus can lick my asshole’ which was dutifully reported and misinterpreted worldwide. Al-Quaeda was the only group which expressed approval. By noon the next day the band were deluged by death threats and protests. Various Christian and patriotic groups also called for ‘Sheep-Licker’ to be banned outright.
Phuntasticka opportunistically launched a massive radio ad campaign under the guise of a patriotic, God-fearing citizen’s group urging offended people to purchase the album in order to destroy it at the nationwide protests. Sadly this did not stimulate sales. Music outlets returned millions upon millions of consignment copies of ‘Sheep-Licker’ to Phuntasticka.
Critics were nothing less than merciless in savaging everything about Waingast and its music including how much they had evidently ‘borrowed’ from other bands. As rival musicians complained about brazen and ruthless theft of their material allegations also surfaced of abuse of groupies – something members of other groups claimed they had done before with more style than Waingast.
The heavily reviled 2012 tour was consequently subjected to the very worst kind of press coverage. The band appeared more concerned about whether rider form demands had been met than playing in the same key or answering allegations of hard drug use and sex with underage boys. The infamous ‘Sardine Story’ began to circulate firmly giving Waingast a notorious reputation. Jaws dropped and eyes popped amongst even the most libertine circles.
The substance of the rumor was that members of Waingast, after a concert in Battle Creek, Michigan had taken a teen boy who was eager to meet them back to a room in their hotel and reverse gang-banged him. They then proceeded to insert sardines into his rectum and tried to coax him into eating them. A film of the alleged encounter was supposedly suppressed – presumably destroyed.
Most of their shows were cancelled or moved to different locations leaving the band with nine gigs total. Contractually promised and expenses paid for, world tour shows in London, Paris and Rome scheduled for September went ahead with minor changes in detail. They took place in London, Ontario, Canada & Paris, Texas & Rome, Georgia respectively instead of England, France and Italy. Ticket sales were so poor that stadium gigs were cancelled and replaced with open mic nights at rundown bars.
By the time of the Rome gig Phuntasticka had filed for bankruptcy protection. Bronwen, Gwyneth, Rhiannon and Sian were all also facing conviction for assault and battery on an American TV reporter who had made the mistake of characterising them as ‘Nice English girls’ without knowing that the band was Welsh and that the Welsh hate being mistaken for English.
By January 2014, Waingast made its triumphant return to Wales but were not necessarily greeted as heroines. Authorities in the United States had deported them and Welsh police collected them directly from Cardiff Airport in security vans. They were charged with the murder of the aforementioned sound guy in Newport. They await their trial set for mid-April.