Deniz Tek (born November 10, 1952) is an American singer, guitarist and songwriter and a founding member of Australian rock group Radio Birdman. He has played in many of the underground rock bands of the 1970s including Australian bands The Visitors, and New Race but is most known for exerting his burning Detroit style guitar influence over the punk rock genre in Australia. Tek is a trained ER doctor and ex-navy flight surgeon who currently splits his time working in emergency departments in hospitals in NSW, Australia and Hawaii, USA while still taking time to record and tour. (More from Wikipedia)
Angie Pepper grew up as the youngest of three children in a middle class family in Newcastle, Australia. She was always interested in art and music and became part of the Sydney rock music scene. Angie became friends with the bandmembers in Radio Birdman, a legendary Sydney punk rock band that formed in 1974 and broke up in 1978. One of the bandmembers, guitarist Deniz Tek is actually from Detroit and brought the hard-edged Detroit sound of MC5 and Iggy and the Stooges with him Down Under.
After the Passengers broke up, Angie Pepper and Deniz Tek quietly married and collaborated on a new band called the Angie Pepper Band. The other bandmembers were Clyde Bramley – later a member of the Sydney rock band Hoodoo Gurus – and former Saints drummer Ivor Hay. The Angie Pepper Band also released just one single in Australia, “Frozen World” b/w “Why Tell Me”.
In 2003, Angie Pepper released her first full-fledged album, Res Ipsa Loquitor (the name is taken from a Latin legal term meaning “the thing speaks for itself”). The album has a variety of moods and influences – even a short rap section – with most songs being co-written by Angie Pepper and Deniz Tek. Four of the tracks were recorded with a Montana psychedelic outfit called Donovan’s Brain (named after a 1942 science fiction novel, Donovan’s Brain that was made into a horror film on three occasions). The songs include a cover of the notorious “Hindu Gods (of Love)”, a linchpin Australian punk rock song; “Hindu Gods (of Love)” was originally released by Lipstick Killers on Greg Shaw’s Voxx Records in 1980.
(December 2013)
