Inner City Unit
Inner City Unit (ICU) is a British Punk/hard edged Space rock band fronted by ex-Hawkwind founder Nik Turner on saxophone with Trev Thoms (guitar), Dead Fred (Keyboards), Baz Magneto (Bass), and Mick Stupp or Dino Ferari on drums.
Thoms & Ferrari were both key members of Steve Peregrin Took's band Steve Took's Horns. Took continued to work with his former band members by guesting with ICU at a couple of gigs. This original line-up produced 2 albums, Passout and The Maximum Effect. A compilation of out-takes and demos Punkadelic was released during the same time. In 1982 Turner returned to Hawkwind taking Dead Fred with him, this marked the end of ICU Mk1.
In 1984 Nik Turner and Dead Fred were removed from Hawkwind and decided to reform ICU, Thoms and Stupp were unavailable for the making of the next album "NewAnatomy" so they recruited Steve Pond (who had previously toured with ICU during the shows for the Passout album as Synth player) to play guitar and program the drum machine. Mick Stupp rejoined the band in time for the NewAnatomy live shows and was joined by another ex. Hawkwind man Dave Anderson on Bass. ICU Mk2. released two more albums Blood & Bone and The Presidents Tapes before finally falling out on the winter solstice of 1985 and calling it a day.
Nik Turner started his Cuban jazz rock outfit Nik Turner's Fabulous Allstars. Dead Fred and Steve Pond went on to play with another ex. Hawkwind man Robert Calvert. Mick Stupp played with many & varied bands moving from drums to guitar over time.
The Imperial Pompadours were an ICU side project with legendary sleeve designer Barney Bubbles he also produced the bands first three album covers.
In the 1980's original guitarist Judge Trev Thoms started a 3 piece Metal band named Atomgods which for a while featured ICU Mk2 guitarist Steve Pond on bass.
In the 1990's Judge Trev used the ICU name for his own band with original drummer Dino Ferari releasing one album Now You Know the Score as "Judge Trev's Inner City Unit"
In 2001 a mutant version of ICU combining members from Mk1 & Mk2 played 2 shows as an ad hoc Mk3. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.
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