prongs.org/ministry
Welcome to the oldest and most informative Ministry site on the net. 1994 - 2022!
Been about 5 years since any site updates here but the releases page is completely redone. It has artwork, lyrics, and even alternative versions of a song listed. More updates to that page will be done, including credits... The site is also mobile friendly.
After multiple reschedules and lineup changes, the latest Ministry tour is finally underway. Melvins and Corrosion of Conformity are opening, and while not as "industrial" as the original lineups, is still solid.
Most notably, Ministry's digging back in the backcatalog for the setlist, with tracks from Land, Mind, 1000 Homo DJs, and even Pailhead. They even brought back the fence.
The full list of dates is at the link below. Maybe we'll even list them on Prongs, if we manage to get any closer to caught up on things.
Here's the list of dates
A direct note from Paul Barker:
Hi everyone- I've finished a Lead Into Gold 12" single! The songs are A Savage Gift and Inside a Golden Sun. It's up for pre-order at this link:
https://www.paulionbarker.com/lead-into-gold-pre-order/
This pre-order will include a hand printed linocut block print by me, as well as three unreleased bonus songs as a digital download. The estimated ship date is in February 2018.
This is a limited edition limited pressing. International orders can be made at Ebay.
A very insightful interview was conducted by elrey96 over on the forums with Al Jourgensen's ex-wife, Patty Jourgensen. She began as the manager for the Blackouts, played with the band on the 1984 tour and had more behind-the-scenes influence than could possibly be listed here.
Read the interview with Patty Jourgensen.
A lot in the Chicago music scene would not have been possible without Jaime Duffy. Last year's Revolting Cocks performance for the Wax Trax! Records Retrospectacle event would not have been possible without Jaime's technical and musical help (he was not only the guitarist for this but also the one who coordinated everything within the band). Though he is most known for his work on Acumen Nation, he has tremendously helped on Ministry's Filth Pig and Lard's Pure Chewing Satisfaction as well as many other albums from the Industrial scene. He was a very hard working and caring individual and it was not uncommon to bump into him while out and about in Chicago.
Sadly, on June 21st 2012, he passed away. Our condolences to his family and close friends. Here's an interesting piece written by Jim Marcus (Die Warzau).
To enter in the drawing to win one of 6 copies of the Fix: The Movie DVD, you must answer all three questions from the link below, and pass on your email address (no, it will not be used for marketing purposes).
Fix The Movie Giveaway
It has been quiet on the Ministry end of things, however, some interesting news...
April 10th 2012 is the date on which the much awaited Fix: The Ministry Movie is to be
released. Directed by Douglas Freel, the documentary, which includes interview snippets from Biafra, Buzz, Maynard, Reznor and Davis just to name a few, consists of footage which chronicles a lot of what went on during Ministry's Filth Pig tour. It is a very fascinating documentary to watch.
We have started a page on Fix: The Movie which includes stills from the documentary, as well as more information.
This site, along with the distributors of the movie, will be giving away 6 copies. Stay tuned for the trivia question....
Fix This!!!
Available in conjunction to the movie will be Paul Barker's new record, Fix This!!!. This album features guests such as Chris Connelly, Ogre, Taylor Momsen and Puscifer. When asked for details on reSpite, the track which features Ogre on vocals, Barker sent this to us:
"I talked to Ogre about this fresh idea I had: make a generic thrash metal record and sing about current lame political woes using sesame street lyrics, but I still have all my teeth and wanted songs with a little more bite than that. After many hilarious phone calls a deal was struck: I write the music and he writes and sings the lyrics.
So I sent Ogre a rough song I wrote. Unfortunately, our schedules didn't allow us to track together, so he and Mark Walk sent me finished vocals and I finished the mix.
Not nearly as much fun as being together in the studio, but fun nonetheless. All 1's and 0's- very modern. "
These tracks are available for download now over here.
Ever since I started this website in 1994, I could have never imagined a weekend such as this past one. It was the Wax Trax! Records Retrospectacle: 33 1/3 Year Anniversary event and included performances from Front 242, My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult and former members of KMFDM and Revolting Cocks. Not only were the musical performances spectacular (LA Weekly hailing the performance of Revco tunes as "what may very well have been the greatest shows of the band's history."), but the atmosphere was incredible. The actual show, in front of a sold out crowd during all three nights, was simply superb. The sound and visual effects were extremely powerful.
After years of reading their posts, I met many people from the Prongs message board including Bisquitodoom, who helps manage this site. There were many that have been frequenting this site for over a decade that I finally have met, such as John Crawford and Jim Ballard (both of whom have contributed pictures of the event in recent days).
It was an absolute pleasure to meet Doug Freel, the creator of the FIX movie, and his wife, both of whom are very upstanding characters with many interesting stories, as well as Paul Barker, Chris Connelly, Luc Van Acker, and Duane Buford (the backstage roster of bands performing listed "The Real Revco"). Members also performing Revolting Cocks tunes who had not before, both Jaime Duffy and Dan Brill, were also outstanding people. Without their hard work, the performance would not have been as smooth as it was. It was about 10 years since I last met Richard 23 (Front 242) and his energy levels and humor is still on par with what they were back then. He performed No Devotion on the last night with Barker & co.. The families of band members were in attendance, including Paul Barker's wife, who stopped by to say hi to Prongers prior to the shows.
There were many highlights during the weekend but definitely one that stood out was Paul Barker playing bass on stage with The Blue Ribbon Glee Club (Chicago's Premier Punk Rock Choir). Together, they performed Pailhead's "I Will Refuse" and Ministry's "Everyday is Halloween".
Another highlight was during the Ministry FIX movie premiere which took place at the Music Box on April 16th 2011. Not only was the movie brilliant and received superb reception (their room was over capacity), but Dave Frey (Al Jourgensen's manager from Silent Partner Management), was reportedly caught capturing / streaming the world premier of FIX on his cell-phone, and therefore, ejected from the theater.
A euphoric atmosphere amongst all existed throughout the weekend, particularly from the bands, not only from meeting each other again after a long time, but also because they would be performing together. Backstage, prior to the event starting, as I was sitting with Connelly, Luc Van Acker came over and expressed his excitement on having to perform with Connelly again after all these years - that was when the sheer excitement and happiness amongst all really hit me.
A huge thank you is in order to Julia Nash who put all this together. Everyone involved with the weekend festivities were very appreciative of her efforts and how awesome she was to work with. Thank you Julia. As with any production of this size, there are many people not directly seen and who must also be thanked for their time and efforts. This will definitely be a weekend which will be talked about for a very long time; I certainly think that it could not have been any better.
This site has a new page, Wax Trax Chicago: Retrospectacle Live, which has more information on the weekend with links to the following picture galleries:
I have also created a thread on the message board which shows posts linked to various media samples from the weekend. If you have any more pictures, videos or information which you would like to share, please email us.
I was fortunate enough to recently watch, FIX, the long awaited Ministry documentary. I felt that the documentary was very well put together and extremely entertaining. One is constantly kept interested by the interview snippets from Biafra, Buzz, Maynard, Reznor and Davis to name just a few. What I liked most about the documentary was that the message was not entirely about Ministry, in that it showed a lot of the backstage antics that one is always curious about: how the crew and the band relate to one another, how band members relate to one another even getting annoyed (Korn's Davis having a bus of his own on tour), how they lure women in backstage, and even the stalker stories were fascinating. In addition, it was surreal to witness how drug induced Al was for a lot of the documentary. Very surreal. We have all heard the stories, however, through the camera, we can watch all this firsthand. The documentary makers never held back as all was shown.
Al's sense of humor was shown particularly in the scene where he described his encounter with Johnny Depp at one of the shows. Though perhaps not humorous, the very obvious display of paranoia from Al's drug use was intriguing, and it shown in great detail in the scenes where he is showing off the bullet proof vest. Another scene has Al discussing how he will wear a top hat so a sniper will not know where the top of his head exactly is.
There is ample exciting concert footage, interview snippets and backstage antics packed into this film and there honestly is never a dull moment while watching this.
I recommend FIX, but not as someone who has followed Ministry over many years, but as someone who is fascinated by the music industry, the world of musicians and how they relate to their surroundings.
The Chicago Sun-Times has posted a review of the FIX documentary which is being premiered in Chicago on Thursday, April 7th, at the Music Box.
Wax Trax! Records is throwing a party on April 15-16 2010 at Chicago's Metro concert hall. The lineup for the "Wax Trax! Records Retrospectacle: 33 1/3 Year Anniversary" will include Front 242, My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult and Rights of the Accused. En Esch, Guenter Schulz and Raymond Watts will focus on the music of KMFDM.
Luc Van Acker, Chris Connelly, former Ministry member Paul Barker and guests will perform the music of the Revolting Cocks.
Tickets ($60 two-day pass; $500 VIP tables) go on sale at noon Saturday via etix.com and will benefit Center on Halsted.
[Discuss]
At Backstage Auctions, from October 31st to November 6 2010, Al Jourgensen will be auctioning off some Ministry memorabilia. Most notably items from amps and road cases for guitars to microphone stands, pins, jackets, rings, sunglasses, gloves, hats and boots from the early 1980s until 2008. What is interesting is that master recordings from the early Ministry days will also be auctioned off.
You can read more at MusicStack.
[Discuss]
Viewing pictures has been fixed over on the Pictures Gallery. You can use the arrow keys to navigate through the pictures.
Concrete, Bulletproof, Invisible and Fried: My Life As A Revolting Cock, the book authored by Chris Connelly, is back in print and can be ordered from amazon.com for $12.
Discuss
Seems the RSS feed was broken but this has been fixed. There will be more page updates coming soon including a revamped pictures section.
There is also another unofficial Ministry forum that has just been started by members of another forum. You can check it out over at ph4pb.com. It is not affiliated with this site in any way.
In addition to that, there is the Ministry subsection on the Litany forum. What this site is to Ministry, Litany is to Skinny Puppy. The site, which resides on prongs.org, is run by a friend of mine, Corey Goldberg, who I had the privilege of hosting when he dropped by Chicago when on tour with Skinny Puppy, a few months ago.
In case you did not know, the oldest Ministry forum is right here on this site.
It has come to our attention that Wax Trax! Records co-founder Dannie Flesher has passed away. It goes without saying that his great contribution enabled us all to see and hear bands such as Ministry, Revolting Cocks, Front 242, and much, much more.
Dannie died on Sunday night from pneumonia, he was 57 years old and was living in Hope, Arkansas.There is an article by the Chicago Tribune on this.
Firstly, I hope the site redesign is to your liking. The design was done by myself while the logo was done by Lawton. In fact, Lawton and I worked hard together on the official site for fixtheministrymovie.com.
This is a documentary to be released in 2010 and features old footage of Ministry backstage and onstage. The documentary includes interviews with the likes of Trent Reznor, Dave Navarro, Jonathan Davis, and much, much more.
From fixtheministrymovie.com, you can not only watch the trailer, but you can also download an exclusive new track released by Flowering Blight (Paul Barker) by registering. The track is called Heroine's Habit and is superb.
We will keep you posted on here regarding the documentary as more news comes out.
Discuss
Seems that Ministry's Bridge School Benefit appearances back in '94 are about to get an official release tomorrow, on November 24th 2009, via iTunes. Included on this compilation are the two Ministry tracks, Here They Come and Paisley both from their November 2nd 1994 performance. Tracks also of interest include Fragile and Hurt, both of which were performed by Trent Reznor on October 22nd 2006.
The non-profit Bridge School Benefit is hosted by Neil and Pegi Young and benefits the unique learning complex which assists children with sever physical impairments and challenging communication needs. The proceeds from the iTunes digital downloads will be donated to the Bridge School.
There is a complete tracklisting over on the official website for Tegan and Sara.
For today only, Al has put up a new song called It's Always Christmas Time on Ministry's official MySpace page.. The song was a collaboration with Mark Thwaite and is a tribute to the late Paul Raven. The song will supposedly be available for purchase as a download at a later date. Definitely a return to his synthpop roots - for better or worse, depending on the listener. Based on interviews with Al, this is probably indicative of the sound for his upcoming planned solo release.
Out this week is the new Dessau album "The Truth Hurts". The first Dessau release since 1995, this album is a compilation featuring outtakes from Details Sketchy, a couple compilation tracks including a cover of Ministry's Revenge, tracks from the first two 12" releases previously available only on vinyl, a couple live Joy Division covers and several tracks from 1990 sessions recorded with Paul Barker. The tracks with Paul were recorded after Exercise In Tension (and The Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Taste). Rather than a second full album, the tracks were scrapped and most were later released on the self-titled Dessau album. These are the long-awaited final unreleased tracks from these sessions.
It's available at most online retailers and directly from WTII Records (along with lots of other great releases).
Not entirely Ministry related but I'm sure many of you are fans of Cevin Key's work.
cEvin Key will be spinning a Tokyo Decadence DJ set with classic and new music from Download, Skinny Puppy, PlatEAU, Tear Garden, Doubting Thomas and more!
Subconscious merchandise booth and autograph session. Closing set by DJ Jeff Moyer
This is going on at Neo in Chicago, IL, USA. This is where Paul Barker also DJed in 2006.
I have finally added the News archives to this site. On the right hand menu you can choose the years you wish to read the archives from. It was interesting to see that January 29th 1999 was our first news posting for this site. Enjoy browsing.
Flowering Blight's The Perfect Pair is available for purchase in MP3 format here.
Yes, it's finally happened!
The album, The Perfect Pair from Paul Barker's Flowering Blight project has finally been released!
Here is a note from Paul himself:
I finally have the first Flowering Blight cd available. This music was recorded three years (!) ago, and was lurking behind the other projects I'd been spending time on. Should be a hit with the ladies...
I want to again thank Gerda Barker, Mat Mitchell, Kyle Ellison, Lee Popa, Earl Harvin, Josh Freese, Adam Grossman, Max Brody, Beth Black, Paul Leary, Critter, Tony Rancich, Danny Lohner, Maria Ferrero, Roland Barker, Paul Elledge, Jimmy Archey, Kevin Walt, Leasha Overturf, Jolee Popa, John Baldwin, Daniel Field, Michael Brokaw, Mark Levinson, and Afra Ahmad for keepin' it real, man.
And your Mama wears combat boots!
Paul Barker
The album itself has appearances from Josh Freese (known for working with a lot of musicians including Nine Inch Nails), Adam Grossman and others.
You may order The Perfect Pair straight from Flowering Blight's webpage. Shipping is included in the price - if you live in the US, it is $12.25 and overseas, $15.00 . Or, you can order from this site.
You can read more information on the release on this site. Lyrics are coming very soon.
Ok, I know it's been a while since we've updated parts of the site. I've spent the better part of the day doing just that. New additions include:
New Song Download - After some bandwidth issues, these are back online and there are several new ones waiting to be put up. The current song is a live version of Señor Peligro from the New York 2006 show.
Tour updates - Thanks to Revco, I've updated all the dates for the 1990 Mind tour, and should have them all correct now. I've also added ticket stubs/posters to several shows including 1/11/90, 2/3/90, 6/19/99, 7/25/92, 8/12/92, 1/24/90, 8/3/90, 12/27/92, 12/1/92, 11/8/88, and 4/11/03. Feel free to browse around the tour section, as updates are pretty continuous.
New Interviews - I added an interview from the Phoenix Sun Times from November 1988 (thanks to tenohtwo) and scans of the Chicago Tribune 7/12/92 interview we had previously only had a transcript of. The real interview includes a picture of Al/Patty/Adrienne (then 7) and a picture from the Lollapallooza practice sessions. Also added to the interview page are a few Wax Trax promotional pics/press releases. Scroll to the bottom for those.
The last Ministry tour, C U LaTour, is well under way. Here is the set list from the Tempe, AZ show on April 8th 2008, as posted by Tenohtwo:
Let's Go
The Dick Song
Watch Yourself
Life Is Good
The Last Sucker
No W
Waiting
Worthless
Wrong
Rio Grande Blood
Señor Peligro
Lies Lies Lies
Khyber Pass
So What
NWO
Just One Fix
Thieves
Roadhouse Blues
Just Got Paid
Under My Thumb
Ground Control has posted a review and pictures from the show at the Fillmore in San Francisco on April 1st 2008.
A huge thanks to Krowe for starting and managing the tabs section for this site. After years of people requesting us for it, it's here.
If you have anything to add or change, please direct your responses to Krowe on the message board.
Unfortunately USSA will not be completing their N. American tour:
Unfortunately, we're headed home early. Duane was injured at one of the shows, and after two grueling weeks of pain ended up being sent home by a doctor for repairs (some minor but necessary surgery). We'll be back out on the road as soon as possible.
Happy Holidays everyone.
We wish Duane a speedy recovery.
For those going to the U.S.S.A. and Chemlab November 20th show here in Chicago, please stop by to the official afterparty right after, hosted by my friend DJ Kamar. Jared Louche (Chemlab frontman) will be DJing that night. And, yes, Paul Barker will be showing up, though he won't be behind the decks that night. I'll also be there.
More information at going.com.
You can view the some of the tour dates for Ministry's tour in early 2008 on the C U LaTour page. This will be updated often so check back.
Bassist Tony Campos (Static-X) will be joining Ministry on the tour. In addition to Jourgensen and Campos, the tour lineup will consist of Tommy Victor and Sin Quirin, both on guitars, with keyboardist John Bechdel and drummer Jimmy DeGrasso. Burton C. Bell from Fear Factory will also be on the tour as a featured artist.
Touring with Ministry will be Meshuggah from Sweden.