John Robb – Many-faceted Creature
John Robb is a many-faceted creature. Bassist and singer for post-punk mainstays The Membranes, author, journalist, DJ, publisher, vegan behemoth and talking head, he’s all these things and more
He grew up in Blackpool before punk rock came along and saved his life.
Naively believing that you really could do what you wanted he went on to form the loudest group ever, the Membranes – the highly influential post punk band and were a big influence on the soon to come Sonic Youth and Big Black American scene. Membranes recently reformed and their 2016 Dark matter/Dark Energy is a critically acclaimed ‘masterpiece’ that is their best selling album yet. The band will release their new album in 2018 which will be recorded with a 20 piece choir.
He was one of the leading post punk fanzine writers in the UK with ‘Rox’ before he went on to write for the rock press with Sounds and was the first person to interview Nirvana and coined the expression Britpop and was instrumental in kick starting and documenting the Madchester scene with his writing. His music and culture website louderthanwar.com is currently one of the biggest music and culture sites in the UK and he does loads of TV and radio and is currently setting up a multi media channel for Lush and filming exclusive one hour interviews with people like Green party leader Caroline Lucas, musician Shaun Ryder, comedian Stewart Lee and many others for them.
He also currently writes books and articles, runs a music and books festival called Louderthanwar and is a political campaigner who chairs committees in Parliament and is an in demand speaker with his spoken word show spawned by the success of his talks of TEDx on punk, zen and the universe and also for his talks of veganism and punk rock and is launching a one man in conversation show called ‘The world accruing to John Robb’.
He also tours the world.