Friends Of Betty- Grief Giver

Friends of Betty was noise/folk/punk band band from Chicago that was formed by Tim Rutili and Glynis Johnson sometime in the mid '80's. Ben Massarella was the band's original drummer, but he was later replaced by John Rowan. The group recorded their only LP, Blind Faith II for Underdog Records in 1988. Speaking about the record years later, Tim Rutili commented "We didn't understand the studio very much. We thought to do in the studio what we did live would be very hard. Much of what we did was noise; we wanted to make more of an album. It was a mistake.". After the album, the group added guitarist Glenn Girard and in 1990 they did a brief European tour. After the tour, Friends of Betty would morph into Red Red Meat. Glynis Johnson recorded one album with Red Red Meat before dying of A.I.D.S. related complications in 1992. Rutili continued with Red Red Meat, and later, Califone. John Rowan changed his name to Blackie Onassis and joined Urge Overkill after leaving Friends of Betty.

[ThirstyCraig]

This is from an acoustic on-air ( radio ) performance (1989 is my semi educated guess).