Rhino Factoids: INXS perform in public for the first time

35 years ago, the band known as INXS made their public debut as INXS. It’s not as if they hadn’t being playing around already, you understand, but it was on this date that they performed their first concert under that particular name.

Yes, history reveals that the first proper show by the band that would ultimately become known INXS took place on August 16, 1977, a.k.a. Tim Farriss’s 20th birthday, in Sydney.. At the time, though, they were still calling themselves The Farriss Brothers Band, an appropriate moniker, it must be said, for a group featuring Tim, Jon, and Andrew Farriss in its lineup. By the following year, the whole crew had tagged along when Jon, still 16, had no choice but to move to Perth when his family did, with everyone else in the band living in a communal home, where they spent most of 1978 writing, rehearsing, and performing. Not long after the start of ’79, however, the gang moved back to Sydney, when things really began to get rolling for them.

So what led to the big name change? Blame Midnight Oil: one of their crewmembers suggested that the Farriss Brothers Band switch things up and call themselves INXS, an idea inspired as much by XTC as an Australian jam manufacturer called IXL. Apparently, it wasn’t the worst idea in the world: before the end of ’79, INXS had Chris Murphy as their manager and had signed a five-album record deal with indie label Deluxe Records.

To celebrate the anniversary of INXS’s first show as INXS, take a listen back to INXS’s 1980 debut album, also called INXS. We’d say the band’s name one more time, but the number of times we’ve done it now is already in excess. (Get it?)