PARTHENOGENESIS

PARTHENOGENESIS
4 July 2023

Parthenogenesis was born in the fall of 1978, but the story begins at a disco-club in Ilioupolis, Kanaria Sq. about a year earlier. At the time, it was normal practice for club owners to have one or more live rock nights during the week as the disco boys and girls went dancing on Fridays and Saturdays. It was on one of those week nights that I first met Alberto and George. Their group was called 'Airborne' and mine was 'Crystal Faces'. We had a good chat over a few beers and about a month later, I decided to leave 'Crystal Faces' and join 'Airborne'. For almost a year, we played mostly covers of popular rock songs. We also tried to write some prog-rock stuff of our own, we were all big 'Pink Floyd' fans, but it was not really working.
Then, in the summer of 1978, after a falling out with the guitarist of the group, the three remaining members Alberto Levis, George Makridis, and myself (then, Takis Polychronopoulos) we decided to redefine our style and started practicing new material which was essentially created during rehearsals and consisted of simple, 2-3 chord songs. A few weeks later, it all started to come together and we had our own first five compositions including 'I will not apologise', with George's lyrics, which later became our theme song. At the same time, we changed the name of the group to 'ΠΑΡΘΕΝΟΓΕΝΕΣΙΣ'. I can't remember if someone came up with the name or whether it just popped up in one of our brainstorming sessions! But it was quite good. The next step was to add one more ingredient to our sound, the electric guitar. As luck would have it, just before Christmas of that year I attended a musical event at KATEE Egaleo with George where we met Kostas Pothoulakis, a student from Crete. Kostas was a great guy and we clicked instantly. He was also interested in experimenting with musical styles and a perfect fit for the guitarist of Parthenogenesis.
That was the original lineup of the group (first photo). In a few months Parthenogenesis had become very popular with new wave and punk rock audiences in Athens and thanks to the initiative of Tasos Psaltakis and the Musical Express Magazine we were able to play in several other cities in Greece. We also won a battle-of-the-bands competition at Kyttaro club in 1980 and we played regularly at the 'legendary' Paranoid Club, which was run by our friend Elias Roussis. We also were, and still are, good friends with Magic De Spell and we always invited them to play at our gigs, long before they were famous :)
The group disbanded early in 1981 and the final lineup was very different from the original. Alberto and Kostas had left and were replaced by Chris Stoligas on drums and Tommie Bouzianis on guitar. There was also Bill Paleokostas on the keyboards. This was in fact the most popular Parthenogenesis lineup and many people wonder why we decided to end it. Well, the view from the outside is often misguided. The truth is that we had come full circle. The only way to keep going without compromising our artistic integrity was to reinvent our sound and that new direction would have to be agreeable to all of us. That was not possible. I know there are some columnists who think otherwise and that's absolutely fine, you can believe what you like. The difference is that I was there, baby!

PS: Parthenogenesis never released any records. However, during practice we used a small tape recorder to check mistakes, etc.. Four of those recordings have survived and one of them was turned into vinyl by the independent label b-otherside about ten years ago. Below is a list of links to youtube videos with the tracks from that cassette:
Might be you  -  I will not apologise  -  Just another prisoner  -  Feeling  -  Now I came
Give more lies  -  Holiday  -  Right or wrong  -  House of the rising sun  -  Try the taste