Antis

Antis is a Lithuanian postmodernist rock band. The name is the Lithuanian word for "duck" and is also slang for a false mass media sensation. In 1986 in the last days of the Soviet Union, there was an alternative music explosion in Lithuania. Before then all "western low quality music" was officially forbidden with lists of proscribed bands including Ramones, AC/DC, and Alice Cooper. Antis was a politically motivated band that played proscribed m... more

Antis is a Lithuanian postmodernist rock band. The name is the Lithuanian word for "duck" and is also slang for a false mass media sensation. In 1986 in the last days of the Soviet Union, there was an alternative music explosion in Lithuania. Before then all "western low quality music" was officially forbidden with lists of proscribed bands including Ramones, AC/DC, and Alice Cooper. Antis was a politically motivated band that played proscribed music in several styles including ska. They also wrote their own songs with jaunty horns and witty ironic lyrics. Algirdas ‘Pablo’ Kaušpėdas founded Antis in 1984 as a joke to entertain attendees at a New Year party that he organised for the architects' union in Kaunas. The band's performance was such a success that word of it spread all over Lithuania. In January 1986 a horn section from Vilnius joined the band and Petras ‘Sniegius’ Ubartas (another architect who was a composer, trumpeter and guitarist) took over the musical leadership of the... less