The earliest incarnation of the group, which was founded in Hamburg in 1984 by Peter Missing, included Sascha Konietzko and En Esch of industrial act KMFDM, who were only with Missing Foundation briefly before going their own way. After Missing moved back to New York City in 1985, he started a new version of the group, and the line-up became more stable, with a core group of Missing, Florian Langmaack, Chris Egan, and Mark Ashwill. The band's second album, 1933, was released in 1988, when the band's social unrest fomenting activities began to increase dramatically. The group's upside-down martini logo had been spray painted all over the East Village that year. At a show in mid-1988 in New York, the group doused oil barrels in kerosene and set them on fire, then rolled them into the audience, causing major damage to C.B.G.B.'s, the club where they were performing. In a July 31 protest, one of the band members was arrested. A week later, Missing helped organize another initially peaceful protest at Tompkins Square Park, which grew violent after the band performed a concert. The group's biggest cultural impact, other than their disruptive live performances, was the creation of their infamous "The Party's Over" image of an upside-down martini glass, which became a symbol for political and social dissent. The logo was part of a major graffiti campaign in New York's Lower East Side during the band's existence. An accompanying phrase, 1933-1988, was added as a way to draw comparisons between contemporary New York and the Weimar Republic. The group was accused of Satanism by a WCBS-TV news during the height of their influence. After releasing a total of five albums, the group disbanded in 1992, and Missing initially moved to Berlin, then relocated to Copenhagen. In 2013, Dais Records reissued the first two Missing Foundation albums, Missing Foundation and 1933 Your House Is Mine in a limited edition vinyl format.
Musical style
Missing Foundation patterned itself after early industrial acts such as Throbbing Gristle and Einsturzende Neubauten. The group used a variety of found metal objects to create its percussion, and only rarely used traditional instruments such as guitars. Lead vocalist Missing often shouted through a bullhorn, on many occasions because the club owners had turned off the in house speaker system. Missing and his cohorts were once described as "a scattered collection of anarchists and antigentrification militants".
