A Brief History...

The Peer Group began in the Summer of 1996 as Prescott's then-current band Kustomized were playing their last shows. The first line-up consisted of Prescott on guitar and vocals, [[Rich Wentworth]] ([[Bald Guys]]) on guitar and keyboards, [[Nick Blakey]] ([[Pretty Flowers]]/[[The In Out]]/[[The Takers]]) on bass, and [[Tim Morse]] ([[Anal Cunt]]/[[Pretty Flowers]]/[[Invisible]]) on drums (Blakey and Morse had also served as the last rhythm section in Kustomized. [[Ed Yazijian]], the multi-instrumentalist and other member of Kustomized, was moving out of state and thus was not continuing on with Prescott). This line-up did not perform live. Morse soon quit (but not before recording a set of 4 track cassette demos in the band's practice space with Prescott and Blakey), replaced by [[Jim Siegel]] ([[dj ningnong]]), with [[Pat Lynch]] ([[Flying Nuns]]) joining on guitar. The group made it's live debut February 15, 1997 at Coney Island High, St. Mark's Place, NYC, opening for [[The Oblivians]], while making their Boston debut later that month (on the 23rd) with the [[Cosmic Psychos]] at TT The Bear's Place, Cambridge, MA. Jeff "Mono Mann" Conolly of [[The Lyres]] introduced the group.

The group recorded a set of demos at [[Zippah]] Studio, Brookline, MA in April (with [[Pete Weiss]] engineering) and continued to play around the Boston area. Paul Hilcoff's web site has a photo from this period of the band performing at TT The Bear's Place on August 5, 1997 (left to right: Blakey, Lynch, Siegel, Prescott, and Wentworth).

Wentworth left the group following a September gig at the Green Street Grille in Cambridge, and the group lumbered on as a four piece, recording another set of demos at Zippah in the process (in November). One of the songs from this session, "Peers" (aka "The Peer Group Hate Anthem"), appeared on the CD compilation A Place To Call Home, which remains the only official Peer Group release.

Following two New England shows with the reformed NYC band [[Bush Tetras]], as a return favor The Peer Group was offered one of the support slots to [[The Fall]] with Bush Tetras supporting at Brownie's in NYC on either Tuesday, April 7, or Wednesday April 8, 1998, but turned it down for reasons now best forgotten. The April 7th gig turned out to be the somewhat infamous show that resulted in Mark E. Smith being arrested and barred from the USA for some time. Owing to this, the April 8th show was cancelled.

Blakey left following the April 17, 1998 gig at [[Jacques]] in Boston (at the end of which, in an apparent final moment of fury, he snapped the tuning head off of his bass), and was soon replaced by [[Doug Hines]] (aka Duggy C.), a former bandmate of Rich Wentworth's in Bald Guys. The group started to record tracks in their practice space on 4 track cassette before the group then proceeded to record their debut proper at [[New Alliance Studio]], Boston (the studio was located in the same building as the group's practice space) with [[Marc Schleicher]] and [[Nick Zampiello]] recording, in 1999. It was during these sessions that Rich Wentworth returned to the group's fold, and was able to contribute to some of the album's sessions.

It is here that things get blurry. The album was finished, and copies were given to friends, fans, and music people alike. Doug left, followed by Lynch, but Lynch and [[Clint Conley]], Peter's former bandmate from [[Mission of Burma]], returned occasionally to fill in on bass. A notable gig was played on May 12, 2000 at The Roxy, Boston (opening for [[Wire]]), and it was during this show that saw the first seeds of the Mission of Burma reunion were sowed, with [[Roger Miller]] joining Prescott, Conley, and the rest of The Peer Group on stage during the song "The Sound Is Off". Though it was not an "official" reunion, and no Mission of Burma songs were played, the press touted this occurrence as potential hope for an actual MoB reunion.

The Peer Group kept performing around Boston, playing some notable gigs at [[The Linwood]], Boston (w/Conley) and [[The Abbey Lounge]], Somerville, MA (w/Lynch) before the group performed for the very last time opening for [[Shellac]] at the [[Knitting Factory]] in New York City on January 20, 2001 with Conley filling in on bass.

It was not long after the Peer Group's untimely demise that Mission of Burma decided to get back together, with new shows starting in 2002.

While nothing other than the lone song "Peers" was ever released, the two 1997 demo tapes do circulate on bootleg, as does the unreleased 1999 album. It is a shame that many of the Peer Group songs never saw the light of day, but oddly enough "Let Yourself Go", on the 2006 Mission of Burma album The Obliterati, has its origins in an unfinished and unrecorded Peer Group song. Whether Prescott will revive any other songs from the vast unreleased Peer Group canon remains to be seen.

There are no current plans for a Peer Group retrospective to be released.