Newsletter 3
Spring '98
- Ex + Albini
- Radio ELO
- Ethiopian grooves
- Interview excerptA new label in the US,
Touch & Go, and plans to record a new CD with Steve Albini, in his new
studio in Chicago. We already know the release date! If all goes well, on
October 20 our CD will see the light. Oops, profi-planning!
And a long list of gigs, mostly the Ex five-piece with the new set. The
club-circuit, but also a Sonic Youth support, an anarchist meeting in
Madrid, a jazz festival in Victoriaville, Canada and probably the Lowlands
rock festival. Plus The Ex & Guests at the Moers and Mulhouse jazz
festivals. And lots more.
The Ex and some old fans
If Steve Albini would end up on a deserted island and had to choose
three records to bring with him, he would definitely pick "Gonna rob
the spermbank", we read somewhere, many years ago. And once in CBGB's,
he was fanatically helping us put the gear on stage. A fan.
"I thought, if I continue long enough in this work and The Ex doesn't
split up, one day we'd work together." We phoned him in Abbey Road
Studios in London, where he was recording Jimmy Page and Robert Plant (the
money for his own studio has to come from somewhere!), he began ranting
enthusiastically about the idea of working together, which Ex records he
had and the number of times he'd seen us. In the background Jimmy Page is
rocking out on his guitar. And suddenly Steve realises that it's not
really a good moment to talk about it, as he has to push some recording
buttons! We thought, wow, this can't go wrong!
But much of this came about from pure circumstances, rather than from
meticulous planning. We were searching for a new label to release our
records in the US, and nearly everyone we asked, from quite different
scenes, recommended Touch & Go as by far the best and most honest
people to work with. But from there... how do you get to them? This
suddenly became much easier, once we discovered the boss, Corey, was also
an old an Ex fan. We first met in Chicago, last year, at our Lounge Ax
gig. It turned out he'd known us for years and had all the old Ex singles.
It seems we both started our musical careers trying to cover the same
song, "I'm an upstart" by the Angelic Upstarts!
We spent the whole day together, chatting about a million things, and hup!
we're on Touch & Go. No contracts or bullshit. On the basis of
enthusiasm and trust. What more do you want? That same day Corey took us
round to Albini's new studio. Half built, but impressive. He especially
had delivered ten lorry loads of sun-dried Adobe bricks from New Mexico. A
gigantic "live-room", around eight metres high. All his
experience and ideas realised in an old warehouse.
How we could not record there!
12 años of ELO Radio,
Madrid
On March 21 we'll play at the 12th anniversary of the Radio ELO
festival in Madrid. Along with Kashbad, Gumdrum and Hechos Contra el
Decoro. Radio ELO (Emisora Libre de Orcasitas) was founded in 1986 by the
Neighbours Association, an historical group created during Franco's
dictatorship, who suffered persecution and jail sentences. The station was
set up to campaign for young people from the South of Madrid (Orcasitas),
who had the worst record of failure at school in all of Europe.
Today it broadcasts 24 hours a day all over Madrid, giving info about
collectives, demos, meetings, squats etc. Plus a good mix of musical
styles. The new conservative party wants to close all non-commercial
radios, so the station has no government support and depends on the
listeners for its survival.
Ethiopian grooves
One of the most striking new sounds we "discovered" recently
is Ethiopian music from the early seventies! Because of the country's
unfortunate history it only comes to the surface now. The golden years
were from 1969-1975, at the end of Haïle Sellassie's feudal medieval
reign, when the country opened up a little bit. Hotels and night-clubs
started, showcasing their bands, for the first time they had juke-boxes an
one tape-recorder. The bands all originated from the army-brass bands;
they were the ones with "modern" instruments: the Imperial
Bodyguard Band, the Police Force Band, etc. and they were also the backing
band for a whole range of modern singers, men and women: Aster Aweke,
Mahmoud Ahmed, Alemayehu Eshete, Ayalew Mesfin, Theheloun Gessesse, Hirut
Bekele, to name a few. And you can hear the freedom, inspiration and
enjoyment; away with the old days! In this small period they produced
about 500 singles and some 30 elpees.
All this healthy turmoil was brutally brought to an end with the arrival
of a particularly vicious military junta. Censorship, curfews and
repression. Ethiopian music was almost totally extinguished. Most artists
fled abroad. This misery lasted 18 years, and only in 1992 the curfew was
abolished. And immediately music and night life sprouted everywhere. Now
there is a big new wave of street musicians and folk music.
And also the 70s stuff is being dug up from under the dust. Mainly by the
incredible dedicated French fanatic Francis Falceto, who has been working
on this treasure for over ten years now. Fifteen times he travelled to
Addis, many times to America to speak to the artist-expatriates, and to
Greece to trace old master tapes. Besides writing a book and working on a
TV documentary, his big project is now to release a series of 10 CD's
called "Ethiopiques". The first two are out. One with great 70s
material, another one with new folk music. We are doing some promotion for
it in Holland, and that's how a photo of a Police Force Band can appear in
an Ex newsletter!
Recommended listening:
Mahmoud Ahmed: "Ere mela mela" (Crammed World) (and not:
"Soul of Addis") / Various: Ethiopian Groove, the golden
seventies (compilation) / Various: Ethiopiques Series (Buda Musique).
Traditional:
Ethiopia, three chordophone traditions (Anthology of African music,
Auvidis Unesco) / Alemu Aga: Beganna of Ethiopia, The harp of King David
(Long Distance).
Interview Excerpt
- as told to Stone for TAZ Bremen newspaper
"Political open mindness and musical open mindness are part and
parcel of the same thing. We don't have rules about who we play with based
on whether the musicians share the same political or musical ideas as us.
We choose people intuitively mostly based on what we hear them play and if
we like them as people, and mostly it works out great. It's mostly much
later that we discover people's political views and sometimes they're
totally different, sometimes not... We are not a band that sits around
talking politics all day... the politics is there much more to do with how
we operate as a band and how we deal with people personally and
professionally.
Recently we played a whole lot of concerts with Djibril Diabate, a cora
player from Mali... how can we talk about politics with him? What would be
the point... how do you explain our music to him and vice versa? And yet
we could play together and share something in common... based more on a
kind of openness and acceptance which enabled two unbelievably different
kinds of music, culture and ideas to somehow work together.
The fantastic thing is that we played together the same song but must have
heard it incredibly differently because of our different musical and
cultural backgrounds... and we'll never really know how Djibril heard our
music... which is great."
On the Internet
This May, The Ex will have its own web-site. It'll include the
newsletter, tour-dates, information about our back-catalogue, mailorder,
band history, and some day maybe even live music.
The Ex's web-site address will be: http://www.xs4all.nl/~exrcrds/
Our E-mail address, already in full swing, is: exrcrds@xs4all.nl
Meanwhile, if you want to read about The Ex on the net, on one of our (so
far very sparse) internet-travels we came across a few web-sites that may
be worth a visit. Most of those easy-to-remember addresses we forgot, but
not the following two:
http://www.nothingness.org/ex/ (also carries stuff from our favourite
rebel news orchestra Rhythm Activism and from the journal Social
Anarchism);
http://www.trouserpress.com/bandpages/ex.html (also contains many, many,
many more discographies of all kinds of bands from the 70s, 80s, 90s).
Shortcuts
+++ October '97 we played in the US with a couple of great new bands,
Neptune, Fat Day, Crom-Tech +++ Fugazi cooks great meals +++ It was
amazing playing with Djibril Diabate. Hopefully this autumn he will return
from Mali with his three-piece band Lanaya and join us again for some gigs
+++ The 1936 Spanish Revolution book + 2x3"CDs is now available in
Spain, through BOA distribution from Madrid +++ Terrie and Andy joined in
some gigs with the Cords from Deventer, great band +++ John Butcher,
London saxophonist, played a spellbinding solo set at the Bimhuis in
February +++ Donkey's new CD "Stroke my wings gently" (on Wormer
Bros) is asskicking ace +++ Sonic Youth invited us to join them for four
dates on their US tour this spring +++ The end of the year we plan to
return to Britain after a long absence. Sorry kids! +++ Andy &
Isabelle do some dancing at a Hungarian dance class! +++ We'll play a
benefit gig for La Gryffe Anarchist Bookshop in Lyon in the middle of our
French tour +++ The Mekons were mixing their new CD when we were in
Chicago. Terrie played some weird guitar +++ Good to see them again. We've
known them since 1983. Jon Langford's band Skull Orchard joined us at
Lounge Ax +++ How to answer all these questions about Chumbawamba? +++
"Folk"-record progress: an Ethiopian, a Hungarian and a Kenyan
song are getting there +++ We won't play Bristol +++ Katrin played an
improvised gig in Utrecht with Rajesh Mehta (trumpet), Anne La Berge
(flute) and Joost Buis (trombone) +++ Kletka Red (Andy on guitar) plan to
record a CD somewhere this year & some gigs & joining The Ex in
Victoriaville +++ Roof (Luc on bass) will do some gigs with Tom Cora's
music of the Slaughterhouse Jenny theatre piece (performed in January and
February): "Mme Luckerniddle", with Phil Minton and Cathérine
Jauniaux singing +++ Red Note will release an acoustic live-CD of Tom Cora
(cello) and Wolfgang Mitterer (piano) +++ Han Bennink is in top shape, go
and see him! +++ Terrie and Ab Baars are working on film music for a TV
cartoon by Martin Keppy about boxing +++ We are slowly thinking about our
20-year anniversary party somewhere half 1999! To have Mahmoud Ahmed
playing is our dream +++
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