All the YOUNG
P U N K S
BELseNFaNgan was a gaS
BELSENFANGAN
My first creative output as a dedicated follower of punk, was a band I had together with my 2 best friends in school. , formed in 1987 in Christiansin. The name was inspired by a life long fascination for the subject of WW2, the SEX PISTOLS track "Belsen Was A Gas", early Norwegian punk act NORGEZ BANKs "Springtime In Belsen"(´80) and hyper obscure early Trondheim punk band BELSEN BOYS, the name can only be found in some band family tree published in an early local punk fanzine(80).
SURE OPPSTØT
Later we changed and were more or less active until September 1990. We never got serious enough to record any of the few tracks we wrote, but were nevertheless using the band as more of a playground to prepare for next phase of ROLF EINARS DATATIPS (R.E.D) The transition from BF to R.E.D was just as much about a journey away from the anachronism and nostalgia of a ´88 ´77 purist punk band and into the more contemporary hardcore punk, using anarcho-punk as the bridge.
BELSENFANGAN (1987-90)
ANTI (Anders Wimpelman) - Vocals/guitars
DOG (Trond Nõrbech) - Drums
TØMME (Tor Helge Kvamme) - Bass
T (Trond Iversen) – Guitars
GUN (Gunnar Jørgenvåg) – Drums ´89-90
I still have many of first recordings we ever did during rehearsals on tape, even the very first one, from September 1987, in the cellar of the guitarist (Trond Iversen), who also was the only guy who actually had a proper instrument that was plugged in, though it was just a tiny amp with the most horrible distortion effect ever. Tor Helge “Tømme” Kvamme, who was supposed to play the bass, played the only string available on an acoustic guitar, while the drummer(Trond Nörbech) did his best to make 5-6 tin cans sound like a drum set. Myself, I screamed as loud as I could to compensate for the missing microphone and PA.
The only song we knew the chords to on our virgin rehearsal was “Clash City Rockers” by THE CLASH. We couldn t figure out the refrain or the exact English words, so we tried to skip most of the refrains,bridge and of course the guitar solo, while I wrote down some hasty phrases in Norwegian, ending up with a lyrics of my own, instead of trying to translate into much of the same meaning in the verse lines.
In those days most of us were pretty right wing in political opinions, to say the least, so I took the battle cry of one of most profiled anti-racist bands in early punk and gave it a new message of a vigilante uprise, calling for an urban guerilla to launch a private warfare on the leftists, the social democracy and all associated institutions and individuals. “Ta Te Våpen”( “Get Your Gun”) had probably made the PC camp of Joe Strummer and Mick Jones see “red” for a fact, in double meaning. However, we are not forgetting the fact that the image of THE CLASH by ´77 had a certain urban guerilla look(mostly thanks to WESTWOOD/MCLARHEN and their Seditionary cloth collection) and the wore RAF badges as well as using a live radio discussion on BAADER MEINHOF and terrorism in the legendary live set at the Punk Festival at 100 Club in 1976.The first line I ever wrote in the context of punk lyrics was nevertheless, in retrospect, the only statement in a pile of naive protest lyrics, that still bears an ounce of resonance to my world of beliefs:
I m the black fascist, don t need anybody else, all I really want is a space of myself
BELSENFANGAN, 1987
We got to the next stage of a fully equipped back line of instruments and a temporary place to rehearse, a room in the bomb shelf of our elementary school, totally unfit for audio but still. We now concentrated on how to play the instruments well enough to play a one chord wonder in the right tempo, actually keeping all the elements together long enough to get in some kind of groove for a second or three.
Covers:
THE CLASH “Clash City Rockers”
SEX PISTOLS “Belsen Was A Gas”
BUZZCOCKS “Boredom”
COCKNEY REJECTS “Flares & Slippers”
THE EXPLOITED “Blown To Bits”
DEADKENNEDYS “Pull My Strings”
LOST KIDS “Asocial”
SLIM “Fuck The King”
GBH “Drug Party in 526”
UK SUBS “Crash Course”
WANNSKRÆKK “Æ Veit Da Faen Æ”
RAGA ROCKERS “Radiator” + “Stig”
BACKSTREET GIRLS “Sexual”“
Own tracks:
“Paven E En Dritt”
“Politi Stat”
“Ambisjona”
“Æ Tru kje”
(Music and words by Anders Wimpelman 1987-90)
“Æ TRU KJE”
Æ trukje på gud eller hans hellige sønn, trukje på dem som drep tia med bønn, trukje på paven eller hans ord, Æ trukje på dem som gjør guds handling så stor
Æ trukje x 2
Æ trukje på regjeringa Ap eller Venstre, trukje på at dem kan styre vårt land, trukje på sosialismen, trukje på liberalismen , Æ trukje at de løftan som dem kjem med e sann
Æ trukje x 2
Trukje på dæ Trukje på mæ Trukje på noka
( LOOOOONG SOLO)
Det æ trur på e sunn fornuft, det æ trur på e natur og luft , det æ trur på e anarki , det e det æ trur på, du hakkje noka å si?
BELSENFANGAN 1988
Our first concert was on the same day as we graduated from elementary school, on a multi band arrangement of local heroes (DAGLIG DOSE and SOMETHING ELSE) as well as the trembling debutants as ourselves. 3 of us wore the same ugly Hawaii shirt, safety pins, circle-A buttons, and I also sported my own pirate Seditionary “Destroy” t-shirt., making sure that both the inverted crucifix and reversed swastika were visible. I sang and played the rhythm guitar, and I doubt any of the efforts to be memorable in terms of technical skills or music whatsoever.
We opened with “Asocial” by LOST KIDS outta the legendary Danish Pære Punk compilation of 1978, without knowing the track in fact was a cover itself, “Mongoloid” by DEVO , with a totally different lyrics in Danish, as well as an extended wah wah guitar solo to show off LOST KIDS´ Sweet Bølle du Blonds promising talent, which unfortunately probably never came in full fledged bloom thanks to his early death due to the heavy line of substance abuse in the LOST KIDS camp. Then we played “Drug Party At 526”(GBH) with ALL instruments out of tune, and to be sure to make a complete disaster out of it also playing the chords in different scales. “Fuck The King” by SLIM, also from the Pære Punk release, was the second last track, before we barely had the nerves and guts to play the only song we had written ourselves, “Paven E En Dritt”(“Fuck The Pope”). I remember walking off stage half embarrassed and with a feeling of failure, and the first reaction from the audience was this Christian girlfriend to this guy from another band, attacking me with accusations of being a tool in the hand of antichrist, though I hardly think ANYONE would have trusted us such a task, I said fuck off and joined the guys on a well deserved celebration bender for our 9 years in primary school.
Our other show was in 1990, the night of the first of May, a traditional marking of the official union workers day in Norway, everybody getting drunk beyond belief and some, like the 4 of us, that is 3 with a stand in drummer for the occasion, Gunnar Jørgenvåg, perform angry music with an agenda devoted to the harshest critique of all tin soldiers and puppets of the government and state, on the stage of one of the biggest National rock events of the year in those days, paid by the public welfare state and given the patron of the Norwegian union workers party LO(Landsorganisasjonen i Norge). SURE OPPSTØT got somehow qualified, and made a short performance of 3 songs, under the name SKJEDENS IRONI.
I got drunk way before even the soundtrack, and minutes before going on stage I thought to myself, unable to recall hardly any of the lyrics to the songs, that the only way to escape the fate of just another tragedy or catastrophe of a performance was to seek ways to distract the attention of the audience, I ripped my button down shirt, cutting up a finger to get some blood to smudge on the white shirt with a black and red circle A badge, I found a marker pen and wrote “LO SUCKS!” with big clumsy letters on the front chest of it, and added some safety pins and neck chain a la SID VICIOUS. Ready for gig. The guitarist played the intro riff of “Politi Stat”(“Police State”), and then I walk up to the microphone stand, shook the microphone till it fell off and hit the floor(with irrepearable damage). Then I picked it up again and yelled out a salute to the union fucks
This goes out to you all you fucking pricks, especially the goddamn LOsers who think we hate them less just for putting up this ridiculous show. The truth is ,we respect you even less, we despite you more than ever, fuck the 1st of May! 1..2..3..4
Later that year, after the Summer vacation, SURE OPPSTØT decided to call it a day. The guitarist was the main reason for the split up, having played along the lines for quite some time without ever showing the least of interest or passion towards the music or the social four piece unit of our band. Unlike the rest of us, he never had the same weak spot for punk and thus he fell out of it after a while, and at the same time he also got considerably more into playing the guitar than playing in a band.
During the last year of playing together with T, he was barely present at all, mentally at least, and it became more and more difficult to communicate with the guy. He would keep quite for hours and hours, without a single smile or gesture, if he ever revealed a dominating emotional character in his personality, it was the one of indifference, maybe with a touch of arrogance. On the typical rehearsal, between every song, he started playing his goddamn solos, and we always had to use loads of effort to drag him out of that state again, like he was trapped in a trance of improvised tones, a dream of stepping into the shoes of JIMMY PAGE or HENDRIX for a minute or two.’
Whenever put at face value with the term “punk”, after the initial bliss faded out, still if it was the identity and image of his band, he left no doubt of a growing distaste for the lot. As he once told me:
"I have advanced to a more intelligent and mature form of rock".
Now he saved his hair and money, until he could afford a special ANGUS YOUNG(AC/DC) Gibson SG guitar, the tool he held worthy enough to bring into his cave of a teenage room, the magic toy that would warp him to guitar hero heaven, section “extended solo psychosis”. Then started a nonstop jerk off on a red guitar, the devil in the flesh, as DAVID SYLVIAN puts it, and I really don t know if the solo still is on, though it may as well be..
T seldom showed no interest in riffs or the structure of songs. Instead of a main focus on the creative aspect of the arrangement in overview, like every single one of the eruptive forces he adored had as first priority, he went for an obsessive technical zoom-in of certain fragments of the rock composition. The interest grew into a love affair, but not with music, as a general totality of a whole, rather the electric guitar. “the medium is the message”(McLuhan), sort of. The guitar as an object of fetish. If the instrument was his love, then his message would have to be the guitar solo.
Guitar solos appeared regularly in modern rock numbers of those days, think EDDY VAN HALEN or JOE SATIRIANI, nearly to the point that you eventually wondered if the guitar hero had some kind of compulsory claim of the total playtime of a song. In the beginning “Mr T” learned by heart all of his favorite solos chosen from a bucketful of evergreens, CREEDENCE CLEARWATER, DEEP PURPLE, ERIC CLAPTON and LED ZEP. After spending most of his time practicing the guitar solos of others for some time, he gradually developed a touch and an intuitive understanding of his instrument , which in return enabled him to take on improvisation, built on the knowledge of blues scales, his only truly creative use of the ax.
The situation had evolved into a bit of an irony: a PUNK guitarist whose main skill is the least used and celebrated element in his own genre, the guitar solo. Otherwise he was unable to memorize songs and could barely keep the tempo or curve in the arrangement a whole song through, all this probably because he only had 1 particular short part of a song before his creative minds´eye.The solo part was the only situation, music wise, that you actually could spot a spark of vitality in his play, and he always pursued this task with an attention and eager that were completely absent outside the bubble of his solos.
This led to a contrast between the whole and the flow that became too easy to point out for the listener, as well as punctuating the dynamics and the groove. What had been an orphic virtue that melted the heart of every bystander, took at some point of his career with SURE OPPSTØT a different turn that soon proved itself as being blunt and ignorant narcissism. This egocentric tendency, rarely succeeds in the interplay with other musicians, made the disbandment of SO no exception from the rule. No serious musician can work with an individual who refuse to acknowledge the supreme position of the whole they all have contributed to as a creation, only doing his job properly when all lights are on him and he is the one to shine.
So he escaped into the realm of his own, where he was the ultimate God of Guitar, released from all pressure to engage the SG in any other use but the sacred art of guitar solos. No other person around to listen, limit down his need for having the attention of the four naked walls all by himself. He took a step out of the social context and into the solitary space of his bedroom, just as he took a specific part of the rock n roll blueprint and isolated it, in order to make this an independent creative output, with no roof of an arrangement to submit it to.
I often thought about how different his take on music, in means of artistic expression,techniques and ambitions, was compared to my own. And one have to remember the fact that this was under 2 years after we both started on scratch,side by side,as we picked up instruments and started a band of our own. I had the dreams and ambitions that already were there long before we formed BELSENFANGAN, in fact they were already deeply rooted in me before punk even came around; since I saw KISS at television at the age of 6.. As I grew up, the dreams of a child morphed into a refined wish for spending my time and energy on creative expression, in one way or the other.
When I dreamt of PAUL STANLEY and KISS it was, more than anything else, a seed of a wish for writing songs that had much of the same power of expression, a force so strong that it would ignite a soul fire so bright that it was able to cast light on paths never seen before, set a new direction for an individual life. I knew that what I first and foremost aimed at, was to create and perform my own songs, even if I knew I had to be patient for the good stuff to materialize. Patient enough to find a suitable channel and tool for it , learning to operate it, mainly to achieve a “higher”goals. This implies putting work into something even you think sucks, but do it anyway because you re smart enough to see that there s no other option, if you want to reach your Stairway To Heaven or, much more accurate for the world of today, Highway To Hell.
On the material and practical level, there was a huge difference in me and Ts´ situation, even if the irony bites your head off by underlining that I was the preppie upper class kid while he was more of a working class anti-hero. He got a proper IBANEZ guitar, including a small Peavey amp, from his parents immediately after he told them about his idea of a new hobby. Me,on the other hand, who lived in a high society household where everything was dictated by a perverted praxis of keeping up those fucking appearances, both my mom and my stepfather did all they could to NOT support me, among other things they never allowed me to buy an instrument, even though I had money for it myself. I had to reach the age of 18, not afraid for getting my own ass kicked anymore, before I did it anyway. My choice was also Gibson, but even though I later converted to SG for a long period, I chose the Les Paul model, first and foremost because of PAUL STANLEY and JIMMY PAGE, as well as PORCELL of YOUTH OF TODAY, a band I was heavy into at the time. Later I discovered it was just a fake one, but the thought was good and, as they say here in Norway, that is what s really important. Just as long as you can make good use of it, I d rather say.
Before the Les Paul came to my rescue, I had to, instead of using a descent and functional guitar, get a cheap and nearly trashed acoustic guitar from my fellow band member and good friend Tømmes father, which he was about to throw away anyway. The problem was that you could only use 3 strings on it, because all note keys were long gone. I sneaked it into my room, which was 1st floor while the rest lived and slept on 2(the perfect symbol of the hierarchy of this family and house), and took it out from the closet on dark evenings and started to fumble with a defected tool I did now how to use, in a broken condition or not. Unlike both T and Tømme, I never got to attend any guitar lessons, once again thanks to the psychopaths that ruled my childhood home, so the only way to start a creative career, was to get the most out of my shitty guitar with three strings.
The first song I ever wrote, back in ´88, “Æ Tru kje”, was a result of the following process: I simply found the 4 tones in the riff, put them together and came up with 4 new tones that would make a refrain. Then I memorized it, and kept working on it in my head while I tried to come up with some lyrics to apply to it.
That s how I wrote my first song, whileT had done, after learning all AC/DC guitar solos by heart, his first improvised solo. It was to become a solo that went on and on, to a point where his 3 ex-band mates had done several concerts, recorded 2 demos and performed a long set on local television, using the name ROLF EINARS DATATIPS(R.E.D), with me on guitar instead of the guitar solo hero. In contrast to SURE OPPSTØT/SKJEDENS IRONI (just like LOST KIDS), where every song had loooong improvised guitar solos, R.E.D had not a single one ever.
1 comment:
har lest dette tidligere..men leste igjen. imponerende med all info..morsomt å lese.
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