Author Joe Muggs has done a fine job, interviewing many people in the KLF's orbit, including Cressida Bowyer (Jimmy Cauty's former partner) as well as Bill Drummond's earlier Liverpool colleagues like David Balfe.
Muggs also avoids the trap that so many journalists can't help but fall into when it comes to describing The KLF's more outrageous stunts in breathless tones. Instead, he explores the creative crucible that led to the formation of The KLF in the mid to late 80s, and summarizes the impact of the music to the present day.
So, what was in the Disco Pogo article that I didn't know before?
First, the pseudo-mystical lyrics and imagery wasn't something picked out of a book, like Jimmy Page digging into old writings by Aleister Crowley. Muggs writes:
If there’s an origin story for all this madness, it comes in the mid-1970s when Drummond, down from Scotland to study art in Liverpool, became a carpenter and scene painter for the notably progressive Everyman Theatre. It was here that actor and anarchist provocateur Ken Campbell put on his 24-hour production of ‘The Illuminatus! Trilogy’ by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson – and Drummond was drawn into the worlds of both Campbell and the serious-not-serious pseudo-religion Discordianism, which surrounds all things ‘Illuminatus!’ Pyramids, golden apples, secret societies, lost continents, the number 23 and the idea that the fabric of reality could be an artistic medium all entered the mix.
Second, the early KLF seemed to be gravitating toward a factory pop model, and at one point even fashioned themselves after The Beastie Boys, which kind of makes sense if you listen to 'Whitney Joins The JAMs' or ‘1987 (What the Fuck Is Going On?)’:
“I think they were trying to be the Beastie Boys,” says Iain Baker, later of Jesus Jones. “You could see it with them calling themselves King Boy D and Rockman Rock. They probably wanted to be popular. But I was working in a record shop then, and I can tell you they were only selling to chin-stroking, John-Peel-listening, art-rock-type guys.”
Third, Trancentral was not a state of mind or a fictional place, as I had assumed. It was a squat in Stockwell:
Drummond moved into the Stockwell squat that would soon become known as Trancentral, and as he and Cauty became thick as thieves the weird symbolism started flowing, starting with the JAMs name, which came straight out of ‘Illuminatus!’.
It was here that a lot of musical experimentation took place, feeding off and contributing to the energy of the emerging Acid House scene. One witness described it as "a five-storey squat ... they just ripped out every internal wall, the place was full of acrow props holding up the ceilings. Their parties were a bit terrifying."
Trancentral was also the headquarters of KLF Communications for a few years. This was before I became a contractor/employee, first at Lillie Yard studio (cofounded by Hans Zimmer in Fulham when he still was based in London) and later in the Brixton Enterprise Centre.
Finally, there's a summary of post-KLF activities by Cauty and Drummond. Some I had heard about, including K2. Other activities were unknown to me, such as the donation of music masters going to the British Library and film material to the BFI. There was even a bit about Jarvis Cocker singing ‘Justified and Ancient’ at an event in 2017, plus other connections to younger artists and collaborators.
There's a video doing the rounds titled "how to write a hardcore punk riff" (see below). I never learned much music theory, other than what my high school bass teacher imparted to me regarding basic major and minor scales and the structure of blues-rock. So the video was interesting, as 12tone breaks down some of the patterns behind hardcore punk-rock.
But I think he missed a few things, too. I say this as someone who used to write this type of music in the 80s and 90s in bands like Mr. O, Uckfay, and Feiwu.
Let's start with something 12tone nailed: "It's really easy to make boring punk music." So true! It was easy to identify the greats back in the 1980s, some of whom the narrator cites - Bad Brains, Minor Threat, and the Dead Kennedys. We found out about these bands through word of mouth, live shows, fanzines, listening to records at friends' places, or college radio.
But boy, was it hard to write songs as good as them. I realize why. It's not just a question of getting the theory wrong. In our zeal to reject everything about "classic rock," and the 80s electronic influences that were taking over the pop charts, we were listening to too much punk and hardcore. It wasn't until Feiwu (1997-1999) that I really began to consider other influences, including Taiwanese nakashi music.
It's very clear that the most creative and impactful musicians and artists are usually the ones who are doing things differently, not blindly adhering to the "rules" for whatever came before.
All of those seminal hardcore bands not only had fantastically skilled musicians (including vocals), but also they were coming from a much different place than we assumed, something I didn't find out until later. It's a mistake to think of them as amateurs who only knew the Sex Pistols and Ramones before they picked up their instruments.
Bad Brains started out as a jazz/pop band. Greg Ginn of Black Flag also had a jazz backgroud. I read somewhere that one of Black Flag's favorite albums in the tour van in the early 80s was ZZ Top's Eliminator - Texas blues rock meets synth drums.
Flea, who played bass in Fear before cofounding RHCP, was a high-level trumpet and French Horn player in high school, and grew up listening to his stepfather's jazz influences. East Bay Ray of the DKs - surf and jazz. D Boon of the Minutemen studied flamenco guitar at one point, which you can hear on Double Nickels on the Dime.
There's a great book by Michael Azzerad (Our Band Could Be Your Life) which gets into the influences of many 80s/early 90s bands including Minor Threat, who late in their existence were veering off into U2 influenced rock.
I wrote this in December 2000, an uncompleted recollection of my internship at London's Lillie Yard Studio in 1991 when I was 21 years old. The studio, which was co-owned by Hans Zimmer (Buggles, Hollywood) had a 24-track analog heart, but was on the cutting edge of the digital revolution with gear to support the nascent digital recording and sampling revolution. It was used by a number of UK indie dance artists, including Nomad and The KLF. I didn't know anything about this industry, but it was an education that I would never forget. I ended up working for the KLF's independent record label, KLF Communications, which in 1992 sold more singles worldwide than any other band.
It was the age of E, a new era in the UK music scene. Ecstasy and boom-boom beats had washed over European youth in the late 80s like a double-edged tidal wave. By 1991, the UK music industry was working flat out to supply the grooves that would keep a generation dancing.
Not that some snotty American indie rocker college fucker like me would know it. But it was happening just the same. And I was about to get a long-term, behind-the-scenes look at how one of the biggest bands of the era operated.
Except The KLF wasn't a band, as I soon discovered. There was no lead singer, guitarist or bassist, like the groups from earlier pop music eras. The KLF was more than that, a sprawling experimental collaborative encompassing music, art, and media.
The organization formed around several business and creative concepts. It had a core of two people, Jimmy Cauty (co-founder of The Orb) and Bill Drummond (Big In Japan, and manager of Echo and the Bunnymen). They were a binary star, surrounded by two or three permanent satellites which fed off the core while simultaneously keeping it alive and healthy. Add to the KLF system another five or six semi-permanent and temporary satellites which would spin away from the core after their assigned mission was complete. Sometimes one of these lesser satellites would swing back into orbit around the core, other times the satellite would spin off into the void, never to return.
These satellites weren't necessarily musicians. In fact, some of the most important people to the KLF collaborative were the permanent and semi-permanent associates who handled business matters. Chief among them was Sallie Fellowes, the manager of The KLF's record label, KLF Communications. Sallie was undoubtedly the Jupiter of the system. Most other orbiting satellites felt her pull if they had any dealings with The KLF.
As for the musical talent that appeared on the albums, only a few were vital to the Cauty/Drummond core. They included Nick Coler, a friendly half-techie/half musical wunderkind who played keys on The White Room and handled some programming duties as well.
Other musicians -- such as the rappers appearing on several White Room tracks, and Tammy Wynette -- were hired guns, bright comets paid to reel off a few verses during a song and maybe even to appear in the video, then being whipped back out into deep space.
I was a very small satellite indeed. In the year or so I orbited the system, I had no real input in anything The KLF or KLF Communications ever did. I wasn't anyone's "mate." I never went down to the pub with anyone in the KLF system for a drink. I never hung out with Bill or Sallie, I never met Scott Piering, Mick Houghton or anyone else in The KLF's publicity machine and I doubt Jimmy ever spoke more than a thousand words to me, or even remembers who I was.
But I did interact quite a bit with Sallie and Bill and some of the KLF music and studio people. And I did observe a lot, starting on on my first day of work at Lillie Yard.
It was a sunny weekday morning, and the door to the studio was ajar. I let myself in and wandered up to the office, which was dominated by a large calendar showing bookings in the coming weeks and months. A thin young blonde woman with black eyebrows was sitting at one of the three desks in the room talking on the phone. She paid me no attention. I didn't see Emma Burnham, the studio manager, so I went out to the living room.
I noticed another room next to the office with different bits of recording gear lying about -- tape consoles, music stands, and some other components I couldn't identify. The techie who had let me in the previous day was standing with his back to me, coiling a cable around his arm.
"Excuse me," I said.
He turned around, and recognized me. This time he grinned. "Oh, you're Ian, aren't you?"
"Yeah. I'm supposed to start work today."
"Yes, Emma told me. I'm Dave. I'm the engineer." Dave put down the coil and reached out to shake my hand. "You're American, aren't you." It wasn't a question, more of a statement.
"Yeah, that's right. I'm from Boston."
"We sometimes get Americans in the studio. Come on, I'll take you downstairs to meet the boys."
"The boys" were Julian Gordon Hastings, the assistant engineer, and Paul Bloom, the "tape op," a sort of apprentice engineer. Both were in the control room, a dim, low-ceilinged, carpeted and soundproofed room absolutely packed with gear. There were computers, reel-to-reel tape recorders, DAT recorders, electronic compressors and gates, and lots of components whose purpose was unknown to me. There was also an absolutely massive mixing desk that seemed to take up half the room, facing a wide-screen video monitor and two expensive-looking speakers.
It looked just like what I thought a professional studio would look like, minus the musicians.
Making music in the early 1990s was a million miles away from making music in
the 1950s. Forget anything you think you may know about recording music from watching music videos or Hollywood biopics. No band gathers in a room to lay tracks down live. No singer
simultaneously plays guitar while laying down a vocal track. As for
dance music, it is not a matter of firing up the drum machine and
playing the keys at the right moment over a beat.
Recording pop music in a professional studio in 1991 was a painstaking, layered process. Spontaneity was limited by the highly technical nature of studio recording.
Julian was sitting at the console. He was tall and thin, very short blonde hair, taken to wearing turtlenecks and acting very serious. He had a biting wit that sometimes shone through, often at Paul's expense. Paul, who was coiling cables, was thin, with longish black hair under a baseball cap. He was almost always smiling. He spoke with a local North London accent and was known as "Max" to his friends -- apparently because he had worked at a McDonalds before becoming entering the recording industry.
While Julian and Paul got their paychecks from Lillie Yard, they also received credit on some of the songs and albums they helped record. Julian, for instance, was named several times in the liner notes of The White Room. To Julian and Paul, and I'm sure any other young engineer or tape op, getting a chance to work with The KLF was a great opportunity and a necessary step in building a respectable career in the music industry.
It was in the studio control room that Julian and Paul spent most of their time. They were subordinate to the producers, programmers and others who rented the studio. If someone needed a mike in the sound booth, Paul would set it up. If the producer needed to listen back to the rhythm section or tweak the bass track, Julian would help make the necessary adjustments on the console. If Bill and Jimmy wanted to stay until 3 a.m. getting a inserting a sample into a song, Paul and Julian would be there until 4 a.m. making sure all the gear was shut off, put away and locked up afterwards. Emma would be long gone by that point, of course. Dave, whose main duties were fixing, installing and ordering components, would probably be gone too, unless some major troubleshooting issue arose.
I said earlier that I wasn't anyone's mate in the KLF organization. That's not totally accurate. Nick Coler was always friendly to me and loved to show me things about music - I remember one time expressing surprise at seeing a rhyming dictionary on a bookshelf in Nick's room, which launched him into an enthusiastic discussion about patterns in pop music. Jimmy Cauty's wife and KLF Communications associate, Cressida Bowyer, was very kind and shared stories about the early days of the British punk scene. Other people I worked with at the studio were friendly, including Paul and Julian and Emma and Dave.
I followed Dave back upstairs. Emma had arrived, and seemed happy to see that I had actually shown up and not fled after the previous day's interview.
I am used to rolling my sleeves up right away when works presents itself, and asked her straight away what she wanted me to do.
"Well, I am not sure there is anything to do at the moment. But you should meet Sallie, 'cause you'll be helping her out a lot," Emma said.
Sallie was the thin blonde woman who had been on the phone in the office. On the first few days she was friendly in a tense sort of way, but that wore off as my low position in the Lillie Yard pecking order became clear.
Sallie's personality was the opposite of Emma's. She was as cold as Emma was warm, direct as Emma was tactful, and efficient as Emma was relaxed. She had a brutal intelligence; no business matter was left unfinished, nothing slipped by her unnoticed and there was absolutely no pulling the wool over her eyes. I consider her one of the sharpest people I have ever met.
I found that most of the time Sallie had distracted air about her. This was not surprising considering the large number of business and creative activities The KLF was involved in and the small size of The KLF organization - she was the only full-time person. I seldom saw her take it easy and never saw her waste time. If it were possible to do several things at the same time, she would. During a phone conversation, for instance, she would often be doing something else -- typing, reviewing a contract or making one of those weedy British fags with pouch tobacco and rolling papers.
Sallie tolerated no dissent from lesser bodies in The KLF universe. She kept things close to the vest, too. For instance, telling me not to let Emma in on certain KLF business. Later, when I worked directly for Sallie at KLF Communications HQ in Brixton - a small, one-room office at the Brixton Enterprise Centre - she would sometimes let me in on the the realities of the music industry, including some minor collisions in deep space involving The KLF and associates. But for some of their biggest capers, including the infamous 1992 Brit Awards controversy, I was mostly kept in the dark (the main hint something weird was going down - calling around to local chemists asking if they had a de-coagulant for a large quantity of sheep's blood).
On that first day at Lillie Yard, Sallie was willing to cut me a little slack. But only a little.
"Emma mentioned you haven't heard of The KLF."
"Yeah, I haven't," I admitted.
"That's not odd," Sallie said, turning to Emma. "We haven't signed to anyone in the U.S. yet."
"Really?" said Emma, looking surprised. "You're not released in the States? I thought they'd be massive over there."
"That's the plan, after we decide who to go with." Sallie smiled tightly and took a drag from her cigarette with one hand, and wrapped her other around her stomach, as if she were cold. Later when I saw Sallie give herself this one-armed hug, I knew it meant she was deep in thought about some important KLF business.
Emma asked her if there was any KLF discs lying around for me to listen to at home.
"Hmmm, I think we have some samples somewhere ..." Sallie replied, turning to a shelf by her desk.
"Actually, I don't think that's necessary," I interrupted. "I don't have a CD player at home." I didn't add that I had no interest in dance music, either.
Sallie shrugged. "Well, we have some other things." She reached over and took a thin, oversized paperback with a glossy cover from the top of a stack. It had a white cover, and stamped in an oversized black typeface like some bland government-issue pamphlet was the title: "The Manual." But the small print underneath the title was distinctly un-governmental: "How to have a number one the easy way." By way of explanation was the message "The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu reveal their zenarchistic method in making the unthinkable happen." The authors were The Timelords.
Justified Ancients of Mu Mu? Zenarchistic? The Timelords? This was all way over my head. "Thanks," I finally managed. "It looks, uh ... Who wrote this?"
"Mostly Bill," said Sallie. "They used to be called The Timelords. Ah!" she said, suddenly remembering something. "That's right! You might know them, The Timelords had a song that got a lot of club play in the U.S. about a few years ago. 'Doctorin' the tardis.' "
It sounded familiar, but I wasn't sure. "Hmm, I don't think I know it."
Emma was nodding. "You know, it goes 'Doctor Who, Hey! Doctor Who!' ..."
Something clicked in the back of my memory. "Oh yeah! I know that song." Finally, some common ground.
There wasn't any more chat after that. Sallie was busy, as was Emma. I made some tea for Emma and Sallie showed me how she liked her coffee. I was let go early on the first day, there was little for me to do, and The KLF wouldn't be coming in until later in the afternoon.
Bloomberg has a story about Fender guitars that contained an interesting statistic: 90% of people who pick up a guitar abandon it within a year. The article suggests that people don't have the stamina to stick with it, even pointing out that "Steel strings hurt delicate hands."
I think there's something else going on. I heard an interesting theory from a friend in the music business, who said that high-quality PC and console videogames caused a seismic shift beginning in the 1990s, as teens gravitated to an immersive, often collaborative indoor activity.
If gaming (or apps, social media, whatever) are drawing away a large population of teens, not only are fewer people picking up a guitar or drumsticks but the number of available local bandmates declines, further weakening the allure of playing music. It makes a big difference if you have friends who also play. If your peers aren't doing it, music is more likely to be a solo activity which is not as much fun.
Another factor: from the 1950s to the early 2000s pop music heroes more often than not could also play guitar. I grew up in the 80s, and learned to play bass starting at age 16 by intently listening to cassettes of The Beatles, Who, Led Zep, U2, REM and the Sex Pistols so I could play with my friends and explore a new dimension of the music I loved.
I was never a hotshot player, but was competent at both the bass and rhythm guitar and played in lots of cover and original bands through my late teens and 20s in Boston and Taipei including The Fit (1986-87), The Dudes (1988-1990), Uckfay (1989-1990), Mr. O (1989-1990), The Librarianz (1993-1994), The Von Stainz and Swampus (1994-1996), Vine (1995), The M-9s (1995-1996), Feiwu/廢物樂隊 (1997-1999), Three-Ten (2000), and (briefly) Ambush at Junction Rock (2000). Some of my best friends today are people I played with decades ago, and one band, Feiwu, had two reunion shows in 2013.
My tween & teen kids have almost no interest in guitar-based pop music, although my daughter's middle school music curriculum included a segment on "90s music" which later prompted her to ask me, "Dad, did you know there was a song about a sweater unraveling?" (man, that made me feel old). They do listen to modern-day pop music, though, and sometimes to pop from previous decades that is not guitar-centric (Michael Jackson, etc.)
On the other hand, the apps and other tools that are now available to everyone--not to mention the ability to connect with like-minded people--can spark different types of musical creativity, collaboration, and insights. I did a double take a few months ago while listening to a radio interview with Philip Glass and my son casually remarked that one of his pieces from the late 1960s "sounds like 'My Singing Monsters'." I hope my kids do get interested in creating music and find an opportunity to collaborate, but I accept that it may not involve rock music.
Ever since subscribing to Netflix nearly 10 years ago, I've been addicted to music documentaries. The stories of bands are the stories of artists creating great music while dealing with the pressures of family, bandmates, and business associates. Last night, I watched Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon. I've also caught great documentaries about Pulp, Pink Floyd, Harry Nilsson, Ginger Baker, The 13th Floor Elevators, Levon Helm, and many others.
Not long ago, I watched Filmage on Amazon Prime. Filmage tells the story of Bill Stevenson, who is like the Buddy Rich of punk rock. Before I saw the film, I knew his performances on Descendents and Black Flag albums (including one of my favorite albums of all time, My War). But I knew nothing of his story, including his teen years working as a fisherman or the fact that he was the leader of Descendents and All (unusual for a drummer!).
There was another interesting tale about Stevenson. About 5 years ago his health deteriorated, his weight went up to ~400 lbs and he seemed out of it, according to his friends and bandmates. One friend interviewed for the film feared he might die of a heart attack on stage.
One day, a neighbor near his home in Colorado saw his dog wandering loose and checked on him, determined something was not right, and called 911. He was rushed to the hospital where staff determined there was something seriously wrong.
This quote is from Mark Neagle, MD, a pulmonologist (and coincidentally a huge Black Flag fan) who was interviewed for Filmage:
“I got a call from the ER doc who said he had a patient who was in pretty bad shape, pretty large pulmonary embolism, which is a blood clot. It travelled up to his lungs, got stuck in his lungs. This was a clot probably a foot and a half long. I actually recall at the time showing someone the CT scan, and they were like, ‘oh, did you get the autopsy?’ and I said, ‘he’s still alive!’”
“... It was apparent that when he came out to see me, that not everything was OK, and he had the MRI that revealed he had a meningioma about the size of a tennis ball, more or less compressing both of his frontal lobes. The cure for the tumor is surgery. You can’t do surgery when they are on blood thinners. But he has an enormous blood clot in his lungs. You have to wait. I think it was about 5 months. I thought, I don’t know if he’s going to get any better. He was in the operating room in like 3 days.”
The good news is, Stevenson not only recovered from the surgery, he thrived. He is back performing and producing music, and really seems to be at the top of his game.
As I've mentioned before on this blog, I was a member of the Taiwan indie rock band Feiwu (廢物樂隊). The band existed from 1997 through 2001. Here's how I described the band in 2012:
The songs we wrote were original. Some were English, some were Mandarin. We recorded two CDs, and were signed to a local music label. We played all over the island, at clubs, festivals, universities, on the streets and under highway overpasses. One of the songs, "我愛台灣啤酒" ("I love Taiwan Beer") was a minor underground hit, and is still covered by local bands today.
One of the best things about Feiwu, besides writing and performing music with a group of close friends, was becoming a part of the local indie music scene. It was small when we started, but very dedicated. There were about three or four dozen bands around the island writing and recording their own music, a few practice spaces and recording studios in the main cities, clubs where we could perform, and the Spring Scream music festival (春天吶喊) which we played in 1998, 1999 and 2000 (see the inset picture below). There was a very strong DIY spirit throughout the small scene, and a feeling that people who loved music could make special music on their own terms.
Feiwu disbanded in 2001. We had two reunion concerts in 2013 in Taipei and Queens that were well-received -- in fact if we weren't so dispersed geographically (with members living in Taipei, Taidong, New York, and the Boston area) I am sure we would have done a few more shows.
As we were preparing for the Taipei reunion show, we unearthed lots of old photos, flyers, magazine articles, and even some practice videos which you can see on our Facebook page. As we went through the old materials, Andrew (guitar and vocals) mentioned a low-budget music video that I dimly remember being shot at some of our shows in the late 1990s but never saw in its completed version. I'm not even sure where we could have distributed it, as this was in the early days of the Internet when streaming video was rare and expensive (there was no YouTube at the time) and local television shied away from indie rock. Andrew said he had a tape somewhere, but we never got around to finding it or converting it to digital formats.
Earlier this year, I opened up my 20th-century media vault, which contains old audio cassettes, digital audio masters for music projects, videotapes of the newscast I used to work on, and even old film reels. I was looking for the old betacam tapes of the newscast to convert to digital, but I also found an old VHS video tape marked simply "KD Studios." Something clicked -- "KD" was the guy who had shot the concert videos so many years before! Someone had probably sent me a copy and I never got around to watching it (I didn't own a VHS player). I thought, I am already converting the betacam, why not convert the music video too?
This week I got the USB drive with the mp4 of the videos. The music video was awesome -- it's a song that Andrew wrote and sang, called "這不是一首芭樂歌" which translates to "This is not a ballad" but we often referred to as "Ballad." KD had spliced together concert footage from 1998 and 1999 along with Taiwan street life. Here's the video:
There are a few rough patches, but overall it's a lot of fun to watch and brings back some fun memories.
My old band, Feiwu, got written up in the Taipei Times in advance of our February 17 show at Taipei's Legacy club. The article is here (scroll to the bottom of the first page, the interview continues to page 2). The reporter was limited in the material from the interview that he could use, so I've decided to post the rest of the interview here.
Taipei Times: The song I Love Taiwan Beer ~ how did you come up with such a thing!? does the song have an official English name? What year does it date to?
Ian: The song 我愛台灣啤酒 ("I Love Taiwan Beer" or the "Taiwan Beer Song") dates to 1997. It's our most well-known song. It really resonated with fans, and some local bands still cover it today. The studio version is the lead track on our first CD 物以類聚 ("Birds of a Feather"), but we also have a really good live version on the second CD 跳火圈 ("Ring of Fire").
I wrote the music and Mandarin lyrics one night, sipping brew from a blue and white can. I brought it to the other guys for the next practice and they picked it right up, and added some nice touches, too. The influences, besides the beer? I was really interested in "nakashi" music you'd hear in local stores and restaurants, taxis, and other places. At the same time, some of the other underground acts around us like LTK and Clippers used Taiwanese or Taiwan themes in their music, which was a very sharp contrast to mainstream Mando-pop that dominated the music industry. I can't speak Taiwanese, but I could write a simple nakashi-influenced guitar melody and sing in Mandarin about something that was very characteristic of Taiwan -- the local beer! I was also heavily influenced by punk and hard rock. In the 1980s had seen a lot of live club performances by bands like Bad Brains, Fugazi, Suicidal Tendencies, Rollins Band, as well as local Boston bands. I think you can hear that hard edge in the loud part and gang chorus of "I Love Taiwan Beer".
Some surprising cultural and musical connections started popping up the more we wrote and played and learned about Taiwanese and Chinese music. For instance, nakashi was actually related to a Japanese style of country music, and was present in Taiwan thanks to the Japanese colonial and cultural connections. I also learned that one crowd favorite we played, a Ramones style cover of Grace Chang's 我要妳的愛 ("I want your love"), was in turn a cover of an American R&B hit from the 1950s called "I Want You To Be My Baby".
Another Taiwan/American musical connection: Before Spring Scream '98 I decided to write a surf instrumental in the vein of "Pipeline" or "Apache" that we could play at the festival. This is when Spring Scream was still by the beach in Kenting. The first time I played it for the guys during practice, our drummer Steve Tsai said, "布袋戲!". This was the Taiwanese puppet opera that is performed live, and was later ported to Taiwanese TV. I didn't understand the connection at first. But Steve explained that the soundtrack for some broadcasts was none other than American surf instrumentals from the early 1960s. We immediately dubbed the song 布袋戲, and gave it the English title "Puppetmaster" (nod to Metallica!). It's on our first CD, 物以類聚 ("Birds of a Feather").
Taipei Times: What do you know about the legacy of the Taiwan Beer song? any TV commercials? use in film or TV? radio? other? did Taiwan Beer ever contact you, comment or acknowledge it in any way?
Ian: Funny you should ask. We just found out that Legacy Taipei has worked out a promotion with Taiwan Beer to provide free beer to ticketholders at our February 17 show. The company is supplying something like 900 beers. Another reason to go to the show! It's actually the first time in 15 years that Taiwan Beer has done something like this. Until now, we didn't know for sure if anyone at the brewery was even aware of the song.
To my knowledge the song was never used in TV or film. But when we started performing it, audiences really took notice. It really resonated with people. Even before we released the first CD, people at our shows knew the melody and chorus and would sing along ("台灣啤酒很好喝，台灣啤酒喝完了。台灣啤酒三十塊,台灣啤酒我最愛").
Taipei Times: What was the song about Coco Lee? and the scandal? somehow i cant remember....
"Cuckoo for Coco" was a song on the second CD, 跳火圈 ("Ring of Fire"). It appears twice, once in Mandarin and in a secret track at the end of the CD that's in English. Andrew wrote the music and the original English lyrics, which have nothing to do with Coco Lee -- it's an homage to breakfast cereal! I wrote the Mandarin verses, kind of a twisted ode to Coco and her ubiquitous media presence at the time. She was overexposed -- songs, TV appearances, commercials, magazines … it was inescapable. The Mandarin lyrics are a love letter from an obsessed foreign fan who wants to get closer: "我聽說妳在國外長大，跟我差不多。 來到台灣你很出風頭，我要作朋友" ("I heard you grew up overseas, just like me. You came to Taiwan and entered the limelight … Let's be friends!")
Our bassist, Bob Hsiung, and guitarist Andrew Watson, heard that she was interviewed on a radio station and they asked her about the song and even played it for her. She apparently said she was "flattered".
Taipei Times: What year was the band formed?
Ian: Spring of 1997. Bob and I had been in another band called The M9s from 1995-1996. We wrote mostly in English and played at a few clubs around Taipei -- and actually after one of our shows I met Steve Tsai, who had been a drummer for Sissey Zhao. The M9s broke up after I went to China and Southeast Asia for six months. By the time I returned to the island in early 1997, Bob was already playing in another band, Smut, which had a lead guitarist named Andrew Watson. They broke up right after Spring Scream '97, so the three of us decided to get together with Steve Tsai for a jam session in April. It clicked, and the band was born. After I left Taiwan in 1999, the Jojoe Huang joined Feiwu as a second guitarist.
Taipei Times: What bars or clubs did you play in most often?
Ian: Feiwu was a regular at Vibe for a few years. We played there more than a dozen times.
Feiwu's first gig was at a place in Taipei called Witches. Steve set up the show. We performed practically everywhere else in town that would let us play, including Underground and one of the Roxy clubs on Shida Road. We also appeared at alternative venues like department stores, parties, universities, and once under a highway overpass near the Grand Hotel (that gig was set up by some TAS kids in the band Nipple).
Feiwu also began playing elsewhere on the island -- every Spring Scream from 1998 to 2001, plus other festivals. I have an old T-shirt from something called "Shroom Festival". That took place in 1998 on a rooftop in an industrial area outside Taichung. It brought together a bunch of underground bands, plus club music later in the night. We played bars in Taichung and in the far south … I remember once having a club owner in southern Taiwan rip the plug of our amp out of the wall after we started playing. He was expecting "Lemon Tree" or Air Supply covers or something lightweight ... instead we played distorted guitars and wicked fast drums.
One thing that's worth mentioning was Taiwan's underground music scene had reached a critical mass by that time. There were underground bands doing their own music in the 80s and early to mid 1990s, but their efforts were isolated. Around 1996 or 1997 that changed. There were finally enough local bands writing and recording their own music, including LTK, 董事長, 1976, 瓢蟲，私分街，啊德， 甜梅號， 夾子，Chthonic, Sticky Rice, and 海豚. There were also enough fans to support live music performances. I think Spring Scream, and Ling Wei's clubs like Vibe and Roxy Plus were very important for giving new bands opportunities to perform, develop original material, and connect with fans. Once that critical mass was reached, the music was there to stay.
Taipei Times: You were weekend editor at the China News, correct? Where has your career taken you since?
Ian: Yes, my day job was weekend editor at the China News. The pay wasn't much, but it was a lot of fun working with some great writers, translators and photojournalists covering local culture, arts, food, music, film and travel. It would take a long time to explain all of the twists and turns since then, but I came back to Boston in 1999 and made a career in digital media. I also went back to grad school full-time to get a business degree from MIT. Since then, I have started my own ebook publishing company -- a series of guides on business and technology topics called the "In 30 Minutes" series. There are five or six titles already, including "Dropbox In 30 Minutes" and a Google Docs for Dummies-type book.
If you're interested in learning more about the band, check out our Facebook page or the interview we did with GigGuide. We also have two Feiwu albums for sale on Amazon.
What was Feiwu (廢物樂隊) like live? The last show I played with them was more than 13 years ago, but I remember them as being a lot of fun, particularly after we developed a fan base. Our December 1998 CD release party, from which the following audio was taken, had a few hundred people attending. You can hear the crowd getting into it:
The song is 我要你的愛, which was a cover of an old Chinese big band tune (which was in turn a cover of an old American big band tune). We did it like the Ramones.
Note that the pictures are from many different shows and practice sessions from 1997 to 2001. The art is public domain from Ookaboo.com.
If you want to follow what the band is doing (including a reunion show planned for 2013) be sure to like the official Feiwu Facebook page.
A flyer from a concert we did with Sugarplum Fairy (甜梅號) at a local college in 1999:
When I lived in Taiwan in the 1990s, I was in a hard rock band called Feiwu. The Chinese name was 廢物樂隊, meaning "good for nothings" or, as Google Translate says, "waste orchestra".
The band had five members in all from 1997 to 2001. Three of us were from the Boston area (Andrew, Bob and I), two of us from Taiwan (Steve and JoJoe).
The songs we wrote were original. Some were English, some were Mandarin. We recorded two CDs, and were signed to a local music label. We played all over the island, at clubs, festivals, universities, on the streets and under highway overpasses. One of the songs, "我愛台灣啤酒" ("I love Taiwan Beer") was a minor underground hit, and is still covered by local bands today.
One of the best things about Feiwu, besides writing and performing music with a group of close friends, was becoming a part of the local indie music scene. It was small when we started, but very dedicated. There were about three or four dozen bands around the island writing and recording their own music, a few practice spaces and recording studios in the main cities, clubs where we could perform, and the Spring Scream music festival (春天吶喊) which we played in 1998, 1999 and 2000 (see the inset picture below). There was a very strong DIY spirit throughout the small scene, and a feeling that people who loved music could make special music on their own terms.
Andrew and the Spring Scream crowd, 2000:
Importantly, there were a core of enthusiastic scenesters and casual fans who loved to see original bands perform. Once in 1998 I saw an outdoor show on the grounds of an abandoned brewery in the center of Taipei. It was pouring rain, yet there were hundreds of people right up front with huge smiles on their faces, soaking in the experience.
I left Taiwan in 1999, but Feiwu continued on until 2001. We had a brief reunion in 2003 when Steve came to Boston to study English, but we haven't played since then.
But ten years is a long time. Too long, for us. For the past few months, the band and some long-time supporters have been working on a reunion show in Taipei in 2013. It's not a done deal, but we really want to make it happen.
The local indie music scene, which was just emerging in the late 1990s, is now very strong (with thousands of bands, according to our old friend Freddy from Chthonic, interviewed in part 1 of the Garageland video series). Here's part 3 from the same series, featuring some more old-school scenesters, including LTK:
