Nihilist Spasm Band - No Record (1968)

Ok, lets get started.

I discovered Nihilist Spasm Band in summer 2006. What a great band is that ?
They basically invented the noise-music genre in 1965 and still enjoy playing together. They've been pounding away for 35 years in London, Ontario, and suddenly discovered that they are a huge influence on guys like Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, and a whole crew of crazed Japanese noise musicians. (Yes, they are Big in Japan.)
One of them collects cockroaches and snakes, another is a doctor who performs acupuncture, 3 of them are artists, one is a librarian, and Bill, the whacked-out lead singer is a high-school teacher (now retired).
They are building their own instruments and play them totally untuned and everything is fully improvised except for the lyrics.
They describe it as the following: "After all, when you eliminate the scale, the key, the repertoire, the category (not jazz, nor rock, nor folk...), the traditional rules, and even the breaking of the rules, what is left? We can only rely on each other. You have to learn to play together or quit and we have kept going for thirteen years. We play for, to, and off each other. One person starts something; a figure, a fragment of common melody, a regular beat. Others pick it up, change it, accompany it, sometimes, even oppose it. Whatever form it takes we react to what he started. Imitation is very important. Sometimes, listening to tapes afterwards, even we cannot tell who was playing what, even when different sorts of instruments are involved (say "violin" and "guitar"), so successful have we become at imitating each other."

Lucky me I had the chance to see them live in Cologne in November 2006. Its been their first ever gig in Germany. Here is a glimpse of what I saw:



By the way they are very nice and polite people. Their wives sat in the back selling the merchandise and assured me that they had to listen to these noises for over 40 years now. Very nice...

Ok, to show you what the fuzz is all about - here is there "No Record"-album from 1968. http://tinyurl.com/2vta62 (192kbs)

Let them have the famous last words on this post:

"Why do we do it? No fame or fortune, nor in service of some artistic theory, nor to please or offend an audience. We do it because we enjoy it. Audiences are nice, frequently stimulating, but ultimately we play for ourselves, because it is fun. Is that all? Almost, but not quite. Sometimes everything seems to fall together into place. The band really starts to cook, to groove, to swing, to drive (words fail). When that happens there is a real rush, a genuine feeling of exhilaration. many bands need to get high to play well. We need to play well to get high. It is this "high" that takes it a bit beyond just fun, just another hobby."

http://www3.sympatico.ca/pratten/NSB/