The straight man
But for imagination, my musical career
ended like it began with no changes in between: nowhere. Thank God for imagination.
Microphobes – Launch pad part 1
All the goodwill we amassed with the
first Microphobes album Let's Go Away For A While, we squandered with
opening noise fest 'Rock brigade' on Launch Pad, the last fully
realized Microphobes album. Just like all of our heroes. And yet
Launch Pad was the best time the Microphobes ever had. We were full
of confidence. We felt we could do anything. And after the exacting
precision and epic ambition of Let's Go Away For A While we most
wanted to do something a little less ambitious. A little more
spontaneous, more ragged round the edges. More whatever happens, more
subconscious than conscious mind.
There was never a shortage of songs.
There were waiting lists of songs. It seemed, at this time still, I
could check my pockets at will and out would fall snippets, songs
tried out with one or more of the bands I'd played in but discarded,
songs silently formed on acoustic guitar or keyboard on weekend
mornings as my girlfriend lay sleeping, riffs to improvise abstract
words over until lightning struck. Some songs were even less
prepared. I'd just point at instruments, explain the title and feel,
and ask the musicians to stop at a certain time. Some of these even
ended up on the record.
The band in the attic
With the Incridible Shrinking Man and
previous Microphobes projects the list of guest musicians had been
long. Half of the recording time was spent waiting for people to show
up. But Launch Pad was played by a core group of four people. The
Microphobes were still a duo, me and my friend Pieterjan, guitarist
in our joint band Felltones. Pieterjan was the most amazingly musical
unguided missile I'd ever met. A silent man who radiated amiable
feelings to one and sunder. I've always liked a man who doesn't
communicate unnecessarily. When he had a guitar in hand, which was most of the
time, out poured the most eloquently felt music. He was blessed with
absolute hearing – at least that's what I surmise looking back, we
never talked about it –, which he tested to the maximum dissecting
Sonic Youth records. For as long as I've known him the message on his
voice mail was a replayed riff from Sonic Youth's Murray Street album
– a sentimental favourite for both of us. I can't imagine anyone
who knew Pieterjan needing anymore confirmation they'd reached the
right number. Roar roar beep silence.
Many hours were spent rambling through
all sorts of rock classics. I'd shout out a song title: Stereolab's
'Ping pong', 'Rattled by the rush', 'Fun,fun, fun', 'Albatros,
Motorpsycho's 'Painting the night unreal', some Van Dyke Parks, 'All
day and all of the night'. He never missed. Just dove straight into
it. And I was a fair hand reader. Kept my eyes on his guitar neck.
For Let's Go Away For A While, besides playing most of the electric
guitar, I relied on PJ as a musical director. He played it as soon as
I hummed it. Painstakingly coached me through vocal overdubs too.
With everything I'd learned, for Launch Pad, I took over the
directorship again, but PJ still, besides playing sterling guitar,
found room to write some great horn charts for 'The great reward' and
'The shipment' (though that one ended up on the cutting room floor at
the final hurdle).
There was never any debauchery in the
Microphobes. In truth we hardly went outside. Never played a show,
never rehearsed a band, never went out on stag nights, directed any
videos of artful semi-nudity like we saw on MTV (there was still
music on MTV then). Our solitary world was the Felltones'
rehearsal room. It may have been the attic of a respectable Louvain
bar, but it had been years since either of us had frequented any bar.
The agreement for the rehearsal attic had been reached years earlier,
and even then, not by us, but by another friend and band mate in
several incarnations, Erik. The most rock'n'roll man I've known in
real life (granted, not in itself the most stunning endorsement). The
Microphobes was not for him. If we carried any liquids upstairs from
the barroom they would invariably be non-alcoholic: soft drinks in
the summer, hot chocolate to face the cold in the unheated attic
during winter. We always paid for the drinks too. Being cheapskates,
sometimes we even hurried upstairs without drinks, gorging on the
free electricity of the bar – not something I look back on proudly.
We live and learn.
The attic. Under a saddle roof, no
isolation. We had more of an audience when we rehearsed in there than
at most of the shows we played. On the other hand, sometimes we
played with our coats on. Furnished with leftovers from the bar: a
table with a faulty leg, a terrace chair with a broken armrest. But
mostly amplifiers in all sizes and shapes, a forest of amps, piles of
old, discarded, broken guitar effects, floor covered with broken
guitar strings, and a carpet which had once been fine indeed (every
rehearsal space needs a carpet), guitars of course, a scraped
together drum set, some parts forgotten by bands we'd shared a bill
with, cheap keyboards, microphones, extension cables, a perfectly
executed jungle of cables to make everything work which we ritually
removed before each gig and painstakingly reenacted before the next
rehearsal. You know what a rehearsal attic looks like. Exactly like
that, except we had no posters on the walls. Never liked 'em and
anyway, the mortar bricks pulverized at the touch and the rooftiles
were asbestos. There is no way to count the idyllic long lunch breaks
I spent there, instead of at work, hunched over our Fostex recording
unit, in the cigarette fumes drifting upwards from downstairs,
repeating the same overdub time and again. Coming back the next day
to do it again. Then returning in the evening with PJ to add yet more
stuff. Sometimes I'd go back there in a heartbeat. Other times, not
so much.
Two drummers completed the recordings.
Bert held the sticks for the uptempo and harder stuff. Bert played
with PJ and me in our indierock band Felltones, so he was an easy
target for our constant demands. 'Stay a little after rehearsal,
Bert.' Bert's a trained musician who's learned to do consciously what
PJ did unconsciously and I never succeeded in doing any which way.
Taught and teaches the rudiments of popmusic to Dutch kids who call
him uncle. Tried his best to teach us a trick or two but we were
headstrong. Bert loves melody. Elvis Costello but mostly the
Attractions, Abba, Blondie. And electronica. Boards of Canada, Daft
punk. All this US-influenced indie rock must've been a weird fit. I
loaned him a Jim O'Rourke record once. But Bert loved some of the
Microphobes stuff and motivated us to pursue our path.
David drummed on most of the ballads
and the gently swinging stuff. I'd met David in another 'real' (you
could book us for a show) band called Feuerbach. He was on guitar. I
was on banjo and violin. This was indie rock squared (indie rock
times postrock / folktronica). I was born before Elvis died (for
real, not just military service), it was a tough act for me to keep
up. They had a crowd and a social media network though (you don't get
into bands for owning a semi-truck anymore – I got in for having
pick-ups installed on a violin). I admit now that many times I drove
home from a show, in shock that the further we got from my idea of a
good set, the more the audience seemed to like it. It was frightfully
young for this generation clash. The band petered out, or morphed on
without me, but I stayed in touch with David – a soft spoken,
generous guy who was always looking to learn musically. The drums
were his second instrument. But he was really a jazz and funkhead. Wrote the charts for a funk cover big band. I never asked him why he kept saying yes
when I called him to join us for another night of drum overdubs in
the attic, playing songs he'd never heard before and would probably
never hear again. Maybe he saw it as good practice. We lost track but
I hope he's well. One of the nicest people I met in music.
https://soundcloud.com/user-560432285-452933133/sets/microphobes-launch-pad-disc-1
https://soundcloud.com/user-560432285-452933133/sets/microphobes-launch-pad-disc-2
Next: Short career as a synthpop band
