is there anyone interested in music who wasn’t ever in a band at some point, back in their teens or early twenties, lost in (adolescent) translation? In Switzerland, these people don’t meet up in garages. They rent rooms one or more floors underground without ventilation or daylight. Getting to them alone is pretty rock’n’roll, since you have to enter deserted industrial zones at night, opening rusty fences and climbing into very scary elevators, always hoping the flies won’t have completely taken over yet or the janitor isn’t around anymore (since he looks like the police might know about him). But then, when the whole gang has finally arrived and people start jamming cables into amplifiers and somebody starts telling the first dirty joke of the night, as cheesy as it may sound, the magic begins.
There is an understanding about how to behave here – people treat each other differently somehow. Nowhere else can you be so sure that you can say the stupidest things, make as much fun of each other as you want, and it’s never going to be a real problem (and nobody is going to ask for political correctness either).
Of course people meet up to play, to write music and to get gigs. But whether they are amibitious or not, good or bad, whether everyone practises a lot or not, so many hours are spent hanging on these shabby sofas with the beatles posters duct taped over them, drinking and smoking (indoors!), talking about setlists, guitar licks or mostly just plain nothing. But it’s not just about a pastime or the laughs, it’s also about the promise in the air, the excitement of the next gig – and who knows what might happen then?
It’s a gritty, badly ventilated but secluded place. Nobody ever has to (or will) grow up in there.
vignettiste 