(narrated by Petruccio)
In 1991, I was working as a programmer for Control-Zed Ltd. when I heard from Kim Khadeyev that Gleb and Zablotski were going to Poland to stay in a studio and record some music. Music, and especially its pop varieties, had always been my ambition, and I then remembered Gleb had once said to me: "Even if you don't play an instrument, there'll always be a place for you in my band". So I went up to the lads and popped my "take-me-along-whatever-it-be" request. And so they did, Zablotski consoling himself by saying to me: "There'll be a lot of high-tech gear there, so you shouldn't get bored".
There in Weicherowo (Trojmiasto, Poland) we wrote 4 and recorded 5 songs:
which were all played by Jarek 'Pastor' Winiecki on the Promocje Trojmiasta FM radio show. This was when the name The R.A.F. Golf Clubs bubbled up. We wanted something that was as implicit and Anglomaniac as we were. When Pastor asked us for a press release, I retaliated with the following statement, painstakingly translated by him into Polish in parallel to my thirsty voice:
The R.A.F. Golf Clubs, i.e. The Royal Air Force
Golf Clubs
Kluby Golfowe Kruliewskich Sil Powetrznych
is a non-governmental organisation
istneje publiczna organizacja
aimed to improve the golf-playing style
ktora zajmuje sie poprawianiem stylu gry w golfa
in the departments of the Royal Air Force.
w departamentach Kruliewskich Sil Powetrznych.
The problem is many a serious.
Problem jest istotny.
You know that sometimes a shot by an unsophisticated player
Czasem, strzal pierwszy raz grajoncego w golfa zawodnika
can kill a plane.
moze zastrzelic samolot.
If it is a civilian one then, generally, who cares?
Jezeli ten samolot jest ciwilny, problem nie istneje.
But each destroying of a military machine
Ale kazde zniszczenie wojennej maszyny
weakens the power of the empire.
oslabia sily imperium.
So, basically, this is what the name is about. Later, we tried to change it to something more balanced, say, The Clubs, but the Minsk public just wouldn't stop calling us RAF, which freaked out people who had heard about the Rote Armee Fraktion, which, I'd like to stress once again, we have nothing to do with. In Winter 1991-92, we tried to turn the band into a live R'n'R combo by engaging Ark.Youcean on guitar (of course) and Dima Look-Young-Chick on drums. However, this lineup proved to be a most pathetic failure, with Ark itching to play three parts at once at machine-gun speed, and Gleb never, ever able to get to the rehearsal site by 9:00am (can anybody?). Nothing was recorded, and scarcely nothing written that winter. Spring saw Gleb and me writing two songs a week (still orientated towards a kind of Stones/Bauhaus/Bowie's Heroes sound), and the band discontinued unnoticed. Then 'Reddy' Zablotski came to say that he was fed up with the brain-washing idea of professionalism and wanted to move on, with him on bass guitar (which, I admit, he played better than anyone in Minsk, 'xactly in a geil way) and Gleb on guitar and vocals, with a drum machine as the most realistic way out. Inspired by the gig Nitzer Ebb played in Minsk on May 5, 1992, we started looking for a sampler (i.e., the money to afford one), but then rushed off to Germany for a reason that is still a mystery to me...
...Six months later, Gleb and me returned to Minsk (six hours after all the guests had expired at Kim's birthday party) minus Zablotski, who'd split off. Months spent boozing, arsing around and talking about how we'd record the grooviest music in the world ended up with the creation of Zeug Records. On July 30, 1994 The Clubs first appeared in Minsk with four songs (can't remember anything except for a Front-242ish cover version of Bolan's Children Of The Revolution) at a big joint concert at Minsk Sports Palace (during the 4am block along with Drum Ecstasy, HDDNname, and Valik Grishko). Since then, we have played multiply in Minsk at Phil's "jazz" club, Addis Abeba, the 3 Pigs (the real name, honestly!), the Switch Club, Salute, and Next Stop's parties with guests including Phil, Valik Grishko, his Remarkable Brilliance Mark Bence, Andrey Vashkevich, and Sveta Semuk. Our special appearance was opening a seance of Derek Jarman's Edward II at Finenko's Post-Elite film club.
To the sampler-synthesised background, we add Gleb's quirky English vocals and acting, and my media-type speeches and narratives in English and Russian. Nothing ever got recorded, except for two demo songs and a gig at the Salute club.
Our last gig we played in Berlin at the Das Russische Feld gallery, with a backtape. It's horrible, with no stage and no comp, and us pouring out our Minsk agression that sounded perfectly aimless in Berlin. So we decided not to sequence stuff any more but put a new live act together. Which we didn't.
You can contact me via e-mail at [email protected]
Zeug Records | HDDNName | Drum Ecstasy | The R.A.F. Golf Clubs | Valik Grishko | Licks of the Trade | Links