THE 49 AMERICANS komplett auf STAUBGOLD

“The 49 Americans is all a rather hazy set of memories for me now as I write these notes from my Melbourne backyard on September 11th 2002. The date makes me wonder what is it like to be American... but hang on... I am not American and never have been American and this bunch of music-makers that I was briefly part of were not American either, (except for one of us and he didn’t even live in the USA)!”
     - Nag

“Most bands create an image in your mind. That image is a mixture of music, musicians, a sound, a style, your own personal history and the flavour of the times. In 1979 I had a brief experience of playing with a band that wasn't a band - The Flying Lizards - but The 49 Americans was more extreme. There were so many members that I never met all of them and the styles of music ranged from post-punk and disco to lounge jazz and indefinable Afro-folk hybrids. In other words, think of The 49 Americans as a band, in the conventional sense, and you're lost.”
     - David Toop

“What can I possibly say about the 49 Americans, except there were not 49 of them, only one as far as I can recall. Such tuneful times they were, allowing all and sundry to singalong, a truely democractic experience. May Rock 'N' Roll live on strong forever.”
     - V

“In the late 1970s there was a theory that anyone could pick up an instrument and form a band. Setting out to disprove this, Buddy Hernia and the Rickets started out with pots and pans for drums and a bass guitar, which was just an ordinary 6-string tuned down until you could tie a knot in the bottom string. My guitar was the very cheapest available and Nick's school trumpet was probably the most valuable of the lot (but not the way he played it). Mike brought his one true gift: his voice (it had to be a gift - you wouldn't pay money for that). I remember when Phil borrowed a proper drum kit he had to set up in the hallway outside the room during recordings due to sound balancing problems.”
     - Dominic

“Nag and I were playing in a band (the Door and the Window) that allowed us to indulge in our interests in sound and noise. Whilst we could play our own stuff and seemed to have found a market for our records, we couldn't play anything in a conventional sense. Skint, we sometimes went busking, where our weird noise earned us very little income. Thus we welcomed the stranger who joined in with us one day and introduced us to his tunes which seemed more popular with the passing public. He introduced himself as Giblet and we met again soon for another busking session. We collaborated on a number of ventures such as a "Benefit for Doubt" in Hyde Park and poetry readings on tube trains before Giblet came up with the idea of the 49 Americans single...”
     - Bendle

“I remember the joy of recording the world’s longest ever single - 14 tracks, each exactly 58 seconds long - and all on a cheapo cassette recorder complete with one built-in condenser microphone. We bashed, scraped and blew away on anything that was to hand (including toy instruments) with a bunch of mates and some people I had never even met before in various bedrooms and kitchens over a few weeks... and then we released it all on our own record-label as a 7 inch single... and people actually bought them... and we got reviewed in the music papers!”
     - Nag

“One of the happiest days of my life was the day that Giblet gathered the rest of the Rickets round for some exciting news. We were moved to hear his plans to change the course of world history with the 49 Americans, and the inspiration that he draws from the career of Julie Andrews. I had never truly opened my heart to Julie until we shared that moment. We all sat around drinking beer and laughing as we watch early VHS editions of Mary Poppins and even The Sound of Music. At the end of this amazing evening, we were moved to create - and I was thrilled that those moments were captured for future generations in the track "Julie Andrews" on the 49 American's first 14-track single.”
     - Bodie 'TS' Publis

“As the main writers for the Rickets, Andrew and I had very different dreams. In his dream he would force back the boundaries of art and create a Utopian society of free-thinking individuals united in their creative belief and marry a rich older woman. In my dream, I was in Tesco wearing a micro skirt and no pants.”
     - Dominic

“49 Americans - even the name makes me smile. I was surprised to be asked to join for a song (or two?), however being relieved to add another American to the group. But I never overcame the 'shock' of answering the telephone and being asked to speak to 'Giblet'. It all still makes me smile.”
     - Giblet’s Mum

“49 Americans - how long ago? Is my son as young as I was then or was I as old as he is now? Two enthusiastic if confused Mums warbling away in a small room in North London. N10 then, Japan now. What's the difference between providing a backing and backing up?”
     - Igor’s Mum

“I recall feeling rather disappointed when the anticipated hordes of screaming teenage girls never materialised.”
     - Igor

“Learning Newton's Laws to music for the live performance at the London Musicians Collective with Earl Court & The Daggy Chucks as (one of?) the support band(s) was probably the best bit of Physics revision I ever did. My one if only claim to fame was being co - Honourary Roady with Philip. My talent at humping other peoples' instruments was marred only by my inability to play my own. You'll be pleased to hear I've graduated to learning how not to play the sax.”
     - Nick Andraloji

“Being an American for a few days was a great honour. I recall John Peel mentioning the complaints he was expecting from the 'they call that music do they brigade'.”
     - Phil Sticks

“What might seem to others to be harsh reviews were to us wonderful complimentary fodder: ‘swamped in kettle and saucepan percussion’, ‘a hearty shabbiness’, ‘amateurism viewed as a material virtue rather than a spiritual one’, and the best quote of all, ‘makes Swell Maps sound like Led Zeppelin’.”
     - Nag

“Early concerts there were 20 or so of us seated on chairs and for each song 6 or 7 people would stand up and play. Because at the time I was tone deaf, and because I couldn't play melodically, I remember playing along rhythmically on toy keyboards and bits of junk. I was a great radiator player! I guess our live sound was a shambolic toyshop/junkyard avant garde but our enthusiasm and joy were infectious - audiences at community festivals where we played enjoyed our performances.”
     - Bendle

“As a founder member of the London Musicians Collective, I felt acutely aware of tensions building within the organisation. The LMC was started by improvising musicians, but by 1980 open membership and collective aims meant that we were attracting a younger generation. They needed a place to play, but didn't have much awareness of improvised music history or its 'philosophy'. Some of us felt that was a positive influence; others took it as a threat. Andrew Brenner was one of the new breed. I don't know why he approached me or how we came to be writing songs together but it just happened.”
     - David Toop

“In Brighton, playing with The Promenaders on the beach, we were approached by a young man wearing a T-shirt upon which was hand-written an entire recipe for chicken supreme. The last word in the recipe was 'giblets' and the young man was therefore known to his friends as 'Giblet'. Actually, maybe that's all wrong, but that's how I remember it, “and that's why we have ‘Rashomon’,” to quote the late Liz Young, who was talking about the story of a slightly better known group contemporary with the 49 Americans. Anyway, what is definite is that Giblet is now Andrew Brenner.”
     - Steve Beresford

“In my late teens my view of the world was that people tended to be spiritually and creatively dead by the time they were 26. To meet a group of accomplished musicians in their thirties who played weird plinky plonk music was hope inspiring. That people like Steve, David and Max were willing to play with me and Nag who couldn't play anything, and with a group of teenagers still in or just out of school and to treat us all with respect was a great inspiration.”
     - Bendle

“Some of my favourite sessions were the early ones - just me, Andrew and Else, playing a song like 'Beat Up Russians', Else playing saucepans from my kitchen and the Sony cassette sitting there on the floor next to us. Else had a certain sensibility that you can't replicate. Her, me and Steve playing in our Chic mode could sound surprisingly tight, yet the feel was still peculiar. Steve and I were trying to be as much like Bernard Edwards and Nile Rodgers as we possibly could (hah!) but Else was just being herself. I wish she could hear how good she sounds now.”
     - David Toop

“Else Watt's unique drumming was logical and yet impossible to predict. And in that little studio off Euston Road, I remember being shocked and delighted by Eddie Saunders' seemingly immediate and brilliant grasp of the ballad 'Tendency To Lie'.”
     - Steve Beresford

“At that time I was doing a bit of live recording of other people's music, just using my Sony cassette machine. I was also working with Steve Beresford in a lot of different contexts where we had a chance to indulge our mutual love of disco, jazz, rockabilly, dub, ska, Nigerian Juju and exotic instrumentals. I certainly never intended to push The 49 Americans away from its quirky, punky origins but some organic process took place whereby Andrew's vision of what he was doing expanded to include whoever came to a session.”
     - David Toop

“Listening now, more than 20 years later, I'm struck by how funny and clever Andrew's lyrics were. There was criticism at the time, that The 49 Americans was just a bunch of friends indulging themselves to amuse each other. To some extent that's true. That seems to me to be a laudable ambition, better than trying to change the world, subvert the music business or any of the other preposterous, self-inflated manifestos that people claimed to pursue with such grim determination in those days. Nothing was ever pursued with grim determination in The 49 Americans, except perhaps the correct pitch. Even then, what's a flattened sharp between friends?”
     - David Toop

“The 49 Americans was a great opportunity for me, as a young buck who just enjoyed making a noise, to get involved with some more serious improvising musicians and to play and to record what I thought of at the time as pop music. Looking back to that time, 20 years ago, I have no idea now if it is pop music or not but it was fun to make all the same.”
     - Nag