The ANARCHIST and the DEVIL Do Cabaret
Introduction
'I saw myself, held myself, hand to hand
Headless, I, too, walked in this strange new land.'Normally, I'd hide my diary under my bed, hoping no one would dare look. Here, now, I ask you to take a peek. Flip the pages and read what happens when my bandmates and I decide to inject a bit of imported, Canadian anarcho rock'n'roll into the outstretched arms of Europe.
Live, we perform high grade, political cabaret guaranteed to shake, rattle and question. We also get people dancing--from Berlin to New York.
How? It's simple. We take the best of traditional, European cabaret, combine it with the worst of American TV, throw in ever-changing and full of suprises cutting-edge & traditional music, add a bit of slapstick, costumes and masks and underpin everything with a serious social message.
On paper, it's hard to reproduce the energy and the stench of four guys playing music under the glare of scorching lights as if every show was the last, as if every word, finger or hand movement mattered as much as a heartbeat or a breath. On stage, the real world shrinks and stops. Headaches disappear. Greasy, pre-show food never happened. If it's not part of the set-list, forget it. If it's not part of the act--like that spurt of blood--make it seem so. The drooping microphone, the smoking amp, the de-tuned string, the wet, clamy socks, the cables, the damn malfunctioning, cheap, fucking, on sale cables--this world matters. On stage, the all-important performance qualities of plastic, rubber, metal, wood, the human voice, muscle and bone--this is important. A false note hurts. Three hundred pairs of ears might not notice, but yours do. Mess up and your bandmates can be unforgiving. Give more than the night before and maybe no one notices. Because on stage, for the one or two hours of this night, the truth of your vibrating G-string, of the delivery, of the substance of what we're trying to say, of any gut or heart driven emotion, counts. Nothing else exists. The one, all-seeing eye scanning every stage since the first ever human performance, knows this. At least, this is what we convince ourselves to believe.
But the music, the theatre, the drive to perform is only part of this sometimes sad, sometimes hilarious story, as seen through my bloodshot eyes. The rest, the moments in between, have little to do with the world of music, stagecraft and band van lore.
The rest are 'urban fairy tales,' about Europe's new, multi-racial underclass: the working poor, immigrants, the marginalized young and old who live in the shadows of that continent. For them our music, our showmanship, our stab at helping promote 'resistance culture' doesn't matter. Europe loves visiting artists and treats us well. But when has Europe ever been kind to refugees, to the Roma, to migrant workers, to ever-trusting Slavs, to women who work the streets and panhandlers who keep them free of cigarette butts and apple cores? In a world of globalized fantasy, these people represent the new face of Europe: uncertain and insecure, filled with growing disenchantment. They reflect a Europe in transition, marked by political and racial tension as East and West, the old and the new, vie for the future while remembering the past.
This book was written between soundchecks, loading and unloading band equipment from the van, and sipping beers. I spent time with dozens of street kids, prostitutes, beggars and the homeless, on park benches, in bus depot cafes, and in stinking alleyways behind the clubs we played. Over shared food and drink, I listened. In the van on the road, in my sleeping bag on people's living room floors, I turned conversations into true stories and tall tales--the reality of people who usually are never listened to. These people could be my neighbours, or yours. They could be in the audience on our next tour, or on the front page of a newspaper clamouring for Peace and Justice. As a band, our music lives on in videos, on CDs and on the Web. Occasionally, we'll learn about how our music inspires listeners, turns them into fans and helps reinforce or give birth to their visions of a new, more just and free world. I'd like to think that these stories will also breathe life into different visions, even for just a moment--that moment when truth and fiction, reality and dream blur, when the dreams of strangers, like the dreams of my bandmates, my friends, and you, dear readers, are released, take root and grow.
Join me and the Devil and let this cabaret begin.**
Norman Nawrocki,
Montreal, 2002**PS:
This is a book that is mostly truthful and mostly fictive. It's based on a personal journal I kept during a band tour of Europe. Names and some characterizations of the band members have been changed to protect the innocent. Between the journal entries are letters from my uncle to my father. Letters that we thought had long disappeared, but surfaced in time to include in this book. There are also short stories based on chance encounters with strangers. Again, their names have been changed, but not the essence of their stories. And at the end, a capsule, factual biography of the band.