I REALLY ENJOYED PLAYING WITH THAT BAND.
Interview with Chris Connelly from Fini Tribe por Diego Centurión
Photographs by Peter Ross.
I’ve read that you reunited for the curation of The Sheer Action of Fini Tribe: 1982–1987. Tell us, how was the process of recovering the material, and what did you think when you heard it again?
When I started to curate the album, I reached out to every member of Fini Tribe to have a look through boxes and storage units, attics, whatever, to see what they could find—photographs, tapes.
So the source material for The Sheer Action of Fini Tribe came from cassettes, came from vinyl as well, and it came from reels.
There were a lot of things that I'd never actually heard before. The live recording of us playing at the Carlton Studios in Edinburgh—I’d never heard that live recording. I didn't even know it existed. So that was a real treat.
And it was a revelation to hear how tight we were live and how live we were live. We didn't play to backing tapes or anything like that. It was all—we learned the parts and played them with our hands.
So, yeah, that was all a wonderful experience for us as a band.
Fini Tribe’s sound blends the rawness of early post-punk with the experimental breadth of 1970s German rock. What were your main sources of inspiration?
As a band, we listened to a lot of music. You know, we were young at the time, so we were not only caught up in what was not necessarily popular at the time, but we liked club music. We liked going out to dance, and we're talking about club music of the early 1980s, '81, '82. We would go out en masse as a band and just dance the night away.
But also, Can were a huge influence on us, not just their music, but their whole philosophy about playing together. We also really enjoyed Wire. We loved A Certain Ratio, who blended a very danceable sensibility with a very gloomy sound, which was, you know, right up our alley. We also enjoyed Public Image Limited.
Those first couple of Public Image albums were really important to us. But we really wanted to sound like us, and what we got from most of these bands was that they were unique, that they sounded like no one else, and that appealed to us. So we were very insistent that we listen to each other and listen to ourselves when we played, to make sure that it was our music and our sound.
We were very influenced by artists as well—painters, filmmakers. That was all part of our, um, oeuvre, if you like. We used to visit galleries a lot. Andy was, and is, a visual artist, and he went to Glasgow College of Art. We were exposed to a lot of things like that.
From your experience, how do you view the music industry today? On the positive side, there’s the possibility of interacting with musicians from anywhere in the world. On the other hand, we’re facing the difficulty of distinguishing — due to the invasion of AI — music made by musicians from music generated by AI itself.
As far as the music business goes today, I mean, I feel very lucky that I've had such a—well, I've been prolific for a very long time. I'm always going to be prolific, no matter what the music business does. I have to write, I have to create.
AI is, yeah, I hate it. It's threatening and annoying, and it doesn't have any place in creativity, as far as I can tell. I try to ignore it, and I get on with what I'm doing the best I can.
When we started playing with Fini Tribe, you know, we used our hands and our voices, and that's how we created our sound. We created sound by listening to each other, not by trying to take cheap shortcuts anywhere. It just wasn't possible.
If you're in a band today, you know, it's very, very different than it was 40 years ago. But there's never been a time where I've been involved in music that other musicians, and myself included, haven't been complaining about the music business. We're always going to complain about the music business, because it has the word “business” in it.
We're not interested in business; we're interested in creation. And I think that goes for anyone involved in the arts. Once you invite the word “business” into what you're doing, you're building walls against creativity.
If you're a filmmaker, you know, you're dependent on financial support, and you're dependent on other people. But you have to get that art out there. You have to do it, no matter what.
In our experience as Fini Tribe, what we noticed in the early '80s was major labels signing bands and then immediately trying to turn them into what they wanted them to be, and not what the band wanted to be. And a lot of these bands, they were happy to be manipulated like that. We watched from a distance. We weren't interested in that kind of thing.
It seemed like a really bad idea. Still is.
Drawing on your memory, let’s go back to the very beginning of your musical path, even before the formation of Fini Tribe.
What was Edinburgh like when punk was emerging in London?
How did that sonic revolution reach your ears?
What do you remember about that discovery, both musically and attitudinally?
Could you share an anecdote from those years?
Growing up in Edinburgh in the mid-'70s, growing up in Britain in the mid-'70s, there was a lot of space, a lot of dead air, a lot of silence. Music was around, but it wasn't a 24-hour onslaught. Television wasn't a 24-hour onslaught either. There were only a few channels—three when I was growing up: BBC One, BBC Two, and ITV.
When punk came around, it couldn't have happened at a better time. Things were so boring. I remember there were some records in our house. I had already started becoming obsessed with David Bowie before punk happened. I listened to Alice Cooper, I listened to David Bowie, I loved Mott the Hoople.
My brother had some records too. He had some Yes records and Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel. But it wasn't enough, and those Yes records were so dull to my ears. I just didn't understand it. So when he brought home "New Rose" by The Damned in the late summer of 1976, it was a real relief.
Then, a few months later, when "Anarchy in the U.K." came out, that was also a real relief. There was something still tangible about it. You could still relate. The guitars sounded Alice Cooper-ish, in a sense. They were heavy, they were fast, but the singing was a lot wilder. The sentiment was a lot more abrasive as well.
Suddenly, rock music was something that was coming down to Earth, if you like. It was something that anyone could do, and that's what punk was.
It didn't last long, really. I mean, you read reports of punk rockers in London saying it was all over after six months, and that may be so, but things took longer to reach us in Scotland.
By late '77, things had started to change. You're listening to John Peel, and he's starting to play stuff like Suicide, Chrome, and The Residents, and things changed quickly. Bands like Wire changed quickly. Their formula was never a formula.
When they came out with that second record, Chairs Missing, it was a massive statement. But it's not like the bands wanted to make a statement. They just got bored really quickly.
You're on a major label, you're put into a 24-track studio with a producer, and you're either going to sink or swim. And by swimming, it means you're going to use the apparatus that's available to you and do something different.
That's what was happening, and that's what I heard, and that's what introduced that compulsion in me.
During those formative listening years, what records do you remember playing over and over again?
The records I would play over and over again—I had the 45 of "Golden Years" by David Bowie. I listened to The Best Years of Our Lives by Cockney Rebel. I listened to "Virginia Plain" by Roxy Music.
But then, when punk happened, there was "Gary Gilmore's Eyes" by The Adverts, "United" by Throbbing Gristle.
Gosh, Buzzcocks—they were one of the first bands I saw live. Devo's first record. Love Bites by the Buzzcocks—I love that record. I still play it all the time. The first Damned album, I still play that all the time as well.
Like a raging fire, punk burned out very quickly, although it left its mark on the present and will continue to shape the future. Then came post-punk. Looking back now, is there a specific moment when you thought something like, “That’s when I realized punk was over and something had changed”?
I didn't have this moment where I realized punk was over. It wasn't over. You didn't think in those terms, in historical terms, back then—or now, you know? What's happening now is happening now.
So I was listening to, for example, "Satisfaction" by The Residents, which was hundreds of miles away from punk, but still a very abrasive and very challenging single.
But I was still listening to "Noise and Noise" by the Buzzcocks, and "Ever Fallen in Love" by the Buzzcocks, and these pop-punk records that came out that I really loved. It didn't matter to me. If something sounded good, I'd listen to it, you know?
Of course, there was a huge line drawn where you wouldn't listen to anything like fucking Yes or anything like that. All that music was dead. It was gray. It was rotting in the ground. It just didn't even occur.
But the local Virgin Records shop was where we would go, and there were always new singles with picture sleeves to buy and look at and dream about.
So, you know, punk and post-punk to me existed at the same time. There was no—nobody called it post-punk back then. That's something that was probably invented in the early 2000s. It wasn't called that. It was just music.
Which artists from the early years of what was later called post-punk would you rescue from your memory — artists you believe deserve greater recognition but were forgotten due to lack of exposure or media interest?
To me, the most important so-called post-punk albums that perhaps deserve more recognition—apart from records by Wire, which do get the recognition they deserve, albums like Chairs Missing and 154—I think the album God by Rip Rig + Panic is a very important record. I think it was very groundbreaking, and I was lucky enough to see Rip Rig + Panic play.
I think Cut by The Slits, although that certainly got recognition, I'm just saying it's still valid today, and it's still groundbreaking to this day.
The album For How Much Longer Must We Tolerate Mass Murder? by The Pop Group is a wonderful, violent, visceral record which still should be listened to today.
And what else? This Heat's first record is a very important record. D.O.A. by Throbbing Gristle. And these are records that certainly have had plenty of recognition.
There's an album by a band called Metabolist, which I think came out in 1979, and, yeah, that's kind of disappeared without a trace. But what a wonderful, strange, and challenging record that was.
Which album you’ve recorded would you consider your most post-punk?
I don't consider any of my albums post-punk. I don't like to put a label on what I do, you know? I'm not being snobby by saying that. I just don't. It just doesn't occur to me.
When I make records, I just make records because I'm making the music that I like.
Let’s talk about your time at Wax Trax! How did you come to the label, and what were those days like — working at the record store during the day and playing shows or recording at night at various levels?
Working at the Wax Trax store was really good fun. There were very few rules, and whatever rules we had were broken very quickly.
I would be up in the studio all night and then go to Wax Trax and work during the day. And if I wasn't in the studio, I'd be out at clubs. I was a 24-hour existence, and I pushed myself pretty far. But a lot of it was a good time.
And what did I learn back then, as far as recording goes? I mean, that was a really strange music to be recording because it was quite nascent at the time. A lot of that technology was brand new, and we were just getting used to it.
I'll always say this: I was never into the technology. I couldn't do that stuff. I was more into writing words and maybe coming up with concepts and ideas.
But when it was working, it was great. When we were on a roll, it was really good. But then often it was just really, really boring because you were waiting on some machine to fix itself or trying to figure out how to fix some machine.
You’ve worked with countless artists in projects such as Pigface, Ministry, Murder Inc., and The Damage Manual, to name just a few. What has industrial rock given you that still stays with you today?
I'm not sure what being involved in industrial music, or so-called industrial music, has given me. That sound meant a lot to me a long time ago, and still to this day, I listen to a lot of these older industrial bands. I still listen to SPK, Throbbing Gristle, Einstürzende Neubauten, bands like that.
I think what it gave me most of all was a sense of being able to push sound. You can be as extreme as you feel you need to be, and record that and capture that sound. Don't be afraid of hurting people's ears. Go for it. Make things as extreme as you want.
Don't be afraid of bringing two very disparate sounds together. Don't worry about that. Bring them together and see what happens.
Make the noise you hear in your head.
For me these days, and I do make a lot of harsh-sounding music, the fun of it is trying to make it even harsher, using feedback or overloading things. I mean, we broke stuff all the time, and I still do.
I use a lot of analog tape and tape loops, things like that, like I used to in the old days. Manipulating sounds is a big part of the fun. You start with an original sound, take it, cut it into a loop, maybe play it backwards, and then start fucking it up even more.
You know, it's all good, clean fun.
Thank you very much, Chris!
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