Reykjavík Grapevine - 13.07.2007, Síða 20

How do you explain an Icelandic dance band
playing Glastonbury’s Jazz Stage? If you’re
GusGus’s President, President Bongo to be
precise, you simply redefine musical genres
to suit, bending a few rules along the way:
“Techno is the new jazz and jazz is the new
techno.” To which Daníel Ágúst, the black-clad
vocalist sipping a gin and tonic in the backstage
tent after their mid-afternoon set, adds “I had
a pre-judged idea about jazz but I think we
broke all the boundaries.”
Few would disagree that GusGus’s perfor-
mance at the world’s most famous festival, held
on a remote but sizeable farm in the West of
England, was far removed from the eclectic
mix of jazz-influenced artists billed to play the
same stage as four dance disciples from Ice-
land. Amy Winehouse, Corrine Bailey-Rae and
other similarly popular brass-voiced warblers all
trod the same boards over the weekend, but
GusGus made them look like a they were from
the 1930s (rather than just being influenced
by the distant past) with a display of technical
dance music and vocalisation that quite literally
made the sun shine and hundreds of people
dance in a muddy field just for fun.
After an entertaining stint at the front of
the stage, Bongo handed the vocal duties to
Earth (Urður Hákonardóttir) and Daníel Ágúst,
whilst he retreated to help Biggi Veira make
the music towards the back of the stage. After
all, Bongo was one of the founding mem-
bers of GusGus in 1995, so he’s had 12 years
of singing at the front of the stage to rabid
masses and this mud-splattered crowd prob-
ably looked particularly feral from his vantage
point. Having played the Glastonbury Festival of
Contemporary Performing Arts in 1999 – “We
had the honour of opening the Pyramid Stage
on Friday, at 11.30 a.m.” reckons Bongo. “No,
no, no, no that was another one…we played
in a tent at Glastonbury in 1999.” Bongo
stands corrected by Biggi – GusGus know
what performing at this typically English festival
involves. The crowd demands enthusiasm and
a performance to buoy their mud-drenched
spirits. GusGus certainly provided the sort of
mid-afternoon injection of energy that made
a lot of the other bands booked to play seem
extremely dull and self-important.
The previous day’s journey to the festival
site, and all the weird and wonderful sights
and sounds contained within, was not an easy
mission, with narrow roads leading to the
area and 177,500 people converging on the
site. Sadly, President Bongo, Earth, Biggi and
Daníel Ágúst had a journey that made other
marathon pilgrimages to Glastonbury look
like a quick stroll to the bar tent. Before they
even left Iceland, their England-bound plane
ground to a halt at Keflavik Airport, causing
them to cancel a London gig the day before
Glastonbury. Even when they did arrive in
London the next day, their Glastonbury appear-
ance was still in doubt. But a quick dash on a
bus (“We travel light so it was OK…” assures
Biggi) and a stay in particularly downmarket
hotel solved the problem and they made their
stage time.
After hearing about their transport issues
and debating which festival they opened at
11.30 a.m. in the summer of 1999 (“It was shit
anyway…” recollects Bongo), we move onto
their attitudes to performing live to a European
audience – something GusGus have years of
experience of doing to great success. “We re-
cently had what we call a Millennium Makeover
so now, when we play live, we only play tracks
from our current albums like Forever and our
last album before that, Attention. Attention was
like a slap in the face – ‘wake up’ – because we
had changes, everything was different and we
had to create a new direction.”
By that President Bongo refers to the band’s
continually evolving line-up. With members
joining and departing on a fairly regular basis,
their music goes through a regular metamor-
phosis depending on who’s adding their influ-
ence and ideas to the GusGus collective. This,
you could speculate, is why they continue to
be such a draw across Europe after so many
years of playing festivals and gigs – the fans
know that every time they see GusGus it will be
entirely different to their last gig in that country.
Familiarity breeds contempt and something
unexpected, such as President Bongo’s fetching
white pin strip jodhpurs or Earth’s spectacular
green seaweed outfit at Glastonbury, will be
memorable rather than forgettable or repeti-
tive.
Add some classy dance music and Bongo’s
charisma to the visual mix and you have the
reason why they sell out gigs all over Europe,
with London, Poland, France and Germany
being particularly enthusiastic about the band.
Sadly, the band’s second appearance at the
festival was cancelled so Glastonbury only got
one dose of the foursome at work, much to
the disappointment of anyone who saw their
first set. GusGus were also disappointed as the
event is truly unique to them. “It’s impossible
to compare this (Glastonbury) to anything we
have in Iceland. We don’t have many people.
All of the people in our biggest cities would
be able to fit in here.”
After being around for so long and play-
ing almost every major festival in Europe and
beyond (they’ve played sold out shows in LA
as well), they freely admit they intend to leave
a politician-style legacy with their fans. “On
our last album we created the concept of
Forever, like being an icon, and we’ve touched
on other things as well, like religion, sin and
all that…purely philosophical but when you
wish hard for a thing it’ll come to you – that’s
the idea of Forever.” Sadly not many things
are forever but GusGus did have the power
to summon something with a shelf life even
longer than theirs: “My trousers brought the
sun out!” declares Bongo, “actually I think it
was your behind that did it…” corrects Ágúst.
If only they’d stayed all weekend, then maybe
GusGus could have repeated the sun trick and
saved us all from another very English summer
festival soaking.
“We had the honour of
opening the Pyramid
Stage on Friday, at 11.30
a.m.” reckons Bongo. “No,
no, no, no that was an-
other one…we played in
a tent at Glastonbury in
1999.” Bongo stands cor-
rected by Biggi
GusGus at Glastonbury
Text by Ben H. Murray Photo by Juli Davis
_REYKJAVÍK_GRAPEVINE_ISSUE 10_007_FEATURE/MUSIC/ON TOUR REYKJAVÍK_GRAPEVINE_ISSUE 10_007_FEATURE/MUSIC/ON TOUR_3
In one corner we have the residents of Ipswich
– one of Britain’s oldest and most historic
towns – who number about 117,986. Their
town is built beside an estuary in the East
of Britain and is known for its fish, football
and ale but definitely not the quality of its
music.
And in the other corner we have the disaf-
fected youth of Ipswich, totalling 14 tattooed
people. There should be at least one more
but the promoter has skipped the country
and left some of the disaffected 14 in charge
of matters. We’re sitting in the attic bar of
a garishly decorated pub where downstairs,
every Saturday night, badly dressed men prob-
ably drink too much Stella and girls fall over
in their high heels after too many alcopops.
Aside from the 14 black-clad metal kids, there
is also hardcore punk band Gavin Portland
and their one-man entourage, but they don’t
count as they’re from Iceland.
The battle is set as the landlady, a woman
who looks like she sees enough misbehaviour
during the weekend to make her clamp down
on any inappropriate activity fairly quickly at
other times, tells the stand-in promoter to turn
the sound down or she’ll throw them out.
A swagger of youthful rebellion sweeps the
room and then, when everyone has thought
about how bad it would be if Gavin Portland
were sent on their way before playing a note,
a moment of hesitation; the volume is reduced
slightly. Round one to the Ipswich majority.
The first band raise themselves from their
seats and wander to the front of the room
without encountering any crowd trouble on
the way. They sound a little like an unpol-
ished version of Gavin Portland and half way
through the singer announces: “I would tell
you our name but as this is embarrassing so
I won’t…this is probably our last ever gig
anyway.” Two nil to the Ipswich masses and
one less ‘bleeding racket’ for them to worry
about.
A similar band follows, albeit one with a
bit more confidence about their future plans,
before Gavin Portland stand up and walk
the two metres from their plastic table to
the stage. There are now only nine people
in the venue, five left after the first band, to
absorb Kolli’s ear-busting screams, Sindri’s
Jurassic drumming and the blasts of punk
that emanate from the strings of Addi and
Þórir’s guitars. All nine crowd members give
it their all from the first cry of blue murder to
the final flourish of drums – they set several
records for the smallest mosh pit, the smallest
crowd surf and for the fact that you hardly
ever say that 100% of the audience, myself
included, really enjoyed their performance.
Their short songs, in true hardcore style,
were harder and faster than the other bands,
who were really just filling the time before
Gavin Portland came on, and the instrumen-
tation was tighter than a duck’s backside in
a full-scale flood. Thankfully, the landlady
found something better to do downstairs
and the volume did creep up to a level that
just about did the band justice, but without
it being impressively loud.
This gig was the penultimate in Gavin
Portland’s UK tour, which has seen them play
some of the most well respected new music
venues in the land under the Kerrang maga-
zine tour banner. Luckily, the rest of the tour
was more of a success than their Ipswich
date, as Addi confirms when we escape the
pub for a windy beer garden before their set:
“It’s actually been pretty good until tonight!
We’ve done seven dates with Hell Is For He-
roes, those weren’t shows we’d normally play
– we’re a punk band, we normally play places
like this - but some of the shows were really
good, Birmingham and London…” To which
Sindri adds, “That venue (Birmingham) was
probably five times bigger than the biggest
venue we’ve ever played before.” So, with a
well-received overseas tour on their CV and
a recent four-out-of-five review in Kerrang,
is this the big break they’ve all been hoping
for?
Addi’s answer isn’t as straightforward as
it might be with a more commercially con-
scious band: “We’re just a punk band, we
like to do things independently. I’d rather
play ten gigs for 50 people each than one
gig for 500 people. When we tour we’re a
no-name Icelandic punk band but everyone is
there for the punk show. When we play with
Hell Is For Heroes in-front of 200 people not
a single one is there to see a punk band. But
we’re very grateful for the opportunity, we
did it because we thought it’d be interesting
playing to different people – it was fun. The
guys from Hell Is For Heroes are really great,
they lent us loads of their equipment too.”
Playing second fiddle to Hell Is For Heroes
clearly isn’t something Gavin Portland relish
– their punk sensibilities seem slightly at odds
with playing support on a magazine-spon-
sored national tour – but all four members
clearly love the experience and process of
playing a gig, much more than the adulation
or praise they might receive from others for
doing so. The reason for this rather unique
viewpoint? “We’re very confident in what
we do, maybe we’re a bit arrogant. We take
what we do very seriously and we’re very seri-
ous about creating something that matters
to us. We don’t use the amount of people
who came to a concert as a measure of how
good the band is. If we’re satisfied with what
we’re creating, then that’s what matters.” If
Gavin Portland had measured the success of
their Ipswich gig purely on attendance, then
it would have been a catastrophe. But, as they
packed up their own equipment and set off
for Newport in Wales, you can be certain that
the other 117,986 people in Ipswich were the
real losers and the nine people in that attic
room had the time of their lives, as did the
four hardcore kids from Iceland.
Ipswich vs. Gavin Portland
Text by Ben H. Murray Photo by Jonathan Fisher
Their short songs, in true
hardcore style, were hard-
er and faster than the oth-
er bands, who were really
just filling the time before
Gavin Portland came on,
and the instrumentation
was tighter than a duck’s
backside in a full-scale
flood.