AA - a band that never really was - was founded late in 1980 in Hasselt, Belgium, after the members witnessed a concert of “The Machines”, winners of the second edition of “Humo’s Rock Rally”, a talent competition sponsored by a weekly magazine.
Because, in their typical adolescent opinion, the winners were too traditional, AA felt they could do better and bolder and set out to form a group with a mission: to release a record after only one rehearsal, and sell it without partaking in such dubious events as talent shows. To put it bluntly: a heartfelt fuck you to the rock n' roll circus.
Very soon after, Geert Beuls, Eddy Gabriel, Eddy Goossens and Remo Perrotti came together in Jo Lemaire’s rehearsing studio in Bilzen, Belgium. The resulting jam session was recorded on a four-track cassette deck present and out of the resulting music a choice was made of four tunes to be recorded in a “proper” recording studio. Since the past few months had been full of turmoil on the personal levels, with two friends committing suicide weeks apart, lovers gone stray and parental - generation gap - problems, the session proved cathartic and the resulting music was dark, clumsy and honest. It reflected the general atmosphere of depression which was hovering over the area at the time, with massive unemployment, the coalmining industry closing down and a future that didn’t seem to hold very much to look out for.
Two weeks later, one afternoon school was being flunked and AA (a name chosen to be the first band in record shops bins, before ABBA, and quickly referred to as the “Anarchists Anonymus”) found themselves in a tiny eight-track recording studio above a pub in Diest. There was budget for four hours of recording and mixing. This studio was chosen because The System, recorded their single “The Box/The Weekend” here a year before. The System was the band in which Remo Perrotti and Eddy Gabriel first met and it was the brainchild of Remo’s brother Angelo Perrotti.
Without really knowing where a tune should stop and lyrics assembled from bits and pieces of texts from all members individually trough a cut and paste approach, “Suicide Fever”, “The Shot”, “Society Stinks” and “Hymn of Praise” were put on tape in one take and roughly mixed under supervision of Frank “Sexy” Jamart, lead singer of Struggler.
Eddy Gabriel, who was studying graphic design, assembled the sleeve using a photograph of a classmate’s deceased grandfather and the master tape was taken to the record pressing plant.
To enhance the illusion of a new independent label and a burgeoning scene, the record was put out on Sexy Robot Records, a fake label name adopted by The Cultural Decay for their first seven inch “Brave New World”, self-released just a few weeks before and greatly admired.
Five hundred copies was the minimum amount to be produced as a first run and after putting the records in the sleeves around a kitchen table, AA found themselves on busses and trains throughout the country with cardboard boxes containing their “Essential Entertainment EP” to distribute it themselves to independent record stores, bars and cafés alike. Frank Jamart even took some copies to Rough Trade in London and when the Y-Pants and Bush Tetras came over on his instigation for a gig in Hasselt, they took some copies with them back to New York. That probably explains how AA got mentioned in the “International Discography Of The New Wave” by B. George & Martha Defoe (Omnibus Press). As the first band in the long list, naturally.
The ep got some good reviews in the small press and airplay on pirate radio stations. The response was such that some weeks later additional copies needed to be pressed and a second run of about 400 ep’s were manufactured. But because shops and other outlets only wanted the record in consignment and were unwilling to buy a small stock it was decided not to have more ep’s pressed and avoid the hassle of distribution by means of public transport.
Meanwhile, promoters were looking to book the band, but playing live had never been the outset, besides, the repertoire was not much more than the four tracks on the record. However, AA had occasionally “raided” the stage after gigs by local bands, hijacked their instruments and played a tune or two from the forthcoming ep in order to gain attention for the record.
Eventually, AA let themselves be persuaded to do some “proper” gigs and rehearsed in order to create some more material. All in all the band played no more than five gigs, one supporting The Fall in Koningshooikt, Belgium, where the local police came on stage and snatched Mark E Smith’s microphone from his hands and ended the gig because of neighbors’ complaints about the noise.
Eddy Goossens left the group to focus on a new band “The Regiment Of Disorder” and after a gig in Brussels, with lead singer Geert handling the bass and Frank Jamart on vocals, AA almost unanimously decided to call it a day. They were in danger of becoming a “real” band, stepping into the treadmill of entertainment.
On one special request they reunited once for a fundraising concert a year later and played an unrehearsed set containing just one long, emotional dirge. And that was the end.
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