From The Archive - The new lo-fi Benny Anderson?

There was a fantastic quote about us in a review of "Heads smashed in" from Holland the other day; "For certain Betika new indie-lo-fi Abba" (translation via some website). Funnily enough, the band does at the moment consist of a blonde girl (Claire), a dark girl (Caz), a beardie bloke and a clean-shaven bloke (Steve and I are interchangeable in these roles, depending on how hairy we are, but it's most common that I am Benny and he is Bjorn). It's always hard to establish the tone of reviews from overseas, when so much of the nuance of the language gets lost in the coarse machine translation, so I can't really tell if the writer's implication is that we write timeless, classic pop songs that will still be danced to in indie-lo-fi discos by our huge and loyal gay-indie-lo-fi following in thirty years time, or if he believes us to be purveyors of vacuous cheese. I guess it all depends on where you stand on Abba. I have to confess to being unsure myself.
In bits at the moment are;
(1) a Columbus EB-3 bass copy that Mike from My Hi-fi Sister (and ex-Miss Black America) gave me. This is nearly finished, I've had to make a new nut, bridge, and almost all the plastic parts (all in a functional if not particularly attractive way) and it's playable again, but it's as ugly as sin where Mike started stripping off the finish with a power sander but gave up half way (I had a similar experience with some window frames once) and think it's probably going to stay that way as I can't be arsed either. Before Mike gave it to me it was living in his shed, along with the remains of several other guitars that had been sacrificed to the gods of rock and roll by various members of Miss Black America. I've always had a bit of a problem with people breaking guitars, which dates back to when I was about thirteen, when I was saving up all the money from my paper-round to buy my first electric guitar, and I saw that famous bit of film of Hendrix smashing his strat at Monterrey. I don't think I've ever coveted an object so much, or waited so long to eventually get my hands on something, and here on the screen in front of me was this guy wantonly destroying it. Torching and then smashing into pieces my heart's desire. It seemed completely decadent, the most obscenely wasteful thing I had ever witnessed. If he didn't want the guitar, why couldn't he give it to someone who did? I was upset about that for a long time afterwards. It was worse than watching the KLF burn a million quid. Nowadays I've become a pragmatist and a scavenger, resigned to the fact that guitar trashing is a rock-pantomime set piece crowd-pleaser (just like throwing shapes, guitar solos and the earnestly gurning singer who really, really means it, face distorted into gargollic rictus by faux-emotional affectation…..), but if I ever witness it or it's victims first-hand I descend vulture-like on the carcass and try to make off with as many reuseable bits as possible. One day, I'll have enough to make a whole guitar, which I'm going to build onstage at the end of a Betika gig, amid an orgy of construction. And, getting off my high-horse;
(2) a number of Zenit SLR cameras. I've had one or more Zenits for years, my dad gave me one when I was a kid, thinking I'd progress onto something better once I'd got the hang of taking pictures with it, but as I got older I just bought more of them. I used to take lots of pictures at gigs, and as it's possible to pick these cameras up in charity shops for the price you pay for a disposable camera in the high street I don't really have to worry about them getting lost, stolen or broken- but at the same time they're still capable of taking fantastic pictures. I've broken two lately through experimenting with using them in ways which nature never intended, one I managed to fix but the other's a goner.
I've been listening to, amongst others; Steve Malkmus, Beulah, a CD of music from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, a compilation of 'outsider' music called "Songs in the key of Z" (and reading the book of the same title) and some Shostakovich piano music. I'm simultaneously reading "Porno" by Irvine Welsh and "And the ass saw the angel" by Nick Cave, both of which are written in hard-to-fathom vernacular by drug-twits

From The Archive - Chris' postcard from Oz

I think you asked me to do a diary entry for the betika site - is this ok?
The ends of my fingers have started to go hard again now. I've had a good 5 months of not having a guitar to play on and I got pretty rubbish. But now I've got one and things have started to look up a bit. I'm hoping to get some students soon which will be much better than a proper job. I can't tell you too much about betika as I've been in the wrong hemisphere for a while now. It seems like HSIBTBGT is getting re-issued with a couple of new tracks. Dave regularly forwards me the nice things that the press have had to say about it, and I would hope that some of the reviews would find their way onto this site before too long. I received a package from Mr Purse recently - he was kindly sending me copies of Belle & Sebastian/Max Tundra cd’s that cost a fortune in Australia. He also included a cd with some of his new demos that I found a little worrying, sometimes scary, but generally very promising as always. Also in the package was the new press release for “Heads Smashed in…” which alludes to Dave’s state of mind and the circumstances surrounding the recording. I never really thought about how fucked up that little bubble of time was, until now it just seemed normal – at least it proves that dysfunctional people make good music. That press release should be up here, or should go out with the cd or something – people deserve to know the truth! (see the archive!)
I’ve been reading lots of really bad books lately (see “The Death Dealers” by Mickey Spillane), but have also found some great ones like “Life of Pi” by Yann Martell and “The Art of Travel” by Alain de Botton. My favourite records of late have been Manitoba’s “Start Breaking my Heart” and Dntel’s “Life is Full of Possibilities”. I’ve been listening to a great radio station called Triple J that plays Cat Power all the time. New South Wales has a pretty active live music scene and so far I’ve seen - You Am I, Gelbison and Gersey amongst others. For proof of good music coming out of Australia check out Machine Translations, The Sleepy Jackson and Gerling (Who’s ya daddy?) See you soon Chris xx

From The Archive - Playing fast and loose in other bands

We never did find anyone (or anything) to replace Chris, so Betika as a live band is on official hiatus until he comes back. That's assuming of course that he does come back- hopefully the Australian authorities are keeping tabs on him and he'll be summarily ejected when his visa runs out…..In the meanwhile I've been keeping myself busy doing all sorts- I've been finding a sort of despondency creeping in whenever I give myself time to stop and ponder the state of the world recently, like those dark, fuzzy edges that sleep-deprivation gives your peripheral vision, so keeping occupied has been paramount. I seconded myself to the mighty Seemonster for a spell, masquerading as their drummer (previous occupants of this coveted role have included Matt "Tex la homa" Shaw and Pete from The Clams). We recorded half-a-dozen or so songs for their next release, giving me ample opportunity to vent any frustrations that may have beset me, and when these recordings are issued I'm sure I'll go back for another bash when they promote them. I've had my composer / arranger hat on over the past couple of weeks. The True Swamp Neglect boys have asked Carolyn, an as-yet-unmet French Horn player called Chris and myself to contribute some brass sounds to what will probably be their forthcoming single "Slow Fighting". I've been playing the cornet for some twenty years now, on and off (mostly off, it must be said), and have achieved the "clueless, but loud and fast" standard, as anyone who has heard my work on the Sancho Panza 7" can attest, but as it was on the basis of this recording that the Swamp asked me to play on theirs I'm hoping that they won't be too disappointed with something similar. I've also written a few short instrumental pieces for Steve's new wRong record "Children's TV themes from a parallel dimension", and even found the time to knock out ten or so new Betika songs to add to our now quite considerable back(cata)log. Steve shot some video of us rehearsing the new songs, which I might post on the site if it's any good. That's what I imagine bands like Blur and Radiohead do in an attempt to keep the wolf of between-the-albums-listener-apathy from the door. Or I could just attempt a brief description and spare us both the up-and-downloading, couldn't I? Okay; largely slow songs, arranged for classical guitar, church-hall harmonium, flute and voice, a more up-tempo song that currently needs work to make it sound less like we're ripping off Love but is a sure-fire international smash nonetheless, and a sort of hasidic/country song. Some with religio-political overtones, others just the same old boy/girl nonsense. You know the score. I've also been indulging in some electronic whimsy that may or may not ever see the light of day, and Chris, Steve and Carolyn all claim to have new tunes also. Carolyn's been doing happy hardcore for money, but I haven't heard it yet.