I think I'll run this past you again and see if anything needs
further clarifuication. I know I've got to write more about the music
for one thing, but I've got that half worked out, just not completely
integrated.




Savage Republic the LA based drone rockers and post rock forefathers
have announced that they are reforming for a series of reunion shows
this November, 13 years after they split. From what I remember I was
first introduced to their sound through an NME review of their E.P.
Trudge by Chris Bohn (Bohn as Biba Kopf. coincidentally wrote the
WIRE review of the reissues) this review spoke of a band that
combined eastern music with rock like a soundtrack to a desert
landscape. There is a very cinematic sounding quality throughout the
work of the band and Bruce Licher's later band Scenic that seems ripe
for plucking as soundtrack stuff, A direction that group leader Bruce
Licher has claimed was intentional and that has been made use of
before. The track Real Men from their first LP Tragic Figures
soundtracks the scene at the climax of The Silence Of the Lambs. This
visual/cinematic quality may come from the fact that the bandleader
was an Art Student when he formed the band in UCLA in 81. As the
leader of Scenic he still runs his own letterpress making cd sleeves
etc in a recognisable style that's graced a lot of other people's
work too. Outside of this, Licher may well have been a major factor
in the formation of the Butthole Surfers who otherwise may have
remained Los Angeles beachfront entrepreneurs instead of heading back
to Austin to get their band going.
January 2002 saw the re-release of Savage Republic's back catalogue
through Mobilization a record label run by Ethan Port, a central
member of the later line up. There was a slight delay from the
projected September 2001 reissue partially caused by the WTC debacle,
which nearly cost Ethan his life. He was in a hotel across the square
when the planes hit, he cathartically explained what happened to the
Procession chatlist where the story is available in the archives.
On recollection I've felt that my discovery of Savage Republic was a
perfect example of finding a band that would fill a hole that I
already knew I wanted filled. This is because I was looking for
something that combined the Middle Eastern music I always liked with
punk or psychedelia. Savage Republic managed to combine all 3,
although their take on punk was possibly a bit cerebral. I bought
their first LP in its Sordide Sentimentale version a while after
reading the NME review. It is a very interesting melange of post
punk, surf, Eastern and art influences which I played quite a bit but
only really linked to a couple of tracks on but the 3rd LP Jamahiriya
was really the one that fully connected with me. It remains one of my
favourite LPs to this day. Along with the 2 LPs from their last
European tour it was something I regularly played on my Dublin pirate
Radio show, I hope I educated a few ears. In 1988 I had managed to
see the band play some very wild shows when they toured England, the
only time they did so (if you count both ends of a European tour as
once) Though I've been told that there was a tour of mainland Europe
the year before too. Ethan Port wasn't with the band when they toured
the UK, being busy finishing off his college degree.
Savage Republic came together as the Africa Corps at the UCLA In Los
Angeles in 1981. This was after Bruce Licher, now leader of Arizona's
Scenic had been through the ranks of Neef. Licher had decided to do
an LP for the Independent Project course he was on. This would lead
to the formation of his record label Independent Projects. Neef had
decided to stick out a single following their friends the Urinals
earlier record release. The Urinals had also featured in the
formative influences of the Gun Club, and a cover of their Black Hole
is on Divinity by that band. 2 years earlier in 1979 Licher's
discovery of the No Wave scene and specifically DNA had led to his
deciding to finally pick up a guitar after having been a huge
Ventures fan all thru high school. There is a coincidence here with
my last article in that the No Wave scene had heavily shaped the Gun
Club guitar player Kid Congo's view of his instrument. Like Kid most
of the players in Savage Republic were more interested in soundmaking
than conventional Technique to quote later member Thom F `When I
think of SR, I don't think of musicians. I think of soundmakers. I
had only been playing bass 1 year when I joined SR (and it showed)
Musicianship isn't everything. We all brought something different to
the table and that's what makes SR special.' Since this almost
paraphrases some of what Kid told me when I was researching the gun
club article, do I detect a pattern to my tastes?
Prior to the Africa Corps, Bruce had been exploring the
tonalities of playing in the tunnels under UCLA leading to his
aggregate crew being known as the Tunneltones. He was joined in this
activity by course mate Mark Erskine a drummer who he'd seen doing a
percussion work on a performance art course he was on. Soon after
they started going down there Bruce's ex `Them Rhythm Ants' bandmate
Phil Drucker (at the time known as Jackson Del Rey) talked his way
into playing along with them. Drucker was in contact with a 16 year
old bassist called Jeff Long who was interested in learning to play
experimentally and became involved in the project. As Bruce
describes Long "he was a bass prodigy, only 16 or 17 when we started
the band, and had already played with some heavy jazz players, loved
Jaco Pastorius, and was starting to get into punk rock and looking to
stretch out into new things. He was a friend of Phil's, and
apparantly they had played in some band previously, though I never
got any details". This was the basic core of the line up that would
record the band's first LP Tragic Figures.
While the band was still rehearsing in Bruce's apartment in West LA,
Licher caught guitar orchestra composer Glen Branca's first west
coast gig at a gallery in UCLA. He says. "There were 6 people in his
group total, and the 10-15 minutes they spent tuning were
mesmerizing. He then performed 4 pieces and I'd never heard anything
like it. By the middle of the fourth piece I was hearing sounds I
couldn't see anybody playing, no doubt from the overtones bouncing
around and off the walls of the gallery space. After the performance
I went up to tell him how much I enjoyed it, and to ask about the
tuning of the guitars. All the way home all I could think of
was "I've got to try tuning my guitar like that." And that's exactly
what we did at the next SR (actually Africa Corps at that point)
rehearsal I had gone and bought a bunch of B strings for my guitar
and strung it all up with 6 B strings.' This was the predecessor to
the instrument the band may well be best known for the white 12
string Gibson SG called the monochord which is responsible for a lot
of the more Eastern sounding textures on the bands recordings.
Bruce had also recently bought a copy of the Faust 4 album, not the
only krautrock influence on the band from the start; Bruce also cites
both Popul Vuh and Amon Duul II. With Faust 4, Bruce was really taken
with the sonic drone of the song "Krautrock," and played it for Phil,
Jeff and Mark. `I suggested we try something along those lines, so
Jeff started up a simple, repetitive bass line, Phil & Mark got a
gamelan-style percussion beat going on a metal rail and pipes, and I
started droning on what became known as our "monotone" guitar. Lo and
behold, the melody I came up with reminded us of the theme music to
the movie "Exodus," so guess what we decided to call the song? Still
one of my favorite SR songs of all time, especially the parking
garage version which appears on the Independent Projects 10" box set'.
Tragic Figures was originally recorded under the band name Africa
Corps for Licher's independent Project course as Project 197. After
it was recorded and the sleeve had been printed, Drucker announced
that he was unhappy with the connotations of the band name. This had
been a problem before, with people approaching the band admiring its
Nazi connection, Drucker was Jewish so its appreciable that he
wouldn't like such thought. There was also a band called Africa Korps
on the east coast, which in itself may have created problems. Licher
was left having to print Savage Republic over every place that the
original sleeve said Africa Corps.
This LP is the most punk sounding the band get. It sounds like a
cerebral hardcore band with a funky rhythm section playing eastern
tinged surf music covers of serial music. I tend to group it
alongside such mavericks as the first Meat Puppets releases and
D.A.F.`s Die Kleinen und Die Bosen, both of which came out in the
same year. It definitely shares the same qualities of pushing against
the barriers of what could be seen as punk music while retaining the
same raw edge that less musically ambitious bands had. This may be
down to the band not yet being entirely used to their instruments, a
quality that Bruce has said elsewhere led to reinterpretation where
otherwise might have been straighter copy. Here

The Original sleeve features the firing squad execution of an Arab
Dissident,
Ethan Port ` It's an Iranian college professor, who's hand is
bandaged from Being broken. He was the history professor of a UCLA
student who lived in the UCLA Cooperative Student Housing with me in
the 1980s'. I was afraid that such images would mean that the reissue
campaign of late last year would be delayed if not halted by
happenings in Afghanistan; luckily this wasn't to be the case, not
for very long anyway. The French Sordide Sentimentale release used a
different, abstract image, presumably because of the political
ambiguity of the image.
Jeff Long was then sharing his time between Savage Republic and a
band called Wasted Youth. For a while it seemed that Wasted Youth
were a better prospect, but Jeff regretted this when Tragic Figures
started getting good press. By this time Drucker had asked fellow
UCLA student Robert Loveless to join the band who therefore became a
5 piece. Robert Loveless is currently working with Bruce Licher again
as a member of Scenic, at the time he started working with SR he was
very interested in keyboards amongst the normal multi-instrumentation
that seems typical of all the members of the band. This was taking
the band into a far softer direction than they'd had before possibly
indicated by the sound of the later Ceremonial. Jeff Long left in mid
83 after the band had done the Mojave Exodus performance in the
desert and the rest of the band continued without him, at least that
is until the end of the year.
Around this time, work was being done on material for a second album
that was initially due for release at the end off 1983. This was to
lead to great arguments about direction between Licher and Drucker.
Licher retains copies of the mastertapes of this material and still
holds dreams of releasing the material the way he originally
envisioned it. His bandmates would eventually released the material
the way they saw it, in more acoustic form under the name 17 Pygmies,
a split-off band centred around Robert Loveless and Phil Drucker.
This LP has remained difficult to get hold of for several years I
thought this was due to legal considerations; Robert Loveless has
told me that there was a limited reissue from Stray Dog records in
Greece coupled with the Hatikvah e.p. sanctioned by Phil Drucker.
I'll have to see about getting a copy since it's a record that I
really would like to lay my hands on.
Licher was to keep the Savage Republic name and reformed the band
alongside Erskine with the intention of making Soundtrack type music.
The new members who would stay with the band until it collapsed after
the 88 European tour, these were Thom Furhmann on bass he'd only been
playing his instrument for a year previously, his big influences in
the early 80's were Joy division, echo, and wire, not to mention
Barry Adamson of Magazine. The other 2 new members were Greg Grunke
and Ethan Port. Ethan Port had been through various noise projects
most notably …uh… as Ethan explains
"1982-1986 Greg Grunke and I worked on ...uh...
Originally with David Saunders, then just Greg and I. Greg and I
would loosely structure songs and invite anyone we could find to
practice/perform with us. The structure was especially inspired by
bands like Flipper, Throbbing Gristle, Joy Division, Africa Corp, PiL
and the Fall. We performed quite a bit at the original Anti-Club. In
1983 we added David Bromberg on drums. Other people who appeared
in ...uh... included Brad Laner and Mike Fey (then in Debt of
Nature).
Brad Laner reappears in The SR story later, then continues with a
far more popular SR derivative band called Medicine
Apart from Erskine this was a set of players who would remain with
the band up to the last planned Lp Jamahiriya. (Customs was a
fortunate accident brought about by spare time created by Greek
Customs hence the title, more on this later) The new line up played
their first gig with the new line up at Djeme el Fna at the
Desolation Center performance with Einsturzende Neubauten and Mark
Pauline's Survival Research Laboratories.
One thing that impresses me deeply about the LPs with the 2nd era
line-up is the way that melody/impact and rhythm all seem to be held
on the same level. Or at least until Erskine left and Laner took
over when the drums seem to almost take dominance/lead role remaining
in constant change while the white 12 string SG known, as the
monochord remains static. This monochord is the instrument
responsible for the more evocative eastern sounding elements of the
sound. Licher had developed the idea for this instrument early in
the bands history around the same time that he caught Branca for the
first time.
This line up recorded the Trudge e.p, which was my first awareness of
the band, although I didn't hear it until much later. The sound here
is more orderly than the earlier record it is heavily layered, based
around the dynamics of tension build and release. Though it retains a
great deal of energy, the punkier aspects of the earlier recordings
are only represented by the dissonance in the guitar tuning. It also
features a broader range of instrumentation, horns are beginning to
appear in the sound, played by band members more used to playing
other instruments but still sounding effective.
This is a mainly instrumental 5-track e.p with one side of 2 long
downbeat instrumentals and another 3 shorter more upbeat ones on the
other side.
This E.P. is now coupled on a CD with the next LP Ceremonial.
Robert Loveless had returned to the band in the interim and remained
until 1986. The original version of the LP was somewhat marred by
very flat singing. There was more disagreement about whether the band
should be instrumental or vocal. In the current instrumental version
this seems to be the closest that Savage Republic come to Licher's
current project Scenic. This may be down to the presence of Loveless
who is also in the latter band.
In 1986 Robert Loveless left the band again, as previously stated he
was to return to playing with Licher several years later in Scenic
from their second LP Acquatica onwards. With the departure of
Loveless the band kept the same line-up for the next year, they
toured including their first tour of mainland Europe, which
unfortunately didn't include the UK. After this Mark Erskine who had
been undergoing some level of personal difficulties left the group to
be replaced by Brad Laner. Brad Laner had been one of LA's most
promising musicians for a while at one time he was in 11different
bands playing almost as many different instruments. He knew Greg
Grunke and Ethan Port from having played with them in ...uh... and
came in to play drums. Bruce thinks `Brad was way into Can as well as
the Beach Boys when he joined SR, and I think his Can-influenced
drumming brought out some really interesting sensibilities in our
songwriting.' And certainly when I played friends my copy of
Jamahiriya in the late 80s it took a lot of convincing to stop them
thinking it was a krautrock band. As I said earlier, several
krautrock bands had been heavily influential in the sound of the band
most notably Popul Vuh whose sound layering was taken aboard
wholesale and Amon Duul II which might be detectable in the
prominence of the rhythm section.
Jamahiriya has been a favourite LP of mine for a very long time. I'd
had the copy of Tragic Figures for quite a while and only really
linked to a couple of the tracks but buying Jamahiriya, taking it
home plonking it on the record deck something just absolutely
clicked. Its use of textures has meant that it was a very good LP to
trip to back in my acid days. Its use of rhythm should've ensured its
place in dancefloor success cos it surely do make me want to shake
m'booty. The original version also has a `kin great cover that the
reissue seriously does not do justice to. It looks like the same
photograph was used but the early morning vibe of the original is
reduced heavily in the 3 colour reproduction. I think the original
sleeve connects to the music in a rare quasi-synaesthetic way. The
music contained is definitely amongst the bands most cinematic,
containing the Arabic/Eastern European themes that the band been
developing on from their first LP. The conflict between the 2 camps
fighting over whether to make songs punchy short vocals or long
instrumentals seems to have reached a point of compromise here too,
since most of the tracks seem to combine elements of the 2. As Bruce
says above, Brad's drumming certainly adds something to the sound
that wasn't there as noticeably before. Comparing the versions of
tracks that appear on Live Trek, the Mark Erskine era live LP with
the Live 88, Brad Laner era LP there seems to be a major dynamic
shift. Erskine was a good solid drummer whose role seemed to be to
keep rhythm; Laner's drumming almost seems to take over as lead
instrument.
At the time that Brad was in the group he was hands down the best
musician. Thom F
goes as far as saying that he could outplay most of the other members
on their own instruments. Brad went on to fronting Medicine on guitar
and had some degree of success with music that seemed to owe a heck
of a lot to the band that he passed through.
Again the LP roughly splits into a side with lyrics/vocals and an
instrumental side or at least into one where the vocals are used more
instrumentally than the more lyrical other. This does fall apart a
bit when it comes to the first side's Pink Floydesque long hypnotic
instrumental Tabula Rasa, a title that SR got to 5 years before
Einsturzende Neubauten used it for the title of their 7th LP. The
phrase means blank slate, here the swirling, constantly changing
focus on instrumentation seems to evoke that state very well.
Spice Fields the second track on this side is highly evocative of a
desert patrol group rolling into view. Is it coincidental that this
band used to be called Africa Corps?
I think this is likely to be the first track that I'd play to anybody
asking what the band was about since for me it seems to encapsulate
the band in a nutshell.
The whole LP is brilliant though and apart from returning the
original sleeve I don't think this could be much better.
Except for Ethan Port who was tied down with University work, the
band finally played the UK on the tour that supported the release of
this LP. I got to see them at the Fulham Greyhound in London, where
they supported the Young Gods. I wangled my way on to the guest list
thanks to the band and their Swedish tour manageress (maybe this
needs stressing I think she was about the only female tour manager
that I came across in the couple of years I was following bands
around). I had hoped that my friends group Playground would be able
to stick me on, since I really didn't want to miss SR. I saw them
again 2 months later at the Dome in Tufnell Park. At this gig Thom F
was forced to play support band Shriekrock's Day-Glo bass since the
tuning peg on his own bass was broken. I thought he'd had his stolen
so was fighting my conscience over whether I should tell him about a
10 string bass on sale in Denmark street that I also had an eye on, I
think he probably didn't know until reading this. He probably
wouldn't have wanted it anyway.
The tour of Europe lasted 21/2 months. In retrospect it is easy to
see that this was just too long, tempers were flaring amongst the
band and it was to have a drastic effect. 2 good things did come out
of the tour in the shape of the 2 LPs recorded on the road, Live 88
and the Customs LP. Live 88 was recorded by the band in Germany where
they were supported by Collosole Jugende who also had to lend Thom F
a bass for which they're thanked in the onstage spiel. Thanks to
bureaucratic red tape the whole Greek part of the tour had been
undermined by the fact that the band had tried to enter the country
with incorrect paperwork. This had lead to the border customs
officers confiscating all their equipment, which meant them having to
play shows with borrowed equipment. After this had already gone down
the band also wound up with spare time on their hands in Greece,
which lead to the recording of Customs. When S R went to reclaim
their equipment before leaving the country they discovered that there
were more signatures needed than they'd expected and that there was a
customs strike about to happen. The promoter of the Greek tour had
pre-booked studio time just in case the band could manage to stay the
weekend. This allowed them to go into the studio for 3 days the
11/12/13 November at Recording Projects Studio in Thessalonika. They
wrote the material in the studio and most of it sounds like they
would have been heading in interesting directions if the tour hadn't
ripped the heart out of the band. Since all of the bands equipment
was locked up in red tape this was recorded on borrowed gear, it
still sounds incredible.
The band had been very popular in Greece following their 1983 b-side
recording of O Adonis; Mikis Theodarakis' banned song from the 1960s.
This led some Greeks to believe that SR were more aware of
underground history than they in fact were. The band had just thought
they'd cover a gorgeous tune.
I don't think their show at the Barrel Organ, Birmingham UK was very
well attended, which is a shame since if things had been going as
planned the band should've been incredible. I remember hitching down
to this show to see them the day after seeing the Gun Club at
Manchester University. By this time Brad Laner had already jumped
ship so they had to use the support act Laughing Academy's drummer.
Jackson Del Rey seemed to be seriously depressed and was being
heavily comforted by the tour manager. I ballsed up getting a lift to
Edinburgh with the band, I kind of doubt that that van would've been
the most restful place to be during that trip anyway. They played
Edinburgh with the local whiz kid drummer who had been brought in by
the promoter, only doing the tracks that he could get a groove going
on, something I'd seen with the guy from Laughing Academy the night
before too. It seems Laner must've used pretty weird drum signatures.
I was put on the guest list in Birmingham as one of the only couple
of names on there. I thought the entire list was supposed to be me
and the guy putting me up that night. I've since heard that Thom F
was trying desperately to get Will Sergeant of the Bunnymen to come
down. Thom's stated the opinion that he would've loved to get one of
the Savage Republic LPs produced by him. This reminds me that I'd
heard a similarity between the playing style of the guitarist from
the Dublin band Whipping Boy and the guitar sound on a lot of Savage
Republic's stuff especially on the live LP from this tour. When I
asked that guitarist Paul Page about whether he'd heard Savage
Republic he said no it was from Will Sergeant. Seemed weird that some
of the republicans were also bunnyfans.
A Couple of weeks after this Bruce Licher sent me a postcard
accompanying a copy of the Sorrdide Sentimentale booklet from the
French Tragic Figures release. In this he told me that I hadn't
really missed much and that after the Edinburgh gig the band got
straight into the tour bus and drove straight to Heathrow Airport to
make a morning flight. Must've been 400 miles at top speed.
So the group in fractious mood staggered home to the States and in
December Bruce decided to leave LA for Sedona Arizona. They played
two final shows with a line up consisting of Thom Furhmann, Greg
Grunke, Ethan Port, the departing Bruce Licher and a drummer called
Aaron Scherer. Scherer was a member of Perry Farrell's pre Jane's
Addiction band Psi Com. For these last dates the band could only
organise a couple of days rehearsal and still sounded incredible.
According to the band the final show at the Wash in Claremont
California was one of the bands best performances. A recording of the
concert is due for October 2002 release through Mobilization under
the title Execution of the State by Fire and Ritual.
Those of you in California get the chance to go and see what will
hopefully be the reunion of a still potent grouping November. I wish
I could be with you, damn the width of this ocean.

There is a Yahoo.groups chatlist dedicated to the band called
Procession. Most of the members of the band appear on there quite
frequently. It has been a great help in my research for this article.

Ethan Port is now running a record label called Mobilization. Through
which the recent reissues have been made available. There is an
October release due on the recording of the last ever gig by Savage
Republic


Bruce Licher is now the leader of the band Scenic. He is alsorunning
his own letterpress with which he has designed the covers for various
artists work in his own recognisable style (he seems to like rough
beige card). Until recently he was also running IPR as a mail-order
firm, a lot of this work has now been picked up by Mobilization.

Thom Fuhrmann has continued to work in music and last year released a
work called Tundra which is an aural description of the Arctic
wasteland. He has also worked in the bands Autumnfair

The dates for the Savage Republic tour are supposed to be as follows

Nov 11, 2002 - Claremont California
Nov 13, 2002 - Los Angeles "Knitting Factory"
Nov. 15, 2002 - San Francisco "Beyond The Pale Festival"
Nov. 16, 2002 - Seattle TBD