The
Missing Links
This article originally appeared in NFH #14 in
thefall of 1988.
In a fair world,
you'd have already heard of The Missing Links. But there's people starving in Africa while
others find it very humorous to have bumper stickers that say "He Who Dies
With The Most Toys Wins", there are people who think Nixon is some great elder
statesmen instead of the fascist crook he really is, and women can't get equal pay
for equal work. No, it isn't a fair world. But at least you have now heard of The
Missing Links, and you can take the next step and do more than hear of them.
You can get their single and actually hear them; a blast of guitars of the sort
that's a rallying cry for despisers of synthesized, gutless rock and roll
everywhere.
The Missing Links are
a four piece band from Nancy, in the northeast of France, just barely on the French
side of the trenches in World War I. Featuring a Frenchman named MacNasty and an
American named Guerilla (really plausible aliases, eh?), the band has consisted of
Dom Crablice on guitar and vocals, Vinnie "Pasta" Vincent (drums and
vocals), Mick MacNasty on bass, and Billy Guerilla (guitar and vocals). Their sound
is formed from dense slabs of ringing guitar chords (Guerilla refers to this as the
"wall of guitars" approach) underscored by a steady, fast paced beat and
bass lines that run up and down the frets at every opportunity. Over the top of
this is the band's tag-team approach to vocals; often all three singers sing at
once giving an effect somewhat like the Angelic Upstarts or the Professionals,
except that The Missing Links can stay in key. Overall, the best comparison I can
make is a cross between Les Thugs and the Vibrators.
The band formed in
May 1984 when Guerilla, a New Yorker studying medicine in France, joined forces
with Crablice, MacNasty and Vincent, who were at the time in a band called
Electrogene that played small clubs around Nancy. The common thread was a fondness for
guitar oriented rock and roll, although influences cited by the band range from
Chuck Berry through the Rolling Stones, Pistols, Clash, Ramones and Vibrators to
Husker Du, Celibate Rifles, Descendants and even long time NFH faves the Reducers.
The band were good
enough to provide me with an interview by mail in which they put together some coherent
answers to my questions while huddled around a cassette recorder. Present were all
members other than Pasta, but Guerilla did almost all the talking due to the fact
that English is his native language. So naturally the first question to ask once
the history is out of the way is, what's it like to be a band of Frenchmen (with
one American) in a very English-speaking rock and roll world? The band agree that
rock and roll is an English medium, and that even the French members prefer to sing
in English; in fact the lyrics to "Ricky Was A Good Boy" and "Deep Feelings"
were written solely by Pasta. As far as relating to audiences in France goes,
that's more of a problem; but many of the real fans of the band are used to English
rock and roll and share the feeling that English lyrics are better. As for the
mainstream of French music fans, they buy either things that are charting in
America and Britain or records that are created in what Guerilla calls "these
artificial synthetic studios with producers who produce synthesized music, but it's
sung in French and people like it, it sells, and it's worth what it's worth, which
is basically nothing". He also says that there's an underground scene parallel
to the American underground scene, but it's politicized to the point of being
dogmatic and sterile, and many of the bands also can't play very well. To some
extent this is improving now, and there are some good bands like the Rats coming up
out of this scene. As for the arena The Missing Links move in, they do draw people to
their shows, but it is difficult to connect to as many people when singing in English.
Live the band have
played sporadically since first forming, with some long gaps followed by periods of
intense gigging. They've played with Fixed Up, the Celibate Rifles, Birdhouse, GBH,
the Dogs and Les Thugs, among others, but have primarily been confined to France
because of the difficulties in working out international arrangements. Even a
seemingly simple thing like playing 70 miles from their home across the border in
Germany is a dauntingly complex matter due to visa and paperwork problems, despite
the Common Market agreements between countries. The band have had their best
successes in Nancy, and then also in Pau, near the border with Spain on the other
side of the country. Their popularity in Nancy is readily explained by the fact
that they live there and are known there, and Guerilla credits their success in Pau
to the fact that when they played there, they felt relaxed and confident, and they
felt that the crowd could sense that and that this helped them connect, as opposed
to Pau being any particular hotbed for rock and roll.
In April 1987, the
band decided to record tracks for an lp despite the fact that they were currently
unsigned. Recorded in a 16 track studio, the resulting ten songs have never been
released as the band have been amazingly unable to find an independent label
willing to sign them on for the whole lp. They sent me a cassette of it; it
contains early (but not by any means primitive sounding) versions of "Deep
Feelings" (re-recorded for the Eyes On You compilation on Closer) and
both songs on their great 45 on Teenage. The tape has some other tracks that rival
"Neighbors" and "Feelings"; "Bitter Tears" has a great sense
of dynamics and some piano fills over the top that give it a Radio Birdman kind
of feel, and "Apartheid's Not Dead" combines an important message with some
great music, changing pace from straight rock to a near hardcore pace, then to
reggae and back again several times in the course of the song. A few of the songs
suffer from less than compelling subject matter ("Alone With My Beer" or
"Just A Guitar Band") but the music is powerful and driving throughout.
And any single slab of vinyl with the three tracks "Deep Feelings",
"Neighbors Can't Stand Rock'n'Roll" and "Bitter Feelings" would be well
worth the money.
The songs for the
"Neighbors" single were chosen from The Missing Links set by producer
Stephane Saunier, and though the band felt they might have chosen other tracks if
left to their own devices, they felt that the result was very good and overall they
are quite pleased. Saunier helped them make some adjustments to the arrangements,
particularly noticeable in the guitar lead over the top of the power chording in
"Neighbors" when compared with the tape version. The band credit Saunier
with helping them see their own songs in a different way by helping them change
arrangements as he did. They also give a lot of credit to French wunderkind Kid
Pharaoh, who they rate as an excellent musician and who has helped them with a lot
of ideas.
The lyrics to the
song "Neighbors Can't Stand Rock'n'Roll" are based on a bizarre incident.
Guerilla explains: "It's a funny thing, I was in my apartment playing my
guitar when the police came. What happened was the police had been called for the
people living on the floor below me who were having a party, and they wouldn't stop
playing their music loud and being obnoxious. They left, and the police came. I
wasn't playing loud at all, but they knocked on the door and came in, and they were
rather rude. French police are much ruder than American police and German
police." The one time the rock'n'roller isn't the troublemaker and he still
gets the blame. Typical.
Talking about
"Deep Feelings" I pointed out that it's unusual for a band to give one of
their best songs for a compilation, but Guerilla countered that one of the things
he really likes about Eyes is that all of the bands contributed solid
efforts, making the record stand up to repeated listenings. He also feels that
although "Deep Feelings" is instrumentally the most challenging song for the
band (he doesn't feel they are really very good musicians at this point, and says
that although they like to play fast, they "aren't good enough to play hardcore"),
there are several other songs in their set as good. I won't argue too strongly.
As for any French or
European scene developing, Guerilla is pessimistic. He says that tastes are
dominated by what he calls Euro-rock; bands like the Pet Shop Boys playing
synthesized music that isn't conducive to playing live. Good bands exist, but it is
so hard for them to get noticed that the they seem to operate to some extent in a
vacuum. Guerilla thinks there's more of a scene in the US than in Europe.
Despite the existence
of this vacuum, they do feel that the few bands playing real rock and roll (which
he says is becoming marginalized these days) feel an affinity for each other and
sympathize with each other’s goals.
As for the future of
The Missing Links, they expect to continue on as they have been, rehearsing and
playing live gigs. As a band they are all good friends in addition to being fellow
musicians, and their reason for existing is a common love of guitar oriented rock
(as opposed to a drive for monetary success) so they don't anticipate the sort of
personal problems that other bands often founder on. A more difficult problem for
them is that Guerilla and Pasta are in medicine as a profession, Mick is an
architect, and Dom is a chemist (which I assume means he's a pharmacist, since
that's what chemist translates to in most countries other than the US). As Guerilla
puts it, "We're not exactly the down-and-out downtrodden working class lads
who discovered rock and roll as a way to get out of life on the dole." Often
just getting one rehearsal a week is a major problem as job schedules conflict.
They hope to do more recording, but no concrete plans exist. They do want to get
international acceptance, but the logistics are overwhelming when you don't have
the time to put into trying to deal with overseas record labels and work visas.
Even booking shows in France can be difficult; just breaking into Paris (which the
Missing Links have yet to accomplish) is incredibly hard...there are places in
Paris where the band has to pay the clubowner to get to play…a custom
that’s happening in the US lately, too.
The Missing Links
cassette has been sent around to several independent labels, and although they got
some tentative response, none of it really went anywhere. It's a damn shame to think of a
whole lps worth of material by a band this good sitting around collecting dust.
Considering all the lame crap that does get put out on independents here, somebody
ought to get off their butts and sign these guys up. Meantime, you can get the
single and the Eyes Only compilation from Closer. Added note: NKVD’s
"Violence Inherent In The System" compilation includes the great track
"Bitter Tears" from this tape. This compilation was released after this article
was written.
