Post-Punk Monk

It’s been a bad week for losing iconic musicians. Sly Stone and Brian Wilson were rightly feted for their tremendous contributions to the Classic Rock canon. Examples of which reside in my Record Cell because, well, every home should have them! But today came the sad news that a third musician who may lack the name recognition among the masses of Stone or Wilson, but whose presence in my Record Cell outweigh those giants by a factor of nine or ten! I’m speaking of Douglas McCarthy of Nitzer Ebb among other endeavors.

The stunning fact that I encountered this morning was that McCarthy was a few years younger than I am! I’m used to all of my favorite musicians being at least a few years older than I am; not younger. Worse still was that until today I had no idea of his health issues with alcoholism. I didn’t know that he was sitting out recent tours of Nitzer Ebb due to his cirrhosis of the liver. The attempts he made near the end of his life to recover were apparently too late to be of benefit to him.

I can remember where I first heard/saw Nitzer Ebb. It was when MTV’s 120 Minutes played the video for “Murderous” from their debut album, “That Total Age.” I was thunderstruck to see that, by golly, someone remembered the advances that DAF had made nearly a decade earlier! This was a suit of material cut from the same hard, minimal, and extreme electronic fabric. Ultimately beholden to Suicide, in the same way that whole swaths of Rock were beholden to the Velvet Underground. When I found out that they were British and not actually German, I was even more thunderstruck.

I wasted no time in buying an import CD of “That Total Age” in the Mute Records pressing as we couldn’t wait for Geffen to get their act together. It was a bracing and very successful addition to the core of hard electronic groups I loved such as Cabaret Voltaire and would soon be recognized as the Industrial/EBM scene [the line was always blurred, to me] that was maturing in the mid to late 80s.

In their heyday, I only bought CDs of their material, but by the second album, “Belief,” the phenomenon of import CD singles was popping and I made sure to obtain everything I could. The “Belief” album was even better than “That Total Age” had been. It evinced substantial movement forward from the ultimately reductive DAF template they first built their band on. My favorite Nitzer Ebb single will still always be “Hearts + Minds.” I really loved the baleful synth vibe which, to my ears, harkened back to the vocabulary of sound that John Foxx had built for his crucial “Metamatic” album. I always responded to that sort of “uneasy listening.”

Better still, For some reason, Orlando, Florida, where I lived at the time, had a vibrant Industrial/EBM scene that saw all of the major players of the movement touching down there during their North American tours. As if it were a place of note! So I got to see Nitzer Ebb play at Visage, the local club that snagged all of the touring acts I was keen to see. That felt like a huge victory at the time. Nitzer Ebb classics like “Join In The Chant,” were always being played at the club nights I attended at Visage and other dance floors. At a time of House Music taking over, it felt great to have another very different flavor of electronica manifesting and thriving.

Better still, Nitzer Ebb weren’t what I called “ogre music” with the singer using distortion on their voice for a shortcut to impact. McCarthy sang without such affectations though he might have strained his voice in doing it! I always felt like he was a Blues singer for a very different time and place. There was a hint of bluesy drawl in his delivery that I found a fascinating juxtaposition in such forceful, but electronic, music.

On my frequent trips to the Tampa Bay area for concerts and record shows, we were thrilled to see the German import of the “So Bright, So Strong” compilation of the early, pre-Mute Nitzer Ebb material I had been blissfully unaware of at the time. Classic material like “Isn’t It Funny, How Your Body Works” or especially “Warsaw Ghetto,” hinted at the directions that the band would later explore more fully as they developed and grew.

The group continued onward and upward. Their third album, “Showtime,” offered further sophistication, and I saw them a second time live as they opened up for the Depeche Mode “Violator” world tour. I was doubly happy that this happened as they offered me far more than DM did in the Orlando Arena. The time to see Depeche Mode would have been when they were in clubs. Eight years earlier. And I can point to the fact that I saw Nitzer Ebb first in such a setting, where it was all more appropriate than an arena with 18,000 others.

The singles from “Showtime” included remixes of “Fun To Be Had” as crafted by…George Clinton! What a treat that not entirely predictable scenario was! I was And by this time there were also [different] US CD singles of the material. I made certain to buy them all! The “Pool Mix” and “Trance Mix” of “Getting Closer” were mixes that made a big impression at the time.

When perusing the bins at Murmur Records one day, I came upon the German grey vinyl 12″ of “Machineries Of Joy” by Die Krupps/Nitzer Ebb. To my detriment, I had not previously encountered Die Krupps, but was happy to see that such a collaboration made all the sense in the world after buying the record! I would go on to buy the occasional Die Krupps release afterward, but they lost me when the pivoted fully to Metal, as did many in the Industrial scene.

I had to admit when Nitzer Ebb released their next album, “Ebbhead,” I heard that they also had pivoted to Metal [or at least used guitar samples] on “Godhead” but I’ll be the first to say that they came through the experience without any egg on their faces. There were great US promo items like the “All States Promo” of remixes and live tracks that were a welcome addition to the Record Cell.

By the mid-90s the band maybe picked up too strongly on the zeitgeist and their fifth album, “Big Hit” embraced [gasp] acoustic drums and guitars as they perhaps tried to find a foothold among the Grunge scene as electronics [save for Techno/Rave] had fallen out of favor. I’ll admit that I listened to this album far fewer times than the one that had preceded it, but its been years so I can’t just whip out an accurate opinion at this juncture. But at the time I can’t remember anyone opining that this was the band’s finest hour.

Following that the band fissured. McCarthy moved to the “straight life” offstage with a day job and households in Los Angeles, Detroit, and Cambridge, England. By 2002, he formed the duo Fixmer/McCarthy with French Techno musician Terrence Fixmer. It’s always been my intention to hear that music, but to date, I’ve not seen any to buy in store. The old story. The bigger story, for me, was seeing that in 2009 Nitzer Ebb had reformed!

Like many in the aftermath of the economic crisis of the era, they had gotten back together since The Brand had cachet. Fortunately, the resulting album, 2009’s “Industrial Complex” was prime Nitzer Ebb. It stood tall as one of the finer such examples of the “reformation album.” Then after that the only Douglas McCarthy solo album came in 2011. Yes, it’s another one I still need to buy. And their US label, Pylon Records, released their earliest demo cassette, “Basic Pain Procedure” on album and CD, which I still need to get!

Since then, I’ve occasionally noted that Nitzer Ebb would tour and they also released a live album, on LP only. But I kept holding out for another great studio album like “Industrial Complex” to no avail. Finally, in 2011, McCarthy issued his only solo album, “Kill Your Friends.” But that’s yet to cross the threshold of my ears. To date the last sessions from Douglas McCarthy were on 2017’s “Detroit House Guests” album by Adult.. Another teaming that made all the sense in the world.

So I’ve already listened to “That Total Age” on the commute to work this morning. “So Bright, So Strong” will accompany me home tonight. I still need to fill in the gaps on my Nitzer Ebb collection and to make efforts to obtain “Kill Your Friends” and the Fixmer/McCarthy work. About 20 years ago I started buying the Nitzer Ebb 12″ singles with loose remixes not on the CD singles I already have. I have a few, but there’s a lot more to come on that road. Condolences to his family, friends and bandmates after losing their friend and partner. Especially so soon.

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