Issue 3: Yage – 3.-17. October 1984

On musical performance as a holistic concept rather than a representation of the recorded.

Part I: A rare occurrence

Memory is tricky.

There is one particular live show I recall vividly. The atmosphere, the energy, the feelings inside of me. And yet, all the details surrounding it are nearly gone from my mind.

It must’ve been some time in 2000 or 2001, but don’t ask me what day or even month it was. The only reason I know an approximation of the year is because the band was touring on their latest album, which, according to Discogs, came out in the first year of the new millennium. Desperately I’ve searched all kinds of online punk archives, but to my eyes not a single record of the show still exists. At times I wonder if I made the whole thing up.

Regardless, despite the loss of the exact date, I have far from forgotten the show itself. It was at Het Podium in Hoogeveen that I saw five young guys, collectively named Yage, utterly elevate any notion of what I thought live music could be. It was as close to a religious experience as I had had up to that point (yes, including the actual religious experience I eventually had through the likes of Shelter).

There’s another element from the fringes that my brain seems to be able to snatch from the clutches of the black void of all things forgotten: the flyer for the show called the group – jokingly, I assume – “emo cry-babies.”

At the time, I hadn’t had much experience with the emo/screamo genre, especially the underground variety (which I suppose was all of it, at that point in history). At around about 16 years old, I was mostly stuck on old-school hardcore fare such as Agnostic Front and Madball, occasionally supplemented by Fat Wreck Chords-brand pop-punk. Oh, and Beastie Boys. Always Beastie Boys. Anyway, as such, I was wholly unprepared for the performance to come.

The Yage show was pure magic.

But here’s the proverbial kicker: as I’m sitting here trying to think of the words to describe it to you, I come up short. There’s the physicality of the performance: the singer darting around the room, the guitarists and bassist jumping around with wild abandon, amps falling over – but that doesn’t capture it. Physicality could be construed as performative, which this was not.

If there’s a thing I hate, it’s speaking in non-specific terms such as ‘energy in the room’, but I fear there might not be a better descriptor than that one. Yage brought a tsunami-esque tidal wave of emotion to a punk show. Instead of performing a prescribed set, it was like the band was moving to what drove them, music and motion in perfect sync.

I’m speaking for myself, of course, but I’ve always found that most of the value of a live performance over the recorded experience lies in the fringes. The raw edge to the instruments, the overwhelming loudness, perhaps an off-key note from the singer here and there. We would call these imperfections, but instead I find they connect me to the performance – after all, otherwise I could’ve just stayed at home and listened to the record.

But this performance was different. It was overwhelming in its totality. I found it impossible not to be swept up, the entirety of it reaching into me and stirring around what was there. It was new to me at the time and I’ve not experienced it often after this.

The performance gave me a new view on what performing music actually is.

Part II: Putting the performance on the record

As one does after witnessing a life-altering performance, I picked up an album at the merch table. In this case it was the oddly titled 3.-17. October 1984. (In all honesty, I’m still not quite sure what it refers to, despite all my internet searches. Perhaps I’m betraying a dangerous lack of knowledge about a certain event, but so be it.)

The day after the show, sitting in my room, listening to the record, it struck me how well the band managed to capture its live energy in mere sound. There is a raw, chaotic feeling to the record – if one were to look for the opposite of ‘overproduced’, this would be a solid find. Not that it is under-baked, but it feels as close to capturing the energy, the feeling of that performance on a physical medium as they could probably get.

The first thing you would notice are the vocals: screaming varied with singing, the latter of which is decidedly off-key in most places – and that’s fine. Remembering then, some friends would comment they were put off by it. Honestly, without context, I would’ve most likely shared that sentiment. With the benefit of context of the live experience, however, it fell into place as a necessary piece of the whole.

The lyrics – half in English, half in German – are somewhat cryptic, more interested in communicating a sentiment than shouting a concrete message into your ear. Though don’t mistake this for purposelessness, as the core theme of the record seems to be learning how to live.

Living in the moment, dealing with mortality, making a life worth living. Despite a lack of ‘the government perpetrates heinous war crimes’-type straightforward lyrics, I would classify Yage as an incredibly political band. By approaching listeners on a foundational, philosophical level, it quickly becomes clear what stance they take on wider issues.

Das ist mein Teil, den ich genau in diesem Moment habe

Global ist total

Nicht fassbar

Dein Moment ist nicht mein Moment, auch nicht die vielen anderen Momente

Und alles, was ich sehe ist viel, doch ich verstehe

Nur was ich wirklich nicht kann, das ist immer und irgendwann

Doch was ich wirklich nicht kann das überall und ich versuche und denke dran

Doch was ich wirklich nicht kann

To see and understand is not one

Und was alles gerade passiert......

It’s painting in fairly broad, rough strokes, beautiful as it is, and it’s a method that fits the performance. Everything about this band is about grand, sweeping, enthralling gestures.

That goes for the instrumental part as well, switching between melodic interludes and harsh assaults on the ears, sometimes veering into softness with hypnotising bass-loops to keep you mesmerised. If anything, the music keeps you on your toes, keeps you curious to see what’s around the corner. What is that next track going to be like, how is the next album going to sound?

Part III: Flipping the script

One more time I got to experience Yage, before they disbanded. Having been so impressed with the first performance I was present for, seeing that they were playing a show in Utrecht was enough for me to convince a friend to make the trek to go see them. The venue was ACU, date unknown also. Year: 2002. But again, I remember being swept up in the moment, in the performance.

The reason I know the year at all is because at the time, I published a zine for which I interviewed them. The interview was incredibly cringe from my side (being a dumb 18-year old with opinions at the time – you know how it is), but there was some nice talk about creating performance spaces, prompted by Yage’s singer at the beginning of the set saying: "When we play here, we become part of this place."

Re-reading that all these years later, it makes much more sense to me than at the time. In the interview we focused mostly on how these small performance spaces don’t come into existence that often anymore, but seeing it now, I finally realise there is a deeper meaning there.

The history of music is strange. For thousands of years, music was strictly a performance-based medium. The only way to experience music, was to either listen to someone perform it live, or create it yourself. And there were no limits, other than one’s imagination or the tolerance of listeners, and perhaps what instrument you could conjure up. Want to jam out on a pan flute for 45 minutes straight? Your prerogative!

The availability of technology shapes our world view, what is attainable and possible. And so it also shapes how we experience music.

Everything changed when we first started recording music, with the technology (backed by capitalism) dictating what music could be. So the wax rolls can only contain five minutes of music? Let’s just make songs roughly five minutes or less long! Singles that are longer than three minutes don’t do well on the radio? Make ‘em shorter! People can’t get through a whole album of the same artist anymore? Let’s make playlists!1

With recorded music becoming commoditised, it turned a participatory medium into a consumable and performative one. The live performance emulating the recorded music. No wonder the enjoyment in live music lies in the fringes.

But Yage did it differently.

By playing in such an undefinable way, they – and the people in the rooms where they performed with them – for lack of other descriptors, became the spaces they played in.

Their records as an emulation of the performance. A way to re-experience magic that happened in a small room between five German musicians and about a hundred people longing to feel something more. And for that experience – and after all these years, finally this recognition of that fact – I am grateful.