Stage Bottles interview - April 2003

The following interview was conducted by e-mail for the Montreal fanzine, Rude Sound prior to the Stage Bottles East Coast Canadian tour in May, 2003.

Q: What is the current line-up?

SBs: At the moment it's Olaf singing and playing sax, Alex playing rhythm-guitar, Marcel lead-guitar, Frank on drums and Genschi playing bass.

Q: Do you tour a lot in Europe? What is the scene like?

SBs: Well, we're not playing a lot of gigs at the moment because we had some problems with our line-up in the past. But now we're back in playing and we want to play as many gigs as possible. It's not really easy because everyone in the band works.

But we've already played in many different countries in Europe and we've had many offers to play all over the world (the reason must be the internet). The scene is quite big in Europe. We've got contacts everywhere, everyone is helping out others with organizing gigs and also politically we're all working together. Europe has become smaller with globalisation.

Q: What did the German skinhead scene look like back in '93 compared to now?

SBs: In 1993 the scene still had to fight to establish itself in the public. Though it was much better than in the late eighties when SHARP made its start, it was still necessary to justify being a Skinhead. A little time later, all the old Oi! bands started to tour in Germany again, like Cocksparrer, The Business, Red Alert, Red London. On these gigs many more different people met each other and started to accept each other. In the time following this it was possible to organize many more Oi! gigs and more and more bands were formed. Now you've got big scene, but it's also not as politically awake as in 1993 when the enemy still turned up at gigs or tried to attack them. Many forget now that anti-fascist politics saved their subculture.

Q: We don't get to see too many European bands here in Montreal (even though things are slowly changing), do you think the European and North American movements have grown apart?

SBs: I think there's already a good contact between especially US bands and the European scene. Every scene accepts the other scene as you can see with compilations like The Real Oi! when popular American hardcore-bands covered English Oi! classics. We already met The Prowlers in Europe. I think every scene is always influenced by the scene across the ocean.

Q: What do you think of skinhead organisations like SHARP and RASH? Do they exist in Frankfurt?

SBs: Those of us from Frankfurt along with a few friends from Berlin and Mönchengladbach founded SHARP in Germany. I think it was a very important thing to do in order to create what I was talking about before. The Skinhead scene could come back officially and many fascists switched sides. And the Nazis had a strong and aggressive enemy. Now we've got much more fun, although the problem is of course not completely solved. But SHARP still exists in Frankfurt. We've also got contacts to RASH. But it doesn't really exist in Frankfurt and is not that big in Germany like - for example - in France. I think there are big differences between some kinds of anarchism and some kinds of communism and of course in between both ideologies themselves. But as an organisation where left-wing Skinheads meet each other and fight the real enemy together, we support it!

Q: Olaf, you've played with the Blaggers. Were you in the band during the era of confrontation with England's Blood and Honour? Can you tell us a little about that?

SBs: This time, in 1992, the British National Party (BNP) matured and took its place within some local parliaments. They were quite active and worked together with Blood and Honour. And this time Combat 18 was very aggressive. I witnessed the Waterloo-Riot in September 1992 and I was at an Adicts / Cocksparrer / Elite gig when C18 stormed the stage and started 'sieg-heiling'. The Blaggers as a well-known anti-fascist band were threatened a few times but it was always possible to defend the gigs.

Q: Are the Blaggers back together for good? What sort of direction is that project taking?

SBs: You're right, it's just a project. When Alex, the guitar-player of the Stage Bottles married, the ex-drummer and the ex-bassist turned up in Frankfurt. At the party we decided to play a few Blaggers songs with me singing, Matt Vinyl on bass, Jason on drums and Stage Bottles' Marcel on guitar. It went very well so we decided to prepare a proper set and begin playing gigs to financially support Anti-Fascist-Action in England. We call the project Blaggers AKA for "also known as". We don't want to pretend we're are the same as the Blaggers were with Matty Blag. At the moment we just play old Blaggers songs from every period and do a few cover versions. I don't think we're going to do new songs. It's hard anyway because two members are living in England and two in Germany. But we want to carry on playing and want to have fun as long as possible with this project!

Q: Any new Stage Bottles releases coming out for North America in the future?

SBs: I think we're definitely going to do new recordings in the future, hopefully this year. At the moment we haven't got any new releases. But we hope Insurgence Records from Toronto will release our forthcoming releases as well.

Q: Anything to add?

SBs: Of course we're looking forward to meet you all in Canada! Have a look at individual, well played, aggressive and melodic Punkrock!
Cheers

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