April 25 - This Story Must Be Told

It's time to change gears. Again. Although I do enjoy the thematic weeks, sometimes they freeze my creativity a little bit more than I would like. In order to truly break free from the mold, today's song is by a band that shattered every mold you'd ever try to put them in. The band is put together in the traditional power trio format, with guitar, bass, and drum, but it is how they use those instruments that truly sets them apart from the rest.

The band is NoMeansNo, yet another great Canadian trio. They are most widely characterized as punk rock, but their music has clear elements of progressive rock and jazz in it as well. It is let by two brothers, John Wright on drums and Rob Wright on bass and vocals, and the guitarist slot was initially held by Andy Kerr, but Tom Holliston has carried the six strings to stage the past 23 years or so (since 1993). If you can't hear the jazz in today's song, it is clearly there in their cover (with lyrics!) of Miles Davis' Bitches' Brew from the album One.

I first heard of NoMeansNo when I was at Hustad Leir as a conscientious objector to Norway's conscription. Being a conscientious objector did not free me from my required service to the country - but instead of 12 months of military service, which often was cut down to about 9 months at this point in time, I had to do 16 months of community service. This was not a punishment, but it did serve as a disincentive for people to simply claim they were conscientious objectors to get out of military service and into a cushier way of serving their country.

I enjoyed my stay at Hustad Leir, although I was really excited to move to Bergen and finish my community service at Center for International Health. The nice things about Hustad was that it had people from very different backgrounds - Jehova's Witnesses and stoners lived side by side as part of the local crew. I got library duty, which fit me to a t (I started in the kitchen and really liked that too, but the early mornings weren't fun - and Library was much more my thing anyway). I spent a lot of time with the stoners in camp, and it was in their company I first heard NoMeansNo. This was the summer and fall of 1994, so I believe the album that was played a lot was The Day Everything Became Isolated and Destroyed. I really liked it, but I didn't really click completely with them until a couple of years later, when I was working in Studentradioen i Bergen.

One of my duties was to be the engineer for their punk rock show, but the name of the show escapes me at this point. On my last show for them, they even played NoMeansNo for me, and it was from their fantastic 1998 album Dance of the Headless Bourgeoisie, which was released during my final stint in Studentradioen. This is the album that really made me aware of them, and while more traditional purists would hold Wrong to be their best, this still has a very special place to me. The opening song itself is a great song, and that is the one I am leaving you with today: This Story Must Be Told.