JEF

JEF was formed in the summer of 2000 in Bergen. Three of us: me on vocals and guitar, Katy Penny on vocals and bass, Jan Terje «Pez» Pedersen on vocals and drums. Me and Pez came straight out of Punishment Park, which was over. Katy came from Twigs, which lay idle at exactly the same time. The timing could not have been better.

The name arrived on 30 September 2000, backstage at Garage, right after the very last Punishment Park concert with No Means No. Their sound engineer coughed it up for us. We glued it to the wall and kept it for six years.

One foot stood planted in punk rock, the other just as well planted in the noisier, indie-leaning stuff. In the old bio I put it like this: «Jef har en formel som det lukter rock n roll av.» A formula that smells of rock’n’roll. I stand by that. Pez was heavy artillery at the back, Katy brought energy and melodies that glued themselves to your head, and I brought the wall of riffs. All three of us were a little crazy and willing to take chances without much risk assessment first.

The strategy was laid fast: lots of live work, hard work, and no climbing the ladder up from cellar band. We wanted straight back to where we had stepped off with our old bands, and we wanted there now.

The first gig was the basement of Garage in Bergen on 17 February 2001, opening for UK Subs. I had worked on their Norwegian tour, so Charlie Harper and the boys picked me up at my own door in Os on their way in to Bergen, and I skipped the bus. Pretty cool shit, really. The basement was packed and it was one of the best UK Subs concerts I have seen in my life. UK Subs got a dice throw of 8 from me. On a dice with six sides.

Few new bands get to introduce themselves like that. We kept going. April at Mobergsvikjo for the Os crowd. On 10 May, Det Akademiske Kvarter with Link 80 from the USA, who blew the walls out of the place. Nine days later, Garage again with Spunge from England and Jason from Brazil: a sweaty, close-to-full cellar and a high party factor.

At the end of August, Psycho-Path from Slovenia: Kvarteret one night, Øren Hotel in Høyanger the next. Høyanger is a small place with an enormously high rock’n’roll factor. Then the Little Big Heart Festival at Garage on 14 September, takings to the association for children with heart disease. By then the reputation was building: JEF was a solid live band, and the word travelled.

In one weekend that autumn we recorded eight songs at Skytterhuset in Høyanger, with Bjarte and Bønna from The Tubs on the knobs, and closed the session at Joss Pub, where Backstreet Girls played up for a dance.

The eight songs became two vinyl 7-inches on October Party Records. The Alternative EP came on blue vinyl on 16 September 2001, the Xenophobia EP on yellow vinyl on 1 November 2001. Each one was pressed in 250 copies, on purpose, and neither was ever repressed, also on purpose. Part of the point was to make them a little exclusive. They disappeared fast into private vinyl collections around the world, exactly as we wanted.

We rounded off the year at the Bergen punk rock X-mas party on 8 December at Det Akademiske Kvarter, then took a long Christmas holiday. We were all past 30, and we had started to enjoy time off when we could get it. Old school punks, he-he-he.

I used the Internet deliberately to pull attention to the band, and JEF turned up on a huge number of music sites and did sharply on most of them. But vinyl was not exactly cool with Punk-Ola and Punk-Kari in this era, so we started spreading plastic too. In February 2002, a free demo CD with the vinyl songs on it, 460 copies strewn around Bergen and beyond. In March, a split promo CD with our friends McDolly, about 1200 copies. It worked. People started listening.

We shot a video for Xenophobia in Vognhallen at home in Os, with the local heroes Kjetil Fossåskaret, Frode Sirevåg and Vidar Bratlund-Mæland behind the film gear. Release on 6 April 2002. A tough video for a tough song, local from start to finish.

From 13 to 19 January 2003, JEF was NRK P3 Urørt’s Band of the Week with Bucharest Express. In February we were named one of ten Year’s Urørt bands and invited to the finale at By:Larm in Trondheim, at our own cost. We said no thanks. NRK phoned on finale day and asked where we were. We were in Bergen, probably the only band in Urørt history that never showed up to its own finale, and the money went to a new Europe tour instead. That same evening we played a private party in Lysekloster with Old Funeral and Bombers, which suited us much better.

On 26 February 2003 JEF fronted the punk page of Garageband.com in the USA for a full 24 hours, and Bucharest Express sat on their punk top-10 for over a week.

We had made one rule about touring: bring at least one good young Norwegian band along every time, to open doors for them the way doors had once been opened for us. First out was Lame Ducks from the Oslo area, a young ska-punk energy bomb we met through Robert Dyrnes of Fuckin North Pole Records. We loaded the Jef-Mobil, an old VW Transporter, and of course we had Tronna with us as crew. Mr Fix It, always smiling, more in control of what we were doing than we were.

Tour start on 23 May 2002 at Komplex in Schüttorf, where Punishment Park had played so many times before. No secret that we surfed on that history, and it got even better when people understood the new band with Katy was punk rock dynamite in its own right. The next night was Stumpf in Hannover, the most punked cellar I have ever stood in. We slept at an illegal caravan settlement in the middle of the city, old train wagons rebuilt into homes, 90 percent punks, showers better than half the campsites in Norway. Strange and lovely, for people from conservative Norway.

Then the Summer Rock Festival at Hubi Rocks in Ochtrup, in an old barn with camouflage nets across the ceiling, where people cycled to the concert and cycled home again as if it were the most natural thing in the world. J.u.k.s. in Emsdetten the day after, then Spiekers Corner, the main pub of Marsberg, a town where I have always loved to play.

The last night, 1 June, was HK2 in Kaunitz, the farm run by the Greed Records boys. Concerts there are never announced. You are invited, or you never learn they happen. Their own cook, football in the yard after soundcheck, and mid-set the show is stopped so the band can be initiated into the family with shots on stage, a little «drikk eller stikk». Drink or beat it. We drank. The perfect place to end a tour, and the worrying wheel bearing on the Jef-Mobil held all the way home, luckily.

The next year we did Denmark, Poland and Germany with two Bergen bands along: McDolly and Goldenboy. For the trip we pressed another free split promo CD, Punk Invation From the North, 400 copies. First concert and release day was 11 April 2003 at All Hell Break Loose in Århus, where one drunk punk cracked a broom over another one’s skull at the bar, and the victim carried on partying in a full turban of bandage, best drinking buddy with the man who had just split his head open. Absurd, but nobody died, so I suppose everyone was satisfied.

Hamburg on 12 April was Lobusch, an occupied apartment block the squatters were buying from the city council on instalments, with café, pub, record shop and venue downstairs. An impressive punk culture house and a tough place to play, where we sold a pile of CDs and vinyl.

At the Polish border a customs officer clocked that me and Pez had been in Punishment Park and announced, with a straight face, that he had to charge us a toll: signed CDs for himself, his colleague and their wives. Fine by us. On 13 April we finally played Poznan, the city Punishment Park never reached on our last Europe tour, opening for Alians, who had once opened for us in 1994 and had since become punk rock stars in Poland. My night was full of old Punishment Park fans who finally got the true story of why we never arrived back then.

Then the mountain town Walbrzych, where a lit fireplace right behind the stage made Pub Wulkan the warmest concert of my life. Then Rocker in Wroclaw, where the PA was more of a stereo and the stage did not really have room for a three-piece, until Jostein from McDolly and Pez dove into the electronics, and the night became a sold-out, airless, sweat-soaked chaos of the very best kind. The last Polish night, at 4 Roze Dla Lucienne in Zielona Gora, was the fanciest club I have ever played in Poland, run by old Punishment Park fans.

From there: a night drive to Berlin, then Eingang Sieben in Bielefeld, the farm at HK2 one more time, and Hafermarkt in Flensburg with a bonfire in the backyard to close the tour. On the ferry home two girls were mistreating the karaoke machine so badly that me and Torkel from Goldenboy took responsibility and sang them into silence. My first and last performance as a karaoke vocalist. Been there, done that.

Back home I sat down with Arvid Grov, vocalist of Greenland Whalefishers, and we agreed it was time our two bands toured together. England picked itself. Six concerts at the end of June 2004, a rented minibus, Tronna on board as always, and Tommy from GW, farmer and professional driver, self-appointed at the wheel for the whole trip. Nobody argued.

First night, 25 June, was the legendary 1 in 12 Club in Bradford. The staff explained that the back alley down to the club was impossible with a vehicle, carry everything from the main road. Tommy looked at the alley, called it an autostrada, said he had it tighter on the farm at home, and parked the bus and trailer at the door. Some people can drive and some cannot. The concert was a blast in a room as punk as they come.

Birmingham next, the Royal George on 26 June, home town of our man in England, Rich Lard of PunkShit Records. Good crowd, good night. The lodging was more eventful. Pez stepped on a carpet nobody had mentioned was covering a hole and came through the floor, so the ceiling panels of the room below rained down on my head with Pez’s shoe after them. In the morning I found a thirty-centimetre black stripe running up the wall and out the window: the local motorway for ants. This is England.

The 27th was supposed to be South Shields. We arrived to find posters on the walls and absolutely nothing else. No PA, no sound man, no food, no beds. Stillborn. We turned the bus south and spent the free day as tourists: Old Trafford, Sherwood Forest, and the village where they film Heartbeat, because Tommy and his wife follow the series.

On 29 June we reached the White Hart Hotel in Saxmundham, an old thatched-roof pub deep in the countryside. We sat in the back garden with cold beers, wondering whether anyone would turn up out here. They did, including punks from Red Flag 77. Almost indescribably nice. I gave the place a dice throw of 16 for the total package.

Leeds, The Primrose, 30 June: sold out, wall to wall. It was Tronna’s birthday, so he took over the bass for a few extra songs and the pub turned into a full English hooley. The last night, 1 July at The Studio in Hartlepool, was an old church rebuilt into a club, the best venue I have ever played in England. We closed with St James’ Park and one more sea battle across the North Sea in good old viking style.

2005 was a quieter year on the surface. We played some local shows, rehearsed more, and recorded our third EP with Jostein Steinsland-Hauge from McDolly producing. Drums in our rehearsal room, most of the vocals in his kitchen, the whole thing mixed in the storage room of his basement in Bergen. It sounds raw and it sounds right. You do not need a million-kroner studio to make good sound. You need a rock-solid McJostein behind the knobs, and the matter is settled.

Then Italy. Derozer, one of the biggest punk bands Italy has ever produced, invited JEF down as support. Years earlier I had helped them with concerts in Norway, and now the favour came back with interest. We stepped off the plane one freezing February morning to find they had rented us the smallest Fiat in the whole of Italy, stuffed everything in somehow, and let the rubber-band engine drag us to Firenze. That concert was a firework, completely sold out, and afterwards we walked that fantastic, ice-cold city like tourists, beer in one hand and, yes, an ice cream in the other.

Rome the next day was sold out too, 3000 tickets, which is when you understand how big Derozer had become. The catch: the venue was run by the local mafia. Ten minutes before our set the boss himself turned up, high on everything a man can be high on, and decided that tonight he would DJ first. His people carried pistols. Nobody argued. Our concert was cancelled on the spot, the crowd booed his DJ set, and when his 45 to 60 minutes were used up he got bored and left, and Derozer could go on. A rotten downer and a cheap lesson: you do not have to play every venue on this earth at any price.

Through all of this, October Party Records was putting out the Punk in Disguise split CDs. Vol 1 came in January 2004 with six JEF tracks and a proper release party at Garage on 10 January. Vol 2 followed in the summer of 2005 with four. Both harvested good reviews, and JEF kept surfacing on countless compilation CDs all over the world. The band was riding one long punk rock’n’roll buzz.

The China thread started with a compilation too. An English compilation CD had both JEF and SMZB from Wuhan on it, with an email address for SMZB’s Wuwei printed in the sleeve. I am born curious, so I wrote and asked how it was even possible to be a punk band in China. My picture of the country said neck-shot punk bands, or at least a steady diet of beatings. Instead I got answers, masses of them, and it all started rolling. I invited SMZB to Europe in 2005, and on 19 August 2005 the Beijing band SUBS played Breeze in Os, with their vocalist Kang Mao staying at my house, playing volleyball with my kids and the neighbourhood children. Eleven days later we played with SMZB at Garage.

As thanks for the touring help, they invited JEF to come tour China in April 2006. There was nobody to ask what to expect. The embassy in Beijing had no advice beyond guessing it was a risk sport. So we held a band meeting and did our version of an analysis: what is the worst that can happen? Most likely, we get thrown head first out of China. That was the whole risk assessment. Plenty of people advised us not to go, which mostly made us more certain. Decision made. JEF goes to China.

First the label. In 2006 I started the Beijing arm of October Party Records together with Kang Mao, neither of us knowing whether the system over there would crush it in two minutes. Our new EP, He Knows He Hears, became its first band release: 3000 CDs, out in April for the tour, and the two old EPs followed on CD, 3000 copies each. JEF became one of the first western bands in the world to release legal punk rock CDs in China, in a country where rock was officially still not legal in 2006.

Then the tour. Eight concerts in nine days, as one of the first western rock bands ever to tour the country properly. Beijing first, 13 Club on 7 April, supported by Joyside and Reflector, who went on to become some of the biggest rock bands in China. The club was nearly full, Kang Mao joined us on stage for a song, CDs grew legs, and afterwards we signed and posed as if we had done it every day of our lives.

From there Wuwei took over as our guide, and without him we would have been completely lost in the Chinese pancake. We crossed China on the old trains, 250 people in carriages built for a hundred, until we learned you could buy a sleeper carriage and go from hell to heaven for a couple hundred yuan. In Xinxiang on 8 April, where Pez played the concert on a restaurant chair, we were the first non-Chinese band ever to visit the city. Sold out. The kids screamed I WANNA ROCK and the light poured out of them.

Wuhan on 9 April was Vox Bar, Wuwei’s own legendary club, with SMZB tearing the place up in their home town. Changsha on 10 April was sold out at 4698 Bar, thirty degrees, no air conditioning and no oxygen. The club’s name is 4 June 1989 with the numbers shuffled: the date of the Tiananmen Square crackdown, which the kids running the club refuse to let be erased. Tough people. Our troubles at home are footnotes next to theirs.

Guilin on 11 April was the Shuanle Bar, up the world’s steepest, narrowest staircase in a bamboo-clad building. Shanghai gave us two nights, Yuyingtang with Sonic Bastards from Austria and Angry Jerks, then Shufle Bar with Load Speaker and Happy Sky, where a familiar face from Os walked in mid-concert. Then back to Beijing, and on 15 April 2006 we played Yugongyishan Bar with Kang Mao’s SUBS and Café In. Tired and happy. We had pulled off something nobody really believed was possible.

We had zero trouble with police or authorities the entire trip. The last thing we packed was the message that JEF was band number 3 or 4 in the world to make a full tour of China like this, beyond just Beijing and Shanghai. Years later I was shown a wall newspaper that hangs in Chinese rock clubs, listing the important events of the country’s rock history. JEF stands in the middle of it, described as punk pioneers from the west. Not world famous. Noted down. That is more than good enough for me in this life.

History tells us that JEF’s very last concert was Beijing, 15 April 2006. Why? I do not know. We flew home full of plans, and then we simply never gathered for another rehearsal. I started my solo project K-Jell, Pez got busier with Bombers, Katy went into her art projects. The band was never dissolved. It just stopped existing, because that was the right thing for JEF to do right then. We walked on as good friends, and none of us ever looked back or regretted a single day.

JEF was a unique punk rock band. A band that did what it wanted, took things on the fly when an opening appeared, and was willing to risk a lot to make something happen. Three strong personalities who knew what rock needs to get things moving. In six years the band left clear marks in several corners of the world, helped open new doors eastward for Norwegian rock bands, and gave young bands a lift out into Europe by letting them open on our tours.

In the book I ended the JEF chapters like this: «Takk for laget, folkens, det var en ære!» Thanks for the ride, folks. It was an honour. I count myself extremely lucky that I got to play in a band with Pez and Katy for those six years. We got so much done in such a short time. It takes its man, and its woman.

Everything JEF put its name on, from the coloured vinyl to the China CDs.

• 2001 Alternative EP 7" blue vinyl, 250 copies, never repressed Sold out!
• 2001 Xenophobia EP 7" yellow vinyl, 250 copies, never repressed Sold out!
• 2002 Demo CD Free CD, 460 copies, given away
• 2002 JEF / McDolly split Free promo CD, About 1200 copies
• 2003 Punk Invation From the North Free promo CD, JEF, McDolly and Goldenboy, 400 copies
• 2004 Punk in Disguise Vol 1 Split CD, Six JEF tracks
• 2005 Punk in Disguise Vol 2 Split CD, Four JEF tracks
• 2006 He Knows He Hears EP CD, October Party Records, Beijing. 3000 copies
• 2006 Alternative EP CD, China pressing, 3000 copies
• 2006 Xenophobia EP CD, China pressing, 3000 copies