Joining the likes of the Rolling Stones, London’s own Nihilist Spasm Band turns 50 this year. And in celebration of their half-century milestone they’re putting together three shows in Toronto, London, and Guelph.
Former EDSS English teacher and department head Bill Exley performs vocals for the band whose music tends to defy categorization. The most common way it’s been described is noise music or anti-music.
“We don’t play normal music,” Exley said. “We don’t fit into any of the categories. But I’m not sure we’re really noise music either. I don’t know what we are, but we’ve been doing it for years so we’re definitely unique.”
![Former EDSS English teacher Bill Exley mans the mic with the Nihilist Spasm Band – which has played across North America, Europe and Japan – in the current incarnation now set to celebrate 50 years of music next week with three shows in London, Toronto and Guelph.[Tara Fillon]](https://www.observerxtra.com/content/images/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/news_nsb_post.jpg)
He’s joined by John Boyle (drums, kazoo), John Clement (drums, bass, guitar), Murray Favro (guitar), Aya Onishi (drums, kazoo), and Art Pratten (Pratt-a-various, water pipe). Guest musician Joe McPhee will also take the stage with them.
“Back in the 1960s in London there was a real artistic movement going on and it was really one of the most vital places in all of Canada, some would argue it was the most vital I think,” Exley said. “A number of the people in the band are artists. One of the guys who died in a bike accident some years ago, Greg Curnoe, he was a very well known Canadian artist. It came out of this art scene. We played and then it just kept going. It was very funny because we had regular jobs and I was, of course, a teacher.”
Exley’s role in the band is to do announcements and the vocals, which is more like oration, with irony and satire. He says the biggest show they ever did was opening for Sonic Youth at the Kool Haus in Toronto in 2002. They’ve played in New York, Chicago, Germany, the Czech Republic, along with six European tours and two Japanese tours.
He says Tokyo was his favourite concert location.
“When we started, one guy described us as a bad joke taken too far,” Exley said. “We got started and we were sort of despised. People saw us as some kind of representative of total chaos. We went into hard times for awhile there. Nobody really cared much about us, and then the guy in Japan, the head of the record company, discovered us and bottled our record, and then sponsored us.”
People lined up down the street to see their first performance in Tokyo. They hadn’t seen such a positive reaction to their music in a long time. Another band member went out and took a photo, saying “they’ll never believe it back home.”
Their debut album, 1968’s No Record, has been reissued three times – in 1996, 2000 and 2014.
Since Exley’s retirement from teaching in 1996 he’s kept busy with the band. They played the Meaford Eclectic Electric Festival last month for the third time, for instance.
“It was a really successful concert. I was quite pleased. We were the oldest band by far, but they received us very well. We played with a guy from Berlin, a bass player from Berlin, but it was really good,” Exley said.
They’ve also participated in the No Music Festival. One was in New York City, and four others were held in London. Noise musicians from all over the world came and even recorded together.
Exley’s involvement with the band as a vocalist came from his love of talking to groups.
“I always used to say humorously that I talk in a very formal matter, being a teacher I thought that my formal method of speech could seem pretentious if you talk in that manner. I said this joke a few years ago, I said I think the only place where I can talk that way now is in the Nihilist Spasm Band. And then lately I told myself, I started to wonder if I could do it here anymore,” Exley said with a laugh.
He hopes audiences enjoy their eclectic performance, full of homemade instruments, and leave with a sense of fun.
“We played at the Kazoo! Festival in Guelph last year and it was great fun,” Exley said. “Some concerts work and some don’t. Greg Curnoe used to say that when we were bad we were just terrible, but when we were good we were really good. I think it’s true that somehow it works.”
He says their free-styling music is an experiment in adventure. With the band members now in their 70s, and two founding members having died since their humble beginning in 1965, Exley says it’s all about having fun.
“Nowadays young people are often so worried. There’s so much worry about jobs and trying to always measure up and getting into colleges and such. Sometimes it’s hard to keep up the sense of fun I think,” Exley said.
“Here we’ve had the good fortune when we were young to grow up in a time when there were more opportunities in a way. But playing in the band I think it helps to keep you young, helps to keep you having a sense of humour and keep up one’s spirit. And we hope to transfer that to the audience.”
They play September 16 at 9 p.m. at eBar in Guelph, September 17 at 9 p.m. at The Garrison in Toronto, and September 18 at 7 p.m. at Museum London. Admission is $12 and tickets can be purchased at the door or online for the London show at museumlondon.ca/concerts.
