LAVVI EBBEL Before Britpop there was BelPop, the Belgian equivalent of the punk and newwave rebellion from the late 70s and early 80s. Lavvi Ebbel was one of the most important bands of the scene, debuting in the classic compilation Get Sprouts and recorded some of the hymns of the time. We have talked with Luckas Vander Taelen, singer and frontman of the classic band that reveals some details from the band career and his own too. Honestly, I did not realize until last week when my wife said it, that the name of the band sounds like La Vie est belle. Maybe because I am not French. Why did you choose such a name for the band? When I was talking with the guitarist about starting a band, I noticed there was an ashtray where, in French, was written “La Vie est Belle”. It gave me the idea for the band’s name, written in a phonetic way. It made some people think we were a group of Jewish Sicilian folk! Although you are from Aalst, most of you met at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel.Howwas the atmosphere there at the time? A few other bands came out of there, didn’t they? We met in Aalst, not at the VUB. I studied there and met with JanWeuts,who played trumpet and Eric Michiels,who changed his name to Eric Sleimich and played saxophone. They became Lavvi Ebbel’s horn-section and also played with Allez-Allez. The band formed in 1977. How were the first years before the release of the first single? We played a lot all over Flanders and composed many good songs. There were so many that we only played the new ones and forgot the older ones.Now,in 2023,listening to old tapes,we discovered these treasures and play them again! What were your influences back then? The obvious: Sex Pistols, The Clash but also Devo and Talking Heads. Short songs, played fast, punk but with organ and horns! Do you consider Lavvi Ebbel as pioneers of the BelPop “scene”? Do you like the term? We were part of a wave of very creative groups, like Luna Twist and Arno’s TC Matic, with whom we toured a lot. There was certainly a Belgian spirit, so BelPop is a very good term. I guess the compilation Get Sprouts, where Lavvi Ebbel appeared for the first time, was important for the band. The Kids said that it had a distribution of 80 000 copies. www.peek-a-boo-magazine.be You recorded a special song for the album. How do you remember the recording and what happened after? It was the first time we worked with Jean-Marie Aerts as a producer. He was then TC Matic’s guitar player. He gave us a very original sound. We worked with him after this session on the single with our “hit”Victoria. Do you think that the band shared the sense of paranoia/ restlessness of the time in its music? Give me a gun and its first sentence could be an example: it’s 1981, and the world is getting worse every day. I studied history and was very involved with politics. We read several newspapers a day and many books. So, the injustice in the world seemed enormous in my eyes. That what “Give me a gun” is about, although the text of the chorus came to me after a friend killed himself and it’s more about the ‘sense of life’. I tell his story also in “No Place to Go” on Get Sprouts. What happened in Belgium in 1981 that Lavvi Ebbel and AllezAllez released their first single meanwhile TCMatic published their first album?Were you friends with them? Did the record companies open their arms to newbands? We all knew each other; we shared the same energy. The record companies began to see the commercial possibilities.We drew a huge audience. But there were no rock radios and TV did not talk about the BelPop. That put a terrible break on record sales. It would lead to the end of the first BelPop-wave… Talking again about TCMatic, J-MAerts was the producer ofmost ofyour works.You just said that he gave the band - 8 -
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