"I bought an expensive guitar." "I thought I'd better do it right from the start." "That's the way I always try to do things." "Because I'm Ieft-handed it had to be ordered in the USA." "In the shop they were very pleased to order such a beautiful guitar." "Every week I went to the shop." "It took ages, week after week I went." "And still it hadn't arrived." "And when it finally did... the owner said:" "'Mr HesseIs, here's your guitar." "Here's an amp." "You can try and play it while you're here.'" "But I'd never touched one before." "I didn't even know how to tune it." "So I said: 'It'II be alright, I'II do it at home.'" "That was a great start." "And since then I haven't stopped." "At a certain moment Terrie signed a sort of contract." "It said that we agreed to play at a festival somewhere in August '79." "He said: 'I heard you have a band." "Do you want to play in Castricum at a punk festival?" "'" "So I signed a contract and said:" "'Jos, we have to practice because we have to play in Castricum.'" "Then it was 'oops', because, we had already thought of a name... so we could spray it all over Utrecht and Amsterdam... but we didn't even have instruments." "And suddenly we had to practice like hell because we had a gig." "I had never played guitar before and Jos had never sung of course... but Jos knew very well how to shout '1-2-3-4' like a punk." "That always sounded great on the practice tapes... '1-2-3-4' and then you'd hear 'pIof pIof pIunk pIunk'..." "That's how it began." "This is the former Van gelder paper factory in Wormer." "The building has been empty since its closure on july 1, 1980." "The sound of the printing presses can only be heard on singles from The Ex." "And this is the former director's house." "Two members of The Ex squatted it with other musicians." "Not long after they were threatened with eviction." "We just have certain ideas about things that happen around us." "Other people also have their own ideas." "They write in newspapers for example... or they have a TV station to express their ideas." "We have our music to say what we think." "But the music is just as important as the ideas are." "You like making music?" "Of course." "In the papers you constantly read about bands hawking their demo tapes... to get a record made and to get a record deal with some label." "They mostly end up being disappointed." "But you absolutely don't need to do this." "You can do everything yourself." "Make records?" "Yeah, I mean, they get a record deal... and they are allowed to make a single... and they get 5 cents for every single they sell." "If you do it yourself, then everything is cheaper." "The profit margin doesn't have to be that high... and costs are covered much quicker." "I didn't know The Ex at all." "I'd never heard of them, so I had no idea what it wouId be like." "Then I made an appointment to meet them one day." "At first we just talked a bit." "Then we went into the rehearsal room to play a bit and it immediately clicked." "I was a taxi driver in Amsterdam." "Once while driving in my taxi I met Terrie in the street." "I had just heard the Tumult album." "I opened my window and began to shower Terrie with compliments... about how great this record was." "And a week later I was in The Ex, so to speak." "If you look back, then it's a quite clear and logical succession... of CD's for example." "also of people we meet, and projects we enter into." "Now and then you take a risk by doing something totally different... and either it works or not, and then you build upon that." "This is a very logical line for me." "We had already played with a jazz sax player in '81... and at that time we had no idea about it at all." "This whole line evolves during the years and then of course it's luck... that we eventually end up in jazz improvisation... and it fits." "If we play a set too long..." "And for each of us it varies how long that takes." "For some longer, for others shorter." "But if you play it too long, then the core disappears." "Your freshness towards the songs disappears." "Then we must make new songs or new parts." "Sometimes that involves other musicians." "This urge to continually make new music means working with other musicians." "Yes, that's definitely The Ex's motivation, I think." "Do you have that string on yet?" "No, we just have to go past it, we pretend to smell nothing." "Our concerts now are simply more intensive and better." "Larger scale in itself isn't really that important." "We play at so many different types of concerts." "We play with Fugazi in front of 3000 people, at a jazz festival... or in a tiny squat, it doesn't matter." "But we definitely play more intensively than we did 10 years ago." "It's never the same, every time it moves in a different direction." "It also has to do with how you live your life." "That you don't play it safe and you stay open and take risks." "And also take the risk that something doesn't go well sometimes." "Then you have to rely on your instinct to channel those things properly." "Of course it's very interesting to see where that leads to... what that's gonna be, and, yes..." "How do you explain that?" "It rained in Okinawa" "It rained in Okinawa a while ago the clouds were full of anger too many people got wet the most in Okinawa" "Okinawa mon amour" "It rained in Okinawa and when it rained it poured the weathermen shrug their shoulders they never heard of Okinawa" "It still rains in Okinawa" "If we sell 3000 CD's in holland, that's great." "But for a major label that's nothing." "But for us it's very good." "We decide the selling price and you know how much it costs." "Everything in between..." "Most important, there's no rake-off." "It all goes back to the band, and so we can invest that in the band." "The Ex has its own label." "If we bring it out ourselves, it's mainly..." "Say, the promotion of it, that's only holland and belgium." "And in France and all other countries it's done by the distributors over there." "In fact there's a Iot of work taken out of our hands." "In the USA, and way back in switzerland with the RecRec people... we naturally did co-reIeases, and now in the States also." "The gentlemen walk through the streets" "Hey, what's that, in front of their feet?" "Is it something with stiff bones?" "Hey, what's that, on the paving stones?" "Is that a corpse right there on the paving stones?" "The gentlemen walk through the streets" "At a certain moment, after 15 years everyone had had enough." "The band takes up a Iot of your time and you begin to notice it." "You feel like doing other things, too." "In the meantime Kat and Luc both had kids." "We had to organise the band differently as their time became more precious." "We couldn't tour for a whole month any more." "It's too long, so we decided to make shorter tours." "Yeah, it's heavy." "Having kids, parenthood is a fuII-time job." "And music, if you do it as a fuII-time job... requires a Iot of energy." "It means if you do both things... then you're spending your whole time working." "When I get in the bus and go on tour or do a concert... then I have something like:" "Wow, I really need that too." "Just to Iearn and to develop." "I feel very much at ease with that." "I'd totally forgotten how it was." "No seriously, it was..." "Papa." "I'm coming." "I've put one in." "well, then you push 'play'." "One minute." "Good eh?" "I always do what I want, I've never worked for a boss and never shall." "I simply do what I Iike and that's what I've done for the Iast 45 years." "And the next 45 years I will manage, too." "In the end the idea behind the concert is that everyone becomes connected." "I mean it sounds a bit crude... but we are there as a kind of... as magicians." "We have to create that atmosphere, and that magic you have to generate." "To get there you have to improvise." "You can't do a good gig without improvising." "Otherwise it goes flat and you don't interact with the audience... or the band members any more." "Improvising is in fact simply making music." "Making music is also simply improvising."