Please find, here, part 2 of a conversation held with musician Chris Connelly, ex- of Fini Tribe, Ministry and Revolting Cocks. Part 1 focused almost solely on the background and recording of Fini Tribe’s Balearic Beat classic “De Testimony”. Now Chris expands on growing up in Edinburgh, Fini Tribe’s connection to influential industrial label Wax Trax and the band’s eventual split. In the process covering Chris’ move to Chicago and the new compilation that collects Fini Tribe’s early work. 

Text taken from Chris Connelly in conversation.

Edinburgh was a great cultural city to grow up in. You know, we had the festival and stuff like that, so from a very early age, me and Andy from The Finis, we’d been friends since we were 5, and I remember us going out in 1972, or 1973, without our parents, and just walking around the festival and seeing performance artists in the street. This was what we grew up with.. and there was an incredible wealth of galleries within walking distance of where we lived. Everywhere. We’d just go to the art gallery on a Saturday afternoon. I remember seeing Gilbert and George exhibitions and things like that. You know, like, pretty heavy-hitting… I probably saw stuff that, if I knew what it was now, I’d be incredibly impressed with myself for seeing. It was around, that’s what we grew up with, so that’s what was natural to us. We were really lucky. I’m just sad that more of Fini Tribe wasn’t documented, but you couldn’t do that back then, I mean, who had a video camera? No one. There aren’t really any films of rehearsals and things like that. That would have been cool. We have a couple of scraps, but nothing substantial. The new compilation was at my instigation. I’m putting it out on my own label.

I really wanted to do something that documented that time, because, between those first two Fini Tribe singles the Peel Session happened. Essentially, I wanted the Peel session, so I licensed it from the BBC, and thought, well, I could do a 12-inch EP, or I could start kicking the other guys’ cages and tell them to get into their attics and find some cassettes… and that’s exactly what we did. We found what we could, and John Vick was really instrumental, because he found some reels, like, actual reels of 4-track demos we’d made in the rehearsal space, which, for me, are just gold.They’re just fantastic. He found 2 concerts from really pivotal times. One was the first concert we performed as Fini Tribe, when we changed our name, in 1983. Before that we were called Gallery Macabre. What a mouthful.

The other show was from the Carlton Studios in Edinburgh in 1987, which was the very beginning of the end for Fini Tribe Mark 1, but it’s when we were full-on live with percussion. It’s formidable. It’s forceful, and we were so tight, because we rehearsed so much, and there were no gaps between the songs. It was just, like, a 20-minute onslaught of percussion and vocals and, keyboards. All 6 of us on stage, all playing all the time. We became a machine, and there was no stopping us.

However, when we were playing and gigging, in the mid-80s, all the bands that we liked and had something in common with in Edinburgh, or in Scotland, had split up. There was no one left. Joseph K had split up, The Fire Engines had split up, our friends, The Visitors, had split up, and our friends Explode Your Heart. They’d all split up. It was so common for groups to record a single and then disband. Fucking Josef K, they had so much energy and creativity. Same with The Fire Engines. 

So we were alone, and then all these other bands started appearing, like Wet Wet Wet and Hipsway, and we were like, “Oh, fuck off. This is shit.” It was just soul boy dirge. We didn’t fit in and people seemed to be pissed off and angry with us all the time.

The only other artists who were we were pals with were Ege Bam Yasi. Back then they were a duo, and more of a performance art thing. They used backing tapes. There was Jamesey MacDonald and a girl called Karen, and also Martin Docherty, who called himself Big Margaret. Then there was, Goodbye Mr. McKenzie, who we played a gig with. I mean, they were light years away from us musically, but we were friends. If we influenced anybody it was only for them to run away from us. I’d love to find out if someone actually liked us.

We always used to do this thing that every band did, like, every few months, when you’d recorded a new demo, you would get on the overnight bus to London and punt it around record companies. At the time, I was working for Fast Forward in Edinburgh, which was, the Scottish distribution arm of The Cartel… so I spoke to people at record companies a lot. I became friendly with Allison Schnackenberg, who worked at Southern Studios, which is where Wax Trax were based in London. Southern also had On-U Sound, which was a huge label for us. We were so into Adrian Sherwood’s mixes. Southern also had Crass, and I thought, “Well, this is a great operation.” So I asked if I could come down and play them my cassette, and Allison said, sure. So I went down there, and there was the Jesus & Mary Chain, Lee Perry, and… Al Jourgensen was recording an album there at the time. Al and Paul Barker and Bill Rieflin from Ministry were all there. Al came into the office and listened to the demo and said, “This is great, you should be on Wax Trax.” And so that was that.

I went into the studio, and Al played me this song and said, do you want to sing on it? And I was “Yeah, great”, and so, that happened, and then I went back to Edinburgh and told the band. 

Jim Nash and Danny Flesher in Chicago, who ran Wax Trax, really loved “De Testimony”, and said, “Oh, as it happens, we play it in the store all the time, so it’s a done deal.”

“I Want More” was the first thing that we did for them.

When I first heard some of the releases on Wax Trax, it sounded so fresh to me at that time. Aggressive in a very compelling, dance-orientated way. The early Revolting Cocks releases and those fairly early Ministry 12 inches, and I felt like we had a kinship with it. 

The Fini Tribe was, though, was more organic than that. We recorded with real drums and real percussion, and we were always very careful about reproducing that live. One thing that I loved about the Fini Tribe was that we kept it live. We weren’t playing to a click track, and we weren’t playing to backing tapes or anything like that. However, the jump in volume and aggression of Ministry and Revolting Cocks was really attractive to me, and I wanted to be a part of it.

Fini Tribe then reached an impasse. After recording “I Want More”, coming up with new material was getting kind of difficult. We were were hammering away at these ideas, but it became obvious that it was time for a change. The 6 of us had been working hard together since 1981, from our early teens to our early 20s, and everybody hated us. We couldn’t get good gigs. We were traveling, paying to go down to London to play these awful opening slots.

Our best gig was when we opened for Wire. That was awesome. We played with Wire at The Town & Country Club. It was us, Wire, and Michael Clark, the dancer. That was such a great night, but  at the same time, we would bundle into our questionable van and make that long trip down south, moving all this gear, for very little. We were doing these gigs to try and get noticed. I remember playing at The Sir George Roby, and Adrian Sherwood did his sound system thing there – Bim Sherman sang, and that was a thrill. But at the same time, it was a real slog. It’s a big joke amongst us now but we played this gig at The Greenwich Tunnel Club, where we literally played for 2 people. We didn’t want to play, but the guy promoting the gig insisted that we went on, so we played for 2 people who weren’t even there to see us, they were just there for after-work drinks. At that point I just didn’t want to do it anymore, and me, Davie and Andy left.

I had the Wax Trax thing going on in Chicago, and I wanted to pursue that. Andy had his, art, he’d just graduated. I can’t speak for Davey, but I think Davey was just done. Fortunately, we all remained friends, but it was a very difficult decision to make. That phase of the band had run its course. 

I moved to Chicago to work with Wax Trax in around 87 and have been here ever since. I’m still in contact with Wax Trax, but work with them less and less, because we’re all getting older and slowing down. For many of those friends, though, the only income they have is touring. So they come around every so often. I just a few months ago, just before the summer, I guested with Ministry when they played here.

It’s still always great to catch up with Al. He’s looking forward to slowing down a bit, but his mind is still sharp. He has the most bizarre ideas, and he’s a lot of fun. He’s certainly calmed down on his, you know, his indulgences. He can’t do that anymore, and he’s resigned to it, but the humour part of Al is still very much alive, which was always the main attraction. He’s a very funny guy, and I enjoy hanging out with him… But all the other people, yeah, we’re still in touch. 

Chris & Cosey and Coil were all on Wax Trax at different times. I would see Chris, Cosey, and Gen (Genesis Breyer P-Orridge) fairly regularly, when they’d come over and tour, and do whatever they were doing. Gen would sometimes be doing Psychic TV, sometimes he’d be DJing at raves and things like that. I’d been in correspondence with Throbbing Gristle since 1978, and I always remained in fairly close contact with all of those guys. Sleazy (Peter Christopherson) did a lot of video work for Ministry as well. Every time I’d go to London with Ministry, Coil would show up, hang out, and help us drink.

Personally Coil were a huge influence, especially when making things like “Throttle Hearts”. “Scatology”, that was a brilliant album, because it retained a lot of the dynamic of Throbbing Gristle. When you say Throbbing Gristle, people just think of violent noise, but a lot of it was very pastoral and gentle. Like, “The Soundtrack To “After Cease To Exist”” from their first album, and songs like “Weeping” or “Hometime” from “DOA”, these were really quite beautiful tracks. Not musical per se, but constructed with a certain emotion involved, that was softer than the noise… and that’s what attracted me to them.

“Scatology” was an extension of that. There were some really gorgeous things on that record. Like the use of sampled choirs. Fini Tribe did that as well. I remember, on “Throttle Hearts”, somebody had lent us a monks’ record – not by the band The Monks, but this record of a bunch of monks singing – so we sampled that. One of the brilliant things about sampling was this sort of serendipity, when what you sampled was exactly in tune and in the same spirit as the music you were doing. And, that’s something I kind of learned from Coil – that these disparate things can come together and make something beautiful.

Jim Nash’s daughter, Julia, lives near me, and also there’s still a Wax Trax office in Chicago, which I work underneath, so it’s still around, and still very popular. Wax Trax is basically a mail order company now, but they do some high-profile tours. They’ll jump on a tour for a few dates and bring t-shirts out and things like that. The original Wax Trax shop recently got made a historical landmark here, which is really nice.

In retrospect, when Fini Tribe ended, it was the perfect time. When the band regrouped as a 3-piece, they went on and had considerable success, changing direction again. That was brilliant, but I’m really glad I wasn’t there, because I wouldn’t have wanted to go in that direction, and I’m sure I’d have ended up some kind of acid house casualty.

The Finis changed, but it’s got to be remembered that John Vick was, and is, a sponge in terms of soaking up the technical aspects of being in a studio. Every engineer we worked with, he worked with them and just learned. He went on to work with people like The Shamen, and helped define the later Fini Tribe sound. Plus the sound of several other bands around at that time. He worked with a lot of people on the progressive house scene. I wish he would do interviews, but he has no interest. John is a scientist, and his art really comes through, in his engineering and his compositional skills. The Fini Tribe was this incredible, indomitable force that we were lucky enough to share. It really was a wonderful time in my life.

“The Sheer Action of the Fini Tribe 1982-1987” can be ordered directly from Chris Connelly’s Shipwrecked Industries / Finiflex Records.