Here you can find an article originally appeared in issue 16 of UK fanzine ARTCORE
and which gives a good idea of Jingo de Lunch .
Many many thanx to Pete for sending me this article :-))
Jingo de Lunch by Pete Craven
I went to
stay with my brother Tom in Zurich, Switzerland in the summer of ’87, &
that’s where I first heard the name JINGO DE LUNCH. Tom was saying he’d heard
good things about this Berlin band from the inner city, who included ex-members
of Hardcore acts COMBAT NOT CONFORM, & MANSON YOUTH, whose split 12” with
HOSTAGES OF AYATOLLAH was a permanent fixture on his turntable. They were due
to play Zurich in the near future & Tom was pretty excited about seeing
them. My next stop was Germany, where I found work at a hotel in Bavaria, only
about 3 hours train journey from Zurich, &, like we’ve always done, Tom
& I stayed in constant touch. He relayed the news that JINGO had pulled out
of the Zurich gig. A bit bummed. Some months later Tom came to visit on a long
weekend, we had a fun time, & I then went to see him off at the train
station. He was literally about to board the express back to Zurich when I
noticed a flyer on a wall – JINGO DE LUNCH … Punk Metal from Berlin,
they were playing 2 nights later in a tiny venue nearby where I’d seen MDC a
couple of months previous. Tom was gutted, sorry bro! 48 hours later I make my
way to the Atomic Café in Immenstadt, it’s a freezing night in mid December,
thick snow on the ground & I have to hitch to the gig. I’m real excited to
see this band whose music I haven’t even heard! Well, needless to say, I was
blown away by JINGO DE LUNCH that night. Fronted by Yvonne
Ducksworth, a dark skinned & dread locked female singer from Canada,
they launched into a crunching set of Hardcore-meets-Heavy Rock…. the missing
link between BAD BRAINS & AC/DC dammit! They looked great, a ragged
collection of Punks & Rockers; lead guitarist Tom
Schwoll, decked out in gear that was more SoCal than Southern Bavaria
with his spiked bleached locks, plaid shorts, & DAG NASTY tee shirt, had
the imposing presence of Angus Young stamped all over his axe playing. Bassist Henning Menke wore a BLACK SABBATH tee shirt,
drummer Steve Hahn AC/DC, & they were
completed by rake thin second guitarist Sepp
Ehrensberger. After playing all the songs they knew, the small fanatical
crowd refused to let them go, so they played half the set again…. before
throwing in a cover of THIN LIZZY’S Cowboy Song to close. I made my way
home in the sub zero temperatures fired by a warm glow of satisfaction at
having seen a truly amazing live band.
JINGO’S
first release of sorts was the track Piece of Mind that came on a flexi
disk with an early ‘88 issue of Trust fanzine. It was a taster for their debut
album, the 11song Perpetuum Mobile that followed soon after on We Bite Records. Spring ’88 I
was back in the UK, & word was that a distro up North (I think it was Loony
Tunes) had copies of the album in, so my money went straight in the post.
Excitement levels were up to 11 when it arrived, & straight on the
turntable it went. The needle met the grooves of opening number Lies.
The production was raw but effective & without a doubt the debut JINGO
album was to prove to be their finest, capturing them in a primal state of
perfecting their sound. And they’d set themselves apart from the crowd. It
wasn’t all plain sailing though, & there was disappointment to be had with
this slap of vinyl. The first pressing was a bit dodgy, & on some tracks
the needle jumped & skipped. I sent off for another copy of the album,
& it did the same. I was in Sydney, Australia 18 months down the line,
listening to a local Punk radio station, when the spike with the mike announced
the next track was ‘Thirteen by JINGO DE LUNCH’… & guess what, it
jumped & skipped & I laughed my head off as the deejay fumbled to
rectify the situation. But let’s back track again to ’88 and the next JINGO
record, the Cursed Earth 12”, which was released on Bonzen Records. This
was a limited edition record, on coloured vinyl, & in a fancy gatefold
sleeve. Only 2000 copies pressed too, a pretty paltry run considering Perpetuum
Mobile had shifted about 10,000 copies. Or units, depending which side of
the fence you’re sitting on. Cursed Earth comprised of 4 new songs, plus
covers of BAD BRAINS Play To Cum, a pissing-around in the studio
version, & a straight played THIN LIZZY Cowboy Song. Tribal Area in
Berlin stuck out the first issue of their video zine at around this time, which
included some cool live-in-the-studio footage of JINGO playing Fate from
Perpetuum Mobile, the title cut of the Cursed Earth 12”, & an
as yet untitled new song, which emerged as Did You Ever on their next
record. There was an interview with them too, as well as live clips of VERBAL
ASSAULT, ZERO BOYS, RKL & NEGAZIONE. Things were clearly picking up for
JINGO now as their stature grew amongst Hardcore scenesters, & constant
touring around Northern mainland Europe cemented their live reputation. Tom had
a mate in Bremen, Germany who told him a great story about seeing them once in
a freezing cold Hamburg squat, where both band & audience spent their whole
set jumping up & down… trying to keep warm! They were gaining a name
amongst overseas bands that played with them too, & THE HARD-ONS in
particular stuck up a firm friendship with JINGO after sharing the same stage
during their first visit to Europe in ’88. It was turning into a memorable
year. So, ’88 turned to ’89, & in May JINGO were featured in Maximum
RocknRoll #72 with Tom Schwoll stating that “Hard Rock has always been a
solid influence on me & I’m damn proud of it. Musicwise I’m a 100% behind
it”. In the same issue there’s tiny snippets on a couple of unknowns – THE
OFFSPRING & MANIC STREET PREACHERS. In the middle of the year my good
friend back then Sean Price (later to become a Buddhist Monk – now that is
another story!) passed me on an advance tape of the brand new JINGO album, Axe
To Grind, which he’d gotten from his mate Florian in Berlin, who ran Heart
First Records, & was in the band SQUANDERED MESSAGE. I played it… played it
again…. & dammit if that tape didn’t become one of the soundtracks to the
summer (along with BAD RELIGION’S Suffer). I was working at in the
kitchens at University of Sussex & the Axe To Grind C90 was a
permanent fixture in the tape deck. And working sometimes 80+ hours a week,
saving money to go travelling again, the line from the title track “I got an
axe to grind – think I had enough of working overtime” was stuck in my
brain. A few of my mates from the Brighton Hardcore scene worked there too,
& we all Rocked out to JINGO daily. Yeah, Rocked out, because JINGO still
continuing to evolve & perfect their Hardcore goes Heavy Rock formula. The
album came out on Berlin’s Hell Hound Records, who were more of a Rock label.
It was starting to make sense, & clearly the band had their sights set
firmly on the path they would follow. And their next almost inevitable move was
to a major label – Vertigo – a possible attraction being that this had been THIN
LIZZY’S old label too? Who knows/cares. What I do know is that this ended the
days of JINGO as the pioneering & explosive underground Hardcore Punks from
Kreuzberg, & saw them turn into a pretty much fully fledged Hard Rock
outfit. As I recall, there wasn’t any real animosity from the Punk community,
because this was what you could tell they’d had aspirations to become all
along. I sensed it the time I saw them. They produced 3 more albums during the
ensuing years - Underdog (1990), B.Y.E. (`91), & Deja
Voodoo (`94). The only one I’ve got is B.Y.E. – picked it up in ’97
from a second hand shop during a visit to Bremen. I was intrigued to see what
had happened to them. The shift to Hard Rocking Blues fused compositions was
almost complete, but there’s still traces of the early Hardcore venom, &
the song Chew & Spit particularly smacks a punchy attack on Fascist
Skinheads from the former East German - “when will your dream world of
illusion stumble & fall”. Overall though, nothing too special at all
was going on here.
The
band, eventually split in about ‘95, sometime after their final album Deja
Voodoo. And in their 8year existence they never made it to play the UK
either which was a real shame, most especially in the early days. And even more
tragic is that poor old Tom, my original information source, never got to see
them. I’m sure he turned up in Zurich in ’88 to see them support NICK CAVE but
the gig was sold-out, & he couldn’t get in. Sorry again bro!
Following
the split, Singer Yvonne eventually returned to Canada, but I understand the
other members still play in Berlin bands, bassist Henning was in CHURCH
OF CONFIDENCE (with ex-members of KGB) & also OJO ROJO. Lead guitarist Tom
joined a bunch called EXTRA BROAD in the late Nineties. But that’s all I know.
The JINGO
essentials are the first 2 albums, which were both re-issued & are
available now on CD if you look hard enough. I’m pretty certain that the Cursed
Earth 12” was never repressed or re-released, so if you were to chance
across a copy, make sure you snap it up. I think Tribal Area released a live
video of JINGO during their late Eighties heyday, but I’ve never seen a copy.
Not so many folk had video cameras back then either, so what live footage there
is of the band must been pretty hard to come by I guess.
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