(Sunday Times, 30th September 2007)
It’s a quiet, uneventful Tuesday night. Last week, fireworks from the other side of Balluta rocked the buildings and set off scores of car alarms. Tonight, however, the low volume bluesy atmosphere of what is, ostensibly, a Steve Urpani playlist, is a more welcome company.
Steve knows what his guests would like for their second round of drinks. They are known faces around here, their voices familiar, their mannerisms easily recognisable. The telly is showing Arsenal play in the third round of the Champions League qualifying against Sparta Prague.
Ray Mercieca swivels on his tool, his trademark baseball cap pointing upwards towards the box. “What’s the score?”
“One-nil.”
“Nah… Walcott? I don’t like Walcott. He’s overrated…”
Everybody has opinions. Ray Mercieca is certainly not the man to hide them behind his little finger, and he will never stop from telling you precisely what he thinks. You ask him the most basic of questions and he’ll give you the most detailed of replies, forgetting nothing, leaving no stone unturned. His charisma, English accent and occasional ‘f’ word, make him one of my favourite interviewees. And, when he talks, you listen, and find it very hard to look away from the quasi-idealistic gleam that lights his eyes.
Gino Micallef and Antoine Griscti, Gaggu for friends, are the other two fifths of The Characters sipping their whiskies at Muddy Waters. After all this time, I’m sitting with the band I thought I’d never see again, as if it were too good to be true.
We’re generations apart, I’m still a fan, they are still pumping energy into their music. Catch one of their concerts, anywhere, and you’ll see that a long hibernation – pause, as they will say – hasn’t got any rust settling into their joints.
Muddy Waters was the place where Steve Urpani set the ball rolling again, after a long time. Ray had just reunited the Rifffs after releasing some of his own solo material.
“With the Rifffs it happened because Rayvin was in Malta at the time, so we… took the opportunity. The Characters was a different story though. I was playing an acoustic set up there (nodding to the diminutive stage) and these two next to me… they conned me!” he laughs. “The magic, the energy, they were still there, after we played we knew we could still have it all.”
Sitting next to the singer, Gino Micallef is relishing the return of his bass swinging days. “We really enjoyed playing together that night. I think was the right time to get together again and start working on bringing The Characters back.”
A slight hangover is in the air, but Ray’s freewheel is working alright. He explains why this long awaited reunion, in 2007, was so simple. And he had the right motives, too.
“I was writing music that was somehow Characters’
music, because that vision was always there. To be honest, I was not at all happy with all the s**t that was going on in Malta, and a lot of people were sitting inside at as well. So I said as long as we have something to say, we try and do it, and Gaggu made it very clear that we don’t play anything unless it is of pure quality and not too commercial, and we all felt the same way.”
“Me, personally, whatever I was seeing [in the local scene] was lazy, no excitement, it was just as if too many people were listening to an album and copying it, making it their own.”
Would you dare accuse someone like Ray of being old, of trying to resurrect a myth that should have been left alone?
“It wasn’t time to move on, no. At the gigs I could see all the energy in the audience and I hadn’t seen something like that for years. But at the end of the day The Characters have always been about that, and I’m sure a lot of people wanted to see us [play live] again, even the old songs. Maybe they were a bit shell-shocked when they heard the new songs, but we believe the music is good fun.”
With Adam Bonello on guitars and Antoine Faure on keyboards to complete the lineup, they set on writing new music, releasing So Alive in what was a relatively busy summer. A song that embodies their spirit, the Characters magic that never really vanished, opening with trademark melodic guitars and Ray’s You’ve got to say what you want. Not quite in the mould of their older classics, though, the new Characters have polished themselves a bit more. Sign of their ageing nicely, perhaps?
Says Gino: “After a few rehearsals we already had the new songs sorted. It’s such fun, it’s like we never stopped. I mean, we’ve played with other musicians and bands, but being onstage as The Characters – it’s special!”
“We were perhaps a bit more ear friendly then, now we are back in a different manner, with a bit more vengeance in our music,” says Gaggu.
“So Alive is a bit similar to what we were doing before we stopped. We still have that thing about us, but the next single will be completely different. Just wait and see that…” says Ray. Should I bet?
I caught The Characters’ for the first time after their reunion at Valletta, where they played as a supporting act for The Wailers. They played with renewed vigour, probably just having some serious fun, surprising some of the audience with the way their classics were sounding.
“We never decided to re-arrange the old songs, I’d say it just happened. Probably it’s the way we’re playing nowadays, or else we must have forgotten what we were playing and we just thought this should be the right way. You can play those songs in any way, and people would still want to hear them, so, why not?”
“I mean, I’m having a lot of fun playing, Ray is writing some fantastic music like he’s never done before. It’s like we’ve found the right groove,” enthuses Gino.
Ask them what their aims are, when they intend to release so and so, what they are planning long-term, and Ray will cut you short with a curt reply: “As long as we have something to say and we’re still relevant – and as long as we have the energy to live up to it.”
“We can push or force ourselves to do things, but we’d run the risk of becoming boring after a couple of years. It wasn’t that we were boring in the 1990’s, but at the time we had a few issues, personal ones especially, that we had to iron out. Those times are over now, and we’re back with better music, that is in a way easier to express in front of the audience,” says Gino.
“Gaggu was the one who always wanted the Characters to be a non-commercial band, and when I was doing music for the Rifffs I often asked myself, at the back of my mind, what Gaggu would say about it.”
After some years apart, they have matured on the personal level as well.
“Today we are five people who have a tremendous respect for each other, and we’ll have no clashes over our music, so it will have its freedom, we’ll let it decide and do the talking for us. That’s the greatest thing we’ve achieved. We discovered things about us musically and personally that we never knew before, maybe because we were younger.”
“We had a lot of pressure to do things. People expected a lot from us. And we also had a lot of clashes then, now we have learnt the lessons and we’ve become more patient with each other,” adds Gaggu.
Yet, added to all this, there was another incident that caused The Characters to split. Ray admits it was a particularly bad time for him.
“It took us long to get over Mike’s [Williams] death. Speaking for myself, it took me a hell of a lot of time. It wasn’t easy, he was a guy who was always part of the family.”
Steve reappears from behind the bar, this must be the third round. Or is it the fourth?
I ask them about the local music scene and the reception they got from the radios. Ray cannot really complain, but he does have some words to say about this:
“The media has become so commercialised, but that’s because they have to survive. At least they still play local acts, who maybe get more airplay if they’re sponsored by some big name or other. We don’t have anyone to sponsor us for airplay but we still get backing from various radio stations.”
“Unless you are within those certain guidelines which they have laid down, you don’t get played. [Turns to Gaggu] – You don’t agree with me?”
“Yes, of course I agree. If you are too awkward or alternative, without those catchy commercial tunes, you don’t get much of a chance to be heard on air. It’s about being clever enough to find a sound in between.”
“With the Rifffs it was hard to get airplay, and I think much of the interest came thanks to the audience and its SMS’s,” said Ray.
“Foreign DJ’s have come here and have no history of Malta and of what used to happen here 30 years ago when there was nothing here, only one national radio station and one TV station, and dictate what should or should not be played on local radio when they’re not locals themselves. They should not turn their noses up to anything local when they don’t understand how hard it is for local musicians to buy instruments and get in the recording studio… there’s no industry here, end of story.”
He’s not talking to me in my mother tongue, but I need not point this out to him.
“Maybe, yes, I am an English immigrant and you can tell me I’ve no right to say this. Well, I am half-Maltese, I’ve got Maltese blood. I haven’t come from Canada two years ago with my family in tow and decided that Malta should become Canadian, or Australian, or English or French. I don’t agree with that. You have to accept the culture of the Maltese, and respect the values of those who have been pioneering the scene, and give them courage, and faith, to try something new.”
His favourite up and coming band: Drive.
“They’re a bunch of great kids. I look forward to see them write and experiment more with their own music.”
“Then Subculture, it’s really great to have Woody and Bahri around, perhaps there should be a DJ who is ready to play their songs and that kind of music. The audience should have the final say whether they want to hear more of that or not, instead of DJ’s who play the same music 23 times a day. There should be a DJ who can watch out for new talent. I mean… they even tried to shut Brian Micallef down, you know, he’s our equivalent of John Peel, and if John Peel weren’t around there would be no U2 today…”
* * *
The second long interview in three years is over. We stop talking about the Characters now, resorting to more mundane topics.
“Are you okay, boy? You’re a bit too quiet,” says Ray, throwing an arm around my shoulder.
I smile, and point to the telly. Arsenal are finishing off Sparta, 3-0, and Walcott is the only Gunner to pick up a yellow.
The Characters will be playing their Official Reunion gig at the Buskett Roadhouse on the 6th of October. More info on http://www.myspace.com/thecharactersmusic.
Wayne Flask
www.wayneflask.com
speakup@wayneflask.com
