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Miscast were formed around September 1983 by people in and around Olten, at a time when American hardcore swept into Switzerland. Back then I was working with Felix Fischer at Jamming Distribution and we were probably the first in Switzerland who were trying to sell stuff like This is Boston Not L.A. and Flex Your Head comps, 7"ers and 12"ers by SS Decontrol, Negative Approach, Minutemen, White Cross, Minor Threat and the like. Miscast played somewhere around 13 shows in Switzerland, among them one supporting Toxie Reasons and another playing after Toten Hosen. There were several smaller gigs too, one of them we did along with Haine Brigade at an anarchist meeting in Lamastre (France) on July 13th, 1984. It was a time bereft of enthusiasm (the "Youth Movements" had been crushed*), various gangs of fascist skins kept attacking gigs, punks beat up on each other, and so forth. There wasn't very much happening in the way of bands either, most of them were musically and ideologically still rooted in '77, except for a few... GKH for example, from Baden, who were very young (average age: 15) and therefore had quite a devil-may-care approach (meaning guitars with strings missing etc.). Still, they managed to get one song on the second Flipside compilation LP. One of them also published the first Swiss hardcore fanzine before he changed sides and became a nazi-skin (with all but the drummer and their later bassplayer doing likewise... The drummer is now in Jaywalker). Brutal Menekken, Decontrol, Attax and Kosili too were early, moderate (and tame!) attempts at hardcore. None of them, however, were quite as fast, original and hard as Miscast. But sometime in Autumn 1984 the story had already come to an end, about half a year after the Miscast demotape was released on Stechapfel-vertrieb. * This refers to the social upheaval that surrounded the struggle for the Autonomous Youth Centre in Zurich (evicted and pulled down in early '82). Massive riots went down in 1980/'81 and then petered out in late '81/early '82, a setback for subculture/anarchists in Switzerland that left some people with a sense of disillusionment -Simon) |
DISCOGRAPHY Releases MISCAST demo (Stechapfel-vertrieb, 1984) Reissues MISCAST 7" EP (Far Out, 1990 - has tracks from their demo) INFO Stefan Marti Homepage The former drummer of Miscast has a website with mp3s of the demo, as well as a whole bunch of cool pictures - plus a whole bunch of non-punk stuff (but who cares about that, right?). |