I
realise that I never really got round to putting a a proper explanation
of what happened to Ebola. The somewhat lengthy tome below is taken from
Ebola's final release which is a split LP with Jinn, the band I currently
play in. 
We
have copies of this split LP for sale, which cost £5.00 plus
postage and packing to wherever you are in the world.You can now pay by
Pay Pal but you will need to email me for instructions. We also have copies
of a split LP with Jinn and The Suicide Handbook available for the same
price if you are interested.
Micky
12/03/2004
From
Last to First … or something like that [a potted history of how this
record came to be released]
It's
a bit of an odd concept this, writing an epitaph for one band and an introduction
for another, especially when you are the thing that links the two pieces
of the Jigsaw together.
Ebola
[Andy Nolan, Chrissy, Johnny, Karin and Micky] came into being in Newcastle
upon Tyne some time in the summer of 1995.
We played two gigs in Belgium under the name of Spite after which we decided
to change our name to avoid confusion with the other band of the same
name! [As were sure most of you are aware there was an Ebola in Berlin,
and apparently one in Australia and the USA. Also there is supposedly
an Oi band in France called Ebola.]
We chose the name for no other reason than it sounded apocalyptic and
we wanted to have a name which would reflect the type of music we were
trying to play…
As you probably know Ebola is a heamoragic fever which broke out in the
equatorial rainforests of Africa. If you want to find out more about the
disease just type the name into any search engine and you should be presented
with thousands of sites on the subject.
We managed to record an LP for Flat Earth in December 1995 [which was
released in March 1996] and do a small tour of Europe in May 1996 before
parting ways with Johnny.
We recruited Nick, who lived in Bradford, and then in October 1996 we
did a short tour of England, Ireland, Northern Ireland and Scotland with
Los Crudos.
In February 1997 we recorded the Imprecation 7" which was also released
on Flat Earth
At some point in all of this Andy Nolan moved to Glasgow, but still remained
very much a part of the band.
We did another European tour in September 1997 and subsequently parted
company with our drummer Chrissy.
We then spent a long time trying to find a suitable person to replace
him and eventually settled upon Skater, who lived in Aberdeen, who stayed
with us long enough to do another European tour in July 1998 and record
some material for a split 7" on Clean Plate.
During this period Andy Irvine was briefly in the band but left before
the tour and the recording.
We found a permanent drummer, Set from Active Minds, and were working
on new stuff when we parted company with our bass player Andy Nolan.
Eventually we decided to ask Duane (formerly of Eradicate and Bloodshot)
to join us on Bass and Andy Irvine (formerly of Disaffect and currently
of Scatha and Stalingrad) to rejoin us as an additional guitarist.
We spent some time working things out and finally hit the road again in
July 2000.
The tour was great but some of the driving excessive. Notable highlights
for me were Berlin and Bratislava. Notable low point for everyone was
getting turned back at the Czech border, having to miss the two gigs we
had organised there, and having to drive the long way round to Leipzig.
We didn't arrive until 8.30am the following day.
On our return we had to get on with the various activities that take up
the majority of our time. However in December 2000 we managed to head
into In A City and record 12 songs which would be finally released as
a split LP with the German band Y sometime in May 2000…
This is that LP and as you can see Y are not on the other side…
At the beginning of 2001 Andy Irvine announced that he was leaving the
band for a second time and is concentrating his activities on his new
band The Devils who feature a number of ex Stalingrad folk and some other
notable punk rock luminaries!
Following this we managed to recruit mad bad Penguin unfriendly Steve
(formerly of Orin DeForrest and Morgue) as new guitarist. Things went
really he managed to learn the new songs in two practices and we even
managed to write some new songs [though we never played them live]…
two of which have even found there way onto the Jinn side of the LP.
Sadly in June 2001 Duane decided that he could no longer continue balancing
his studies with being in Ebola and handed in his notice. Our planned
gigs with DS13 and ETA at the 1 in 12 Club in Bradford on the 20th July,
the 13th Note in Glasgow on the 21st of July and in Scarborough on the
22nd of July would be his farewell to the band. At about this time, Karin
and I found that we were expecting a child and that as she would be commencing
her 'band maternity leave' at a round about the same time we would be
sorting things out with a new bass player, she decided that these gigs
would also probably be her last with the band for some time.
By this time we had found out that Y were not going to be able to get
enough songs together for there half of the LP and we tried to see if
we could make it a three way split by roping in Shikari … but it
was not to be. The dispute about the format of the recordings became intractable,
the majority of the band wanting to release it as a mini LP, get it out
and get on with the next project.
The first two gigs with DS13 and ETA went really well, but the final gig
in Scarborough proved to be a bridge too far, the people in the venue
were complete arseholes, there were lots of equipment problems and ...
well lets put it this way, Glasgow was the last gig of the tour for Ebola!
We spent a couple of weeks trying to find a new bass player and Nick then
decided that he didn't want to be in the band any more as he felt that
the mammoth effort that was required to keep Ebola going did not equal
the rewards.
Well that was it for Ebola, the distances between us became too great
an impediment.
Nick went off to sing in Boxed In, Set continued his activities with Active
Minds, Duane continued his studying, Steve formed Losing The Battle and
The Great Refusal and Karin and I waited for Jasmine to arrive, which
she did on the 9th of March 2002.
The 12 songs just sat there gathering dust with no one in particular wanting
to put them out.
In November 2001 Pete from Thirty Seconds Until Armageddon and I decided
we should try and get a band together, possibly with Steve. However before
we could actually sort out any details Pete was seriously injured when
he was knocked off his scooter on his way home from work.
Steve and I had a few jams [awful word] but the uncertainty of his living
arrangements at the time stopped us getting anything together.
When Pete's health improved we started chatting again about getting a
band together and roped in Adam from Thirty Seconds Until Armageddon.
We practiced for the first time at the end of February 2002 and Jinn was
born... then Jasmine was born and we had to put things on hold until May!
We managed to get enough songs together to play our first gig with DS13
and Boxed in at the end of their UK tour in July 2002.
At this point I had decided to see if we could get enough songs together
to put out the 12 Ebola songs as a split LP with Jinn I had already spoken
to Jorg who had agreed to get involved, but we were trying to find other
people in order to spread the cost. I mentioned this to Nick who supported
the idea, but could not commit t getting involved, however he did offer
to put out a 7" by Jinn*. So after this we set about getting the
songs together to make these two projects happen. We went into the studio
just over a week ago and now the race is on to see which will come out
first the split LP or the 7".
A lot of people would feel a bit odd about doing a split LP with their
previous band, but I think that the Jinn stuff stands on it's own merit.
As I said previously, two of the Jinn songs are actually songs I wrote
for Ebola, we practiced them but never played them live. We have changed
one of them slightly but the other one is exactly as it was written. I
doubt if many people would actually be able to spot them.
The future for Jinn will be writing more songs, playing live some more
and perhaps even a tour if work commitments, other activities and Jasmine
allow!
I'd like to take this opportunity to thank any one who ever helped us
out in any way whatsoever in the long hard struggle of Ebola's existence,
Jorg for believing this project and actually putting it out, and Karin
for her selfless support which has allowed me to stay involved in playing
in a band.
Finally I'd like to thank everyone who strummed a string, bashed a skin
or shouted themselves hoarse in the six year roller coaster of Ebola's
existence.
Ebola started out as 5 friends living in the same town playing fast music,
and ended up being six friends living hundreds of miles apart trying to
keep the idea of a band together in the face of adversity.
These are the last ever notes you will hear from Ebola.
Micky
16/12/2002
Sned
will be releasing the entire Ebola back catalogue on CD sometime in the
distant future. In the mean time you can download MP3's from http://www.gibboncore.demon.co.uk/main_index.html
or http://unixpunx.org/ .
Special
thanks to Sned for post production and DAT editing services.
*
The Jinn 7" will not now be released by Enslaved and will instead
come out as a split 12" with The Suicide Handbook on Totenschiff.
Footnote:
My Hard disk died in February 2003 and I lost some of the Ebola and Jinn
lyrics, and other stuff which I had stored there, so if you come to a
song without any lyrics or an explanation that's the reason why.
Micky
12/08/2003
Well
that's it for Ebola, we are no more, the distances between us became too
great an impediment (see Ebola
Biography for the full band history). I was trying to form a new band
with some of the Ebola folk but the restrictions my personal commitments
placed in the way mean that this is no longer a possibility.
Some of the others may re-group in some form and rise again, but as I
live in splendid geographical isolation in Newcastle it is highly unlikely
I would be in position to participate.
I am reluctant to hang up my guitar after all of these years but realistically
other than forming a one man band I don't really see what options I have
got, as I know no one in the immediate geographical area with the same
musical tastes and the ability to participate in a band.
The
stuff we recorded last December will eventually see the light of day as
a split LP with Y. As yet no release date has been set.
Keep
checking back for details .
Thanks
for sticking with us through thick and thin for so long, especially to
those who have put us up, fed us, put us on and put up with us through
the course of our checkered history!
Cheers
Micky
07/11/2001
This site has
been produced using the mighty tool that is Dreamweaver.
A big thanks to Bas for his invaluable help there and also to Marko for
his ongoing assistance. I am still ploughing my way through O'Reilly's
"HTML & XHTML" and hope to gain a better understanding and
also learn some of the finer points that a basic WYSIWYG editor uses ...
eventually I plan to add some of those ideas to the whole of the site
but the Ebola web pages are likely to be where they surface first. I will
keep the site as compliant as possible with the HTML 4.01 standard...
however I may experiment in places! If you don't like that tough get a
better browser!
I have added
a section to the site for downloading
Ebola songs which now has the entire Ebola back catalogue plus one
song from the forthcoming split LP. Mucho thanks to uncle Sned who was
kind enough to copy all of our DATs to CD. update.