Jón Gnarr - The Pirate

“So, they’re getting chucked away after all.”

“And it could have been far earlier!” Mom shouted.

Dad stood by powerless, unable to avert this great cultural misfortune.

All this took place, however, long after the days of Nefrennsli.

“We can rehearse in our garage, for sure,” said Hannes.

We couldn’t believe our own ears. Garages that are open to musical types don’t grow on trees. Most garage owners have enough in their garages already. People keep camping equipment and forgotten stuff. Bands cause disturbances and noise and bother beloved neighbors — especially at night. They draw smoking and spitting crowds of teens no one wants to see near their property and valuables.

“We don’t have a car and don’t use the garage for anything,” he added. “Mom definitely won’t care.”

A rehearsal space needs sound-proofing. The main things people use are old carpets, egg boxes, and foam mattresses. I remembered a leftover foam mattress Dad had gotten for free from some place many years before and that remained rolled up in a storage closet. It was something various people at various times had wanted to throw out, but as usual Dad was confident he’d eventually find a use for it. He even tried to sell my Mom on the idea that they could use this remnant as a tent mattress for camping, but she wouldn’t hear of it: it was exceptionally ugly foam, melted around the edges and with bubbles and holes. I knew that there was little point asking my dad about the mattress, so I followed my own advice and asked Mom if I could take the foam.

“Yes, please do!” she said, very relieved to get rid of it. “It’s just some junk your dad picked up. I don’t understand why he’s always collecting such rubbish. Just don’t let him see you taking it.”

I snuck the foam over to Hannes’s garage, and we put it on the door and under the amplifiers and drum kit. Dad never missed it. Alli and Maggi fixed us up with carpets. They managed to get hold of a very thick floral rug from the recreation room on Suðurlandsbraut and bring it over on the bus, to the annoyance of the other passengers since the carpet smelled of old urine and vomit. It went down on the floor. Alli gathered egg cartons and hung them right on the walls along with pieces of foam and foul-smelling leftover bits of the rug. It was all very punk, and finally the rehearsal space was ready. We were drenched with sweat but satisfied with our successful efforts. Now there was nothing left to do but to get started.

There were no windows or ventilation in the garage. We had covered the door with foam, so it very quickly became stuffy and hot inside the punk womb. The sweat poured off us and when it warmed up, it stank with terrible emissions of vomit, urine, and sweat. Alli was particularly easily nauseated and had to run out from time to time to retch. But little by little we got accustomed to the smells and eventually stopped noticing it. We smoked and burned incense and also hung up some posters to make it homey.

We held our first formal band meeting. The first item on the agenda: Name. We needed a name for the band, and it had to be punk. Anti-Police was eliminated with three votes to one. Maggi was keen on a short name like Farting or Ass. I thought that was naïve and too much like a joke. This was not supposed to be a prank band. Hannes was the one of us who had the greatest experience with bands, and he’d even read books about bands. Despite the fact that his favorite band name was Bay City Rollers, he still had greater insight into music and punk rock than the rest of us put together. Hannes suggested that we call the band Punk Icelandic Land, abbreviated PIL. That way we wouldn’t have to come up with a logo and could instead use the logo of the British band Public Image Ltd., which Johnny Rotten founded after the Sex Pistols split. Hannes also pointed out that it was in the spirit of punk to repurpose, and why not repurpose a name? I thought that it was in many ways a fascinating idea but noted that this was dangerously close to another band called Danceband Reykjavík and Environs, abbreviated as DRAE, which was in homage to The Co-operative for Reykjavik and Environs, or KRAE. I didn’t want to be like them in any way. I wouldn’t want anyone to think we were in some way influenced by DRAE. Many good bands never get past the initial stage in which the members agree on a name. It’s crucial that the name is good. Finally the meeting dissolved into an argument between Alli and Maggi, who continually suggested names like The Runs, Pussy, and even Cunt. We were clearly on the wrong track with Maggi, who didn’t fit into the group and was immediately fired from the band after he declared he’d only joined the band to impress girls. With that statement, he was completely lost to me. It was more than we could tolerate — and then Maggi gibed that there was little chance this band would attract girls anyway.

“Why on earth does he think he could get a girl when he’s always sniffing and his nose runs constantly?” Alli asked in amazement after Maggi had slammed the foam-lined garage door behind him.

“You know, his nickname’s Snotty, because his nose is always running,” I said.

Hannes, who had not been very engaged in the conversation about a name, mainly sitting silent and pensive at the drum kit, suddenly asked:

“What about Nefrennsli?”

“What?”

“Why not call the band Nefrennsli? It’s cool.”

Nefrennsli? The name sounded very good. If we got popular abroad, you could easily translate it; we’d become Runny Nose. I rolled the name about. “Jón — or Johnny — the lead singer of Runny Nose” sounded just fine. Alli nodded. It was the name of the band. We were Nefrennsli. The hottest punk band in Iceland had formally begun work. Nefrennsli.

The next days and weeks were spent rehearsing. We practiced from morning to night. We started out playing songs by other bands, “Public Image” by PIL, “Do They Owe Us a Living” by Crass, and other easy songs. Again and again I couldn’t keep time. I was terrible at knowing when I should come into a song and where. The boys nodded encouraging heads in my direction, but I got confused over the ongoing beat and came in either a beat too early or too late. I was like a blind man in a maze. If I managed to get into the song by sheer chance, sooner or later I lost the beat unless the song was both easy and slow. So what happened was that Alli and Hannes played all the songs extremely slowly. Whenever I was meant to start singing, Alli nodded his head to me really obviously and counted me in silently as I read his lips, or else he sang the opening line of the song with me. In this way, I sometimes got to hang on through the song. But this would never work onstage, where you need to be jumping and dancing around with your eyes on the crowd, not standing like a stone staring at Alli all the time.

This peculiar inability to keep the beat was paralyzing and exacerbated by my timidity, reserve, and stage fright. I felt extremely uncomfortable standing up while I sang; I’d rather sit in the corner and look down at the song lyrics and watch for instructions from Alli. Worldwide fame, which had seemed so close, was now rapidly disappearing. How would I be able to show up at a gig? I could hardly sit in a chair and mutter something in the corner. Maybe it was just a matter of practice? Maybe I could learn the songs? If we practiced enough, maybe it would all suddenly click.

Soon our first original song was born. Alli started out with a simple, rhythmic melodic line and even wrote some lyrics which he called “Onetime Hippie.” The song was about a stupid hippie who went about in a floral dress and didn’t realize that hippies were dead. The song was almost as simple as a child’s language, and I even got to sing with some passion and without having to stare at Alli. Amazingly, I got up from my chair and screamed at the end of the song, in the direction of the sponge on the garage door: