Not Available
 

- reliable high quality punk rock since 1992 -

Not Available are in the punk-rock business for time immemorial, strictly speaking since 1992. In this long time they did chiefly one thing: Making great Punk-Rock Records. And now the long expected new disc is out: „5 Aces“.
There are certainly a lot of bands who play more shows, who do the business more businesslike, who are more sober on stage or do more professional things after the show than to hang around and party with the fans. But are there a lot of bands who publish better Punk-Rock records than Not Available? To put it into careful words: No.

Well, the last release was the longplayer „V8“ in 2001, quite a long time ago. Did it take so long because of the above mentioned topics? Because of a lack of professionality?
Singer Dragan: „Holy Moly, no! Concerning making a new record our approach is following: We compose till we have at least 20 songs, each one of wich must have at least the quality „fucking great“. Before that we book no studio. Than we choose the best 14 out of that 20. In so doing we want to avoid what often happens to the competition: That they release a record wich contains zero to two hits, five quite nice songs and seven tracks wich you usualy refer to as „ok“, wich is another way to say they are shit. That’s a thing we’d never accept, no matter how long it takes till we’re satisfied. Only those songs reach the record, which we still suppose to be great after the twentiest playing.“
All involved see the disadvantages of this strategy very clearly: The last four years one watched out futile for the merchandise stand of the Headliner. The support bands had all imaginable punkrock accessories, from lighter to tea cup, real punkrock supermarkets. The guys from Not Available sometimes had a T-Shirt... and sometimes not. Every single one of the four records „Not Available“ anymore, because sold out and not manufactured by Lost&Found anymore. Don’t lose people interest therefore and stay away from the shows?
Drummer Chris: „Amazingly not. We rarely have less than 200 people, pan-European. And on our annual Barcelona-Shows we can allways count on 500 people in front of the stage, every single one of them going postal. The fans want to be entertained, and we’re giving them what they want – willingly. A show must be a party, for all involved. We are here to celebrate. And so it happens that the fans entertain us as much as we entertain the fans. Hey... we should pay them!“ (gets knocked out by Dragan)
There’s also a new entrant: Bass virtuoso Stephan Papp, former bass player of the Seasick Pirates, may they rest in peace. Wasn’t that guy on stage with you formerly?
Arndt (Guitar): „Yeahrr. Thorte (Ex-Bass-Player) was often hindered due to unmodifiable service scheduls (he’s a police man!). And Pappinger kindly helped us out many times. We always were downright shocked about how fast he learned the songs. After the first practising he played them as good as we did after ten years. And how he goes off (and looks like) on stage is just indescribable. At least in english words. When Thorte left the band due to job and family reasons we were so happy that Pappinger joined us. Hajo (our studio guy for 5 Aces) said he’s the best musician of the band.“
So you’re ready to rock n’ roll. 5 Aces is definitely a special album for the band, e.g. it’s the first album whose production the band paid completely alone. Why no record deal this time?
Dragan: „At the end of the composition phase we had to ascertain that we had 30 complete finished and further 20 half-finished songs. And that the best 14 of this wide range would be the best record we ever maid. Concernig the last two records we had the problem of a not so good production, meanly for budget, and therefore time-reasons. To get to the point: Those songs were wasted. With a better production and a promotion budget a little bigger than 100 Dollars the songs (and the band) would have maid much better. Shit... but shit happens. But we all agreed to the fact, that we would rather chop off our balls than let something like this happen again. So we declined some offers of small Labels who wanted us to record an LP for 2000 $ and paid the whole shit by ourself. We only signed a publishing deal with Modern Noise to use their infrastructure, but all important decisions were our own. So we chose a real good studio (Jowa Studios in Uhingen-Holzhausen, Germany) and took as much time as we wanted – that is to say four fucking weeks! We’ve never been to studio for such a long time! And you hear it, hehe... 5 Aces is by far the best production we ever had.“
By the way – what makes up a real great punkrock album? An album that you buy instead of burning it? An Album not with one or two but ten or more hits? An album you play when you and your friends are driving to the party of the year on a beautiful sommernight?
Dragan: „Very simple. Firstly to tenthly: Great melodies, great melodies and over again great melodies. And in fact no melodies wich are good, nice or, heaven forbid, interesting. No, they must be great, and if a melody is great or not is a thing you know (if you are straight forward) after ten seconds.“
And...?
To save Dragan’s blushes in complimenting himself Didi is anwsering: „A great voice. To that ingredient apply the same criterions as for point one to ten. So please refer to the above mentioned. No great voice, no great album.“
That’s it?
Far from it! Arndt: „Phat guitars (which includes bass of course) and phat drums which place themselfes into the service of the songs and don’t want to show what Mr. Super-Musician learned in his guitar or drum-lessons last weak.“ Now he gathered momentum and is unstoppable: „Thirteenthly: Lyrics which you can sing along with all your heart. Lyrics not affirming song by song how much live, the world and the people living on it suck. Lyrics proclaiming essentially following message: Live is great fun, you just have to get it. And last but not least: An inlay which is a reason to buy and not to burn the CD. And that’s a thing we and Chris von Bock (www.cvb.cc) respectively managed by all means. But that’s a secret we don’t break. Buy it, look at it and die laughing!“
The lads definitely achieved all above mentioned points. With further delicacies as brute choruses, guitarsolos, whose melodies are actually own refrains, drums produced in great profusion and the favoritism of high speeds Not Available created an album being fit not only to hold a candle to the West Coast Prominence. You say Great! after listening to it one time and you say Great! after listening to it ten times, not one song is a skip away song. And that’s the opinion not only of punk rockers, but of people who normally like complete different music. And the best thing is: The guys have so many further songs finished, that they theoretical could hit studio next weak. A new star on the Punk Rock Firmament?

We’ll see... .







Line-Up:
Dragan Jordanov – Vocals + Backing Vocals
Stefan Papp – Bass + No Backing Vocals
Dietmar Nagel – Gitarre + Backing Vocals
Arndt Hieber – Gitarre + Backing Voacals
Christian Frey – Drums + definitely no Backing Vocals at all