Hi, Mysh!
Finally I got the point that the interview is not gonna go any further so I send it like it is. I haven’t answered some questions and mostly I wrote not what you asked about, but I really did my best.

Gniewo

?: When and how was TROMPKA POMPKA formed? Where does such name come from and what does it mean?
Gniewo The band appeared quite long ago, last millenium even. We had keys from a rehearsal hall where all necessary equipment was and from time to time we went there to make some noise. At that time I wanted to learn to play drums because this instrument intrigued me for a long time. So I played drums, Aneta – guitar and then we traded places. If to speak about the name we are not sure where it comes from. What does it mean? “Trompka” certainly means trumpet, and “pompka” pump (and slang for syringe), but it’s hard to understand what they both have in common. The only thing that comes to mind is such song in which it is said that we are a good coordinated band: a trumpet, a pump and an organ. If it was the inspiration to the name, I don’t really know why we declined that organ.

?: Who is playing in TROMPKA POMPKA? Did you have any changes in the line-up? Tell us a bit about yourself.
Gniewo: We are playing in three, I mean Daniel, Aneta and Gniewo or me. Some time Wicio played drums with us. He was my old fellow from the neighbourhood when I had been living in Warsaw (the capital of Poland), and several years later I met him in Berlin and the guy joined us. It was a complete chaos by that time because part of songs we played in two with Aneta trading instruments and the rest of the songs with Wicio, moreover we exchanged with Aneta bass and guitar in half of cases too.
In some time Wicio began to take LSD which affected him and on the whole he lost the love to punk-rock so we remained in two again. But in a couple months we made sure that playing with bass is not a silly trick in general, so Daniel joined us and since that time we have been playing with him.
If to speak about our persons Daniel likes to repair old exhausted lorries and the most part of time spends laying under one of them. And when he leads it to such condition that it could be only condemned to destruction he finds another one.
We live together with Aneta and at present mostly spend our time stoking the furnace not to freeze.

?: How many records of your own do you have? Tell us about each of them. Do you plan to make new records or albums?
Gniewo: Up to this time we have recorded 3 demo-tapes, one better than other he-he. The first of them our fellow Franek recorded in the rehearsal hall. At that time we had only a couple of pieces plus we composed a couple more on the spot and besides 3 covers and thus the material was put on a cassette. We succeeded in recording the second one about a year or maybe 1.5 later in music academy in Warsaw. Our buddy Kostek was studying to work in a studio there and as the result of that we could use all that complicated equipment for free. But as it is said a little bit of equipment and a man is at his wit’s end, so most of time we spent in musing upon what to do with all that equipment in general.
The third material we have recorded again in the rehearsal hall but for some reason we were not completely satisfied with it. Some time later we managed to record it once again but it turned out to be even worse so finally we left the first version. This record was laying somewhere and waiting for something maybe for the proper time, so we managed to release a cassette 1.5 years later.
You should wait a little for the next material but we hope that not for a long. Finally we got out of the creative crisis and are gradually making new songs. It’s a good time because after 2 years of playing the same pieces we are sick and tired of those old songs.

?: What impressions do you have of the concert on the 8th of May in Kletka (The Cage) club in Belarus ? Would you like to play in Belarus again? Did you like the town of Grodno?
Gniewo: We are very glad that we managed to play in your country because till the last moment we were not sure that somebody would not cut off the electricity in the whole district. We have been in Belarus only for one day so we did not see much. Grodno is just town as town but at least there are no those goddamned advertising signs everywhere by which the Western world is simply screwed up. In Soviet times Poland looked quite the same so we felt a little bit as if somebody put us into time machine and transported 15 years back. If to speak about me I’m sure that sooner or later I will visit Belarus again.

?: Which of Belarusian bands did you listen to, do you know? Maybe you liked anything?
Gniewo: To tell the truth I know only Contra la Contra, Deviation, Kalian (The Hookah) and Antiglobalizator with which we wandered over Poland. It happened so that on the whole they should have hitch-hiked the whole way, hundreds of kilometers daily, I would not like to appear in their place. But since we had space in our car we traveled together. There were 3 of us, 5 of them and 4 dogs in addition. And once we were riding at night to the overnight stay and a cop suddenly waved to us to stop. So we said to them to the rear that it was control and they had to sit quietly because if the cop found them it would be trouble since the car was registered only for two people. The cop approached, asked us for the papers but maybe he smelled beer because he immediately asked who was drinking beer there. “I am, - I said, - I’m not a driver isn’t it allowed?” “And what do you have from the rear?” “The dogs are sitting there,”- I answered. But he was suspicious and wanted to see it first-hand, a doubting Thomas. What could we do – as we were going to open those doors for him, everybody was thinking that we would pay fine because there was the whole gang of antiglobalizators. But OK, the doors were open and the cop is threw the light of torch into the middle right on Nikita’s face, the light reflected in his glasses as in the mirror. But luckily right in that moment the dogs began to bark and the youngest of them Fregel by name even jumped out. And this stupid cop noticed nothing, blind man, closed the doors and said that everything was in order. I took out the key, locked those doors and he asked me: “Why don’t you take that dog?” I would have forgot about Fregel because of all that.

?: Do you think there is any difference between concerts in Poland, Belarus, Germany etc.? Where do you like to play best of all?
Gniewo: Probably there is difference. Lots of concerts are organized in Germany , especially in Berlin , because in some village there are no gigs of course, though in small towns from time to time something also happens. But to take for example Berlin, one can visit punk-concerts every day there. But the majority of them are in commercial places and we don’t go there at all, we don’t like those clubs. Even if there plays somebody whom we would really like to see there is problem – we can’t afford to pay for the entry. But fortunately there are lots of concerts in squats or other alternative places. In Kopi for example there is a concert practically every Friday and in addition in the middle of the week something occurs at times.
In Poland everything looks different, there are not so many alternative places. Unfortunately lots of shows take place in some lousy clubs where bald thugs are standing at the entrance, and I think this is a great mistake. Once we played in Katovice in “Mega Club”. We had heard before that that was not a very interesting place. And actually there was some fucking disco there with security guards who were used to treating people like cattle. Earlier fights often occurred there and one day those fuckers were badly beating somebody so the manager of that club ordered them to stop because they would kill that guy and if they don’t stop he would fire them. And they responded: “You can fire your dick but not us!” And actually it was truth because it was mafia and the manager could not fire his workers.
And it happened such way with me: once I was standing near the entrance and there was the whole gang of those morons sitting. And one of them said to me: “Why are you, bitch, staring at me?” I answered that I was not staring at all and even if I did, so what? “We’ll screw your ass, fucking queer,” – he answered. And I went away because neither I wanted to fight with them, nor to bonk.
But luckily there are tons of concerts in places where you can amuse yourself without the company of those wretched security. Squatting in Poland is still developing but there is a couple of such places that deserve appreciation. You probably know “De-Centrum” squat in Bailystok because it’s very close to you and I know that crews from Belarus often visit it. There is a great fabulous squat in Czestochow, “Zhaba” (Frog) in Warsaw which doesn’t exist any more, it’s a pity because there were incredible shows, but there is another squat “Fabrika” (Factory) where several concerts already took place, we played there one day and it was tremendous. In Wroclaw there was such place, they had reconstructed it so well, that it would be too unbelievable if it could last so. Officials began to pick on them and finally locked it. After that something burned there, but the crew is very strong there and something is happening there all the time, they will probably invent something. Once we had to play there in some neglected site which was squatted only for the concert, a couple of concerts had taken there place already. But it were we who was unfortunate because when we set up the equipment the owner showed up with police and told we had to move out and he didn’t want to talk with us. Hardly but punks grabbed all the equipment and carried it 2 kilometers to an island, turned a generator on and concert passed all right. Later different shows were often organized on that island.
Concerts are also made in Gliwicy in “Krzyk” (Scream) squat, I can advise it to everybody, it’s a splendid place. Something is happening in Poznan in “Rozbrat” squat from time to time, but I don’t know much about how it looks like now because I haven’t been there for a long time. I can’t remember other places, but I can’t know all places, right?
And how the concerts in Belarus look like you know better.

?: What is the funniest story which occurred to your band?
Gniewo: Now I think that it was funny as we traveled from Belarus to Lithuania though at that time we were past laughter. When we rode there, customs officials were shocked because maybe they had never seen any punks and thought at first that it was some sexual minority – we heard them talking about it. But then they got into our car, found some Belarusian zines and thought that we were anarchists and carried some undermining leaflets with us. They ordered us to pull all the stuff out of the car, looked everywhere and even wanted to take film out of photo camera to look what was inside. And when they realized that we were a band they wished to listen to a cassette. One of them told that he liked it but the other stated that one can play such music only when on drugs. We tried to persuade him that we only drink beer but he did not want to believe that and we had to show him our arms that there were no signs of needles. We stayed there for 2 hours or maybe even more and finally they had nothing to find fault with and said that we had to give them 5 rubles (Russian and Belarusian currency) and we were free to go. We wondered what they needed those 5 rubles for, because it was almost nothing, but then we found out that they were talking about American “rubles”. So we gave them those bucks and rode further though they managed to steal our mattress, because when we carried our stuff out of the car it was there and when we loaded everything back it wasn’t there, it disappeared.

?: What thoughts come to your mind at the mentioning of the word “anarchy”? Do you consider yourself to be punks or anarchists?
Gniewo: We are certainly punks! Punk is the best thing that I could find in my life. For several years already I also consider myself to be an anarchist, though I didn’t go deep in any of anarchist theories. For me it was always easy: the power is fucking. It can be more or less fucking, but it will be fucking always. They are troubled only how to rule and live in luxury and they don’t give a fuck what is happening beneath. The power spoils and even if any politician had any ideals, so when he reached the sinecure he forgot about them very quickly. This happened to communism which from its foundation was a good idea that everybody is equal and so on, but it turned into some totalitarian horror. And those who shouted about freedom louder than others soon turned into rulers. It was the same in Poland , Solidarnocs (Solidarity) in 1980s fought for the rights of workers, it had some anarchist ideas. 10 years later they came to power and heard tall tales from West and in the name of capitalism quickly forgot about those workers, who are now as browbeaten as they used to be. At that time they had at least the places to work and now factories and plants are closed and workers are thrown out to pavement.

?: Who is the author of the lyrics? What questions do you touch upon in your songs?
Gniewo: Aneta writes lyrics for her songs and I write for mine, some of them we write together. Daniel threatens us that he will also write something, but everything is limited by these threats so far. And what they are about you will read when you get our cassette. But if somebody doesn’t understand Polish it is difficult to advice him anything.

?: I know that you live in squats. For how long? Do you like it? How do you earn your living?
Gniewo: We don’t live in a squat, only in a wagenburg, it’s a squatted piece of land. There was a border between Eastern and Western Berlin on the place where our wagenburg is now standing. And where the wall fell down, was nobodies lane, without an official ruler. Squatters used that, occupied that place and began to live in their vans, lorries, busses, trailers. Earlier there was a dozen of such wagenburgs in Berlin , the majority of them were destroyed by police but several of them still exist and new appear at times.
We have been living for 8 years here and it is really cool in summer, but it’s a little bit fucking in winter.
If to say about money, we are constantly trying to contrive how to earn money while doing nothing. Fortunately we don’t need much for living, we are not paying rent, we can find food in a dustbin behind a market, so it’s not bad.

?: What is your attitude to D.I.Y.-culture? Do you consider yourself to be a D.I.Y.-band?
Gniewo: D.I.Y. is the basis. Without it punk-rock would have been just one of the musical styles, one of the fashions in clutches of huge firms. It’s the only way for me to realization of the world which I would like to have. If you want anarchy, so make it, even a small one but, your own. TROMPKA releases all its cassettes itself, we print T-shirts and patches ourselves, concerts and tours we organize ourselves too and wish that to other bands.

?: How can you characterize the style of music you are playing?
Gniewo: We play punk-rock, that’s for sure. Somebody wrote somewhere that we are characterized by total artisan minimalism and it’s unfortunately true. Sometimes I reassure myself that the day will come when we will play fabulously, but if to look at it impartially nothing of that will ever happen. Fortunately it doesn’t go that it is necessary to be some kind of virtuoso.

?: What do you wish to readers of our zine? Maybe you want to add anything? How to contact you?
Gniewo: Thank you for your patience while waiting for the answers and sorry that part of them are not on the topic. I didn’t write so much since time when I went to school. If anybody wishes to interview us I would like to dissuade you from that. Or just if you don’t mind waiting a couple years.

Our e-mail is: trompkapompka@hotmail.com

our post address is: Aneta + Gniewo
Lohmuehlenwagenburg
Lohmuehlenstr. 17
12435 Berlin .

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