Download Sic - High Voltage And Uncontrolled

SIC, the punk years

Around 1975, I was playing in KOSMOSE, a sort of kosmic/experimental/noisy band ...
I had always been fascinated by bass guitar and THE STOOGES ... I had tried to learn the instrument, but I really could not handle it (too heavy, far too many strings).
Francis had played bass in SIC, a rock band from the early 70’s (he played in KOSMOSE aswell), but he had always wanted to play rhythm guitar in that same kind of band .... He was also fan of THE STOOGES and MC5...
I had a « bass guitar » preset on my synth, so we began to jam after the KOSMOSE rehearsals...my sound was rather weak, so I added a double Fuzzbox to my synth and got that fuzzy sound ... We asked Michel if he'd like to be our drummer and he quickly bought a second-hand drum set and began to learn with us...
We needed a singer ( none of us could sing) and we remembered that young lady (Micheline) who often helped carrying the amps after the KOSMOSE gigs. She had a loud voice and used to shout and scream, she also had a « rock and roll attitude » suitable for being a good frontwoman ; so we ask her to join the band with no name, rehearsing just for fun... It worked well and, in early 1976, we had about twelve songs with harsh/angry lyrics...We heard PATTI SMITH and felt very close to her music, and then, we heard the SEX PISTOLS and it was a real shock ; so we decided to speed up our songs ...we were now ready to play live !!
At first, we named the band NEW ROSE IN TOWN after that great DAMNED song, but finally we decided to come back to SIC. We were closer to the American “New Wave” and “Punk “ of the time (Patti Smith, The Ramones, The Dictators, The Dead Boys) than to the English one (except for The Damned and Sex Pistols).
After one year, Michel decided to leave and moved to Brussels, so we put an ad in a newspaper and Mario joined.
We played in the Charleroi and La Louvière area (except one time in Grimbergen) and it was great. Our wild punk audience was very enthousiastic and kindly forgave our rather decadent new wave look.
In early 1978, we decided to experience a new concept : mixing SIC and KOSMOSE into a band named KATALEPSIC, and after a while MICROKOSME... it was really hard to achieve and some tensions appeared ... Micheline and Francis wanted to stay in a sort of electric/electronic New Wave (what they did in the 80's) while me and Guy (Hinant) wanted to go further in aggressive/noisy/dark stuff.
The band splitted on the 3rd of November 1978 after a gig at The SAMP (Marcinelle) where we played a super noisy wall of sound hidden behind a giant screen ... all the audience ran away after 10 minutes, except 3 guys ...I hurted my left hand during the set and my keyboard was full of blood ... before we all went home, Francis told me he wanted to quit...

Michel Vanherwegen founded GRAFIKA Discs, played in M.V. (Mécanique Végétale) and GLAMOUR FOR EVENING.
Mario Berchicci stopped drumming and went back to school.
Francis Pourcel and Micheline Dufert went on with SIC, playing Minimal Wave with synths.
I founded the INSANE label and I played in PSEUDO CODE, SUBJECT, JAPANESE GENIUS, BeNe GeSSeRiT, HUMAN FLESH and carried on with I SCREAM and CORTEX (both parallel to KOSMOSE in the mid 70's).

Alain Neffe

True PUNK from Charleroi - Between The Stooges and The Sex Pistols!!!