Lucrate Milk
After a night of plundering, moving piles of ceramic tiles from a disused mosque, MaSTo and LauL practiced their craft on a few bottles of milk delivered to a grocery store (a classic end∼of∼trip activity). Like so many others in 1979, they had a virtual band and had just come up with a name : LUCRATE MILK ! They came up with the logo, in a pure punk graphic style. Derision, a sense of the absurd, exaggeration, provocation & arty dandyism…
MaSTo : “We invented this band before it existed. We spent a year tagging everywhere. They had a huge impact, and we started finding tags everywhere that weren’t ours. We’d go up to the cranes, steal big grease bombs, and that was great. When you tagged a wall and it was repainted, the grease soaked through the paint, and it was like you’d tagged a brand new wall → It was magnificent !”
For the next two years, the Paris & suburbs’ walls were spray∼painted with the Lucrate Milk label by a gang of night owls who were still active. The name spread & the rumor mill grew ; it was time to really get this group going !
LauL : “There was a reaction… «Lucrate Milk, that sounds really good…». There were even some who knew them, before they existed, who had already seen them in concert : «a great english band…» There was already a legend before we even started.”
LauL vaguely plays bass without really hearing it, MaSTo, who hates jazz, chooses the sax, Gaboni offers to play drums, and the band meets Nina, originally from USA, who takes over vocals & synthesizer (she’s the only one who has any musical knowledge, the others being complete novices), no need for a guitarist, and off we go ! Shortly after, Marsu, a fanzine writer and radio host friend, was hired as a manager.
LauL : “I met Nina at the Arts Déco, and I hooked her up, mainly to model for Masto’s photos, because she was very pretty, she had a great presence. She said «But I can also scream !» and she gave us a fucking screeeaaaam that stuck with us. That’s what we were looking for to illustrate our music, which didn’t yet exist. We weren’t musicians, and we chose the instrument we liked the least. To react, to make it enjoyable.”
One fortunate coincidence followed another : three months after its first rehearsal, the band released its first 7∼inch, demonstrating that you don’t need to know how to play to create original & interesting music. With resounding concerts, support from the fanzine network and independent radio stations, and echoes in the trendy press, the quartet, now flanked by its mascot∼cum∼chaos∼making backing vocalist, Helno (future singer of Les Négresses Vertes), and followed by a whole crazy raïa scene, managed to leave a lasting mark on the parisian scene in the space of three years.
The band disbanded in february 1984 after a final, acclaimed concert at the Théâtre du Forum des Halles (Paris).
LauL : “I preferred to stop, for fear that we would split up.”
Paradoxically, it was after the band’s breakup that its reputation grew, notably thanks to some of its former members joining Bérurier Noir. In 37 concerts, from gloomy venues (with general fighting) to autonomous squats, from trendy bars & clubs (Pont∼à∼Mousson) to festivals (Berlin, Paris, etc.), an urban legend was created around LUCRATE MILK, becoming a reference without having really met with popular success during his lifetime…
