Yeee-HAW!: Jever Mountain Boys, Bury the Bottle With Me

For a good portion of my readers (two out of three of you), Alexander Hacke needs no introduction. For those stumbling in from the bar or another website, let me give you some background on this innovative musician. He began his music career in the early 1980s under the moniker Alexander von Borsig, and soon joined avant-garde/experimental band Einstürzende Neubauten at the age of fifteen. He has been a part of many music projects, included Sentimentale Jugend, P1/E, Sprung Aus Den Wolken, Crime & the City Solution, and numerous others. But one project that Hacke was the frontman for that even my most nerdy of obscurity-obsessed music geek friends have never mentioned is the Jever Mountain Boys.

Information on Jever Mountain Boys is scarce. Wikipedia tells me nothing other than Hacke was the frontman and the band performed country variations on some of their favorite songs. Hacke’s website states that Bury the Bottle With Me is the only official release, the album was released in 1994, and that “this band would take song-material of various origin and transform it into their unique style of country music.” Most other websites offer little unique concrete information.

Attempts to find a hard copy are even more fruitless; eBay yields no results, Amazon America stares at you like you have king crabs coming out of your nostrils, and Amazon UK and Deutschland tell you that it’s unavailable, and only the German site has a tracklisting. Neither have a picture of the cover or reviews. Even bootlegging it online proves to be a bear. I searched on peer-to-peer for over a year before I found someone that had Bury the Bottle With Me shared. That person I must commend, because they also scanned in just about everything, including both the inside and outside of the digipak and the fold-out liner notes. Thanks to those scans, I learned that the band was made up of Hacke, Jochen Arbeit, Moritz Wolpert, Roland Wolf, and Rumme Beck. Aside from Hacke, only two of those names are familiar to me: Arbeit and Wolf both joined Einstürzende Neubauten at different times, although Wolf died in a car accident shortly after joining in 1995.

As stated on Hacke’s site and his Wikipedia page, all the songs on Bury the Bottle With Me are covers from assorted artists and genres. The tracklisting is as follows:

1. “Bury the Bottle With Me” (Cochran/McCall)
2. “Skip A Rope” (Moran/Tubb)
3. “Ace of Spades” (Kilmister/Clarke/Taylor)
4. “It’s Dark (In My Heart)” (L. Hazlewood)
5. “Run for Your Life” (Lennon/McCartney)
6. “Photograph” (Chris Bailey)
7. “Yesterday Is Here” (Waits/Brennan)
8. “I’ll Die Happy” (J. C. Hendricks)
9. “Wings of A Dove” (Ferguson)
10. “If You Were A Viper” (Rosetta Howard)
11. “Wild and Blue” (J. Scott Sherill)
12. “Diamonds Don’t Mean A Thing” (Shadrick/Smith)
Phantom track: “Freebird” (A. Collins/R. v. Zant)

I’m not going to even pretend that I know where all these songs come from. However, those that I do recognize make my eyes pop to see on the same album. The Beatles, Motörhead, Tom Waits, Lynyrd Skynyrd? The variety is quite astonishing.

Now, the country western genre is a variety of music that I typically avoid at all costs. I really can’t stand most of it. But, I have to confess, a few of these cuts really grab me. “Ace of Spades” lends itself very well to the selected style; the way Jever Mountain Boys arrange this song into a Western/bluegrass style conjures up old West saloons and unshaven gunslingers. It works perfectly. While I usually take umbrage at anyone covering Tom Waits songs (probably owing to Rod Stewart’s rendition of “Downtown Train”), the Boys handle it quite well. Their version of “Yesterday Is Here” is probably one of the better covers of any Waits song I’ve heard, plus they get bonus points for reaching for the not-so-obvious song to cover. “I’ll Die Happy” is a fun track, featuring some voice-acting between Hacke and Louisa Bradshaw in the middle. Phantom track “Freebird” features some sounds of assorted improvised Neubauten-style scrap metal striking and breaking glass in the background about halfway through and continuing until the song is almost over; the liner notes only list this as “domestic percussion,” whatever the heck that means, so I really have no clue as to what they were using to achieve this effect. I don’t really care, because this is probably the only version of “Freebird” that I will ever in my life confess to liking.

Aside from that, I haven’t much to say. I don’t care for the genre, and the album is more of an oddity. But it’s an oddity dripping with character. Even though it’s for the most part not my thing, I can’t help but respect this album. Also, I have tremendous respect for artists that pursue multiple genres; by doing so, they show how many layers they have to their persona. Jumping from style to style keeps the musician fresh and unpredictable, as opposed to becoming a has-been jammed in one gutter that smells like rotting and irrelevant hit singles from decades prior (like some other musicians I can name). Unfortunately, since I can’t find any more information (in English) on Jever Mountain Boys, I can only assume they are no longer playing together and thus will most likely not be releasing any further albums. As for Bury the Bottle With Me, the Boys pursued these songs with spirit and produced an album that is thoroughly enjoyable. Actually, the more I listened, the more I found myself addicted to it. I can only recommend that you pick it up if you are lucky enough to find it and give it at least a chance. Bury the Bottle With Me is so quirky you just might learn to love it.



Alexander Hacke’s website and myspace, which each have samples from Bury the Bottle With Me