It’s a shame that none of you were able to join me at The Ex show at Lee’s on Saturday night. It was without exaggeration (one of) the most mind blowing shows I have been to in my life. I spent the evening gobsmacked, jawdropped, thrusting my fist in the air, hooting and hollering or just standing there dumbstruck with a stupid grin plastered across my intoxicated face.

The Ex showed up as a four piece. Terrie Ex and Andy Ex on Guitars, Katerina on Drums, and GW Sok on vocals. The Ex have been through a morphing line up since their forming in 1979 when they hit the scene with their version of a hard hitting Amsterdam protest punk sound. Over the years the sound has ventured into experimental and jazz but what they showed up with on Saturday night was full-on angry punk.

The talent and passion on stage was astounding. The band was the tightest I have ever seen in such a furious performance and the night was filled with guitar sounds, the likes of which I have never heard. I figure that the Ex must have a combined age of a couple of centuries and in case, must have about a century of combined performance under their belts, and it shows. There was not a hint of complacency in their musical message, but rather, their proficiency as musicians shone through the entire performance.

It was inspiring to see musicians in their 40’s & 50’s putting out music that is still so impassioned and unencumbered by commercialization. On the surface, on might think that the show would have been anachronistic but on the contrary the music, a combination of new and old, came across more relevant and dire than any other I have ever encountered.

…”a rough calculation makes it very clear that within a 100 years we all be x-times as rich and x-times as fucked” shouts Sok through a small megaphone. An eerie reminder that perhaps we are at more than just another gig at Lee’s

The evening was a dreamscape of controlled chaos. A purity of notes and sounds that were clean, crisp, articulate but filled with anger, rage and a deep seated belief that the world is going to hell in a hen basket, half the world is fucking the other half and we are all fucking our kids, their kids and mother earth.