Kleenex began with a crash. It transpired one night not
long after they’d formed, in Zurich of 1978, while the germinal punk group was
onstage. They had but four tunes then—“Beri-Beri,” “Ain’t You,” “Heidi’s Head,”
“Nice”—and at early gigs they would play them over and over to small but
delighted crowds who did not want the noise to stop. When Kleenex’s original
male guitarist didn’t care to continue on as such, the late Marlene Marder
stepped up from the audience and swiftly found her place alongside bassist
Klaudia Schifferle and drummer Lislot Ha. Marder—a literal post-punk; she
delivered mail—was armed with a knowledge of two chords if not an awareness of
pitch. “Lislot didn’t know that you can tune a drum kit,” Marder once said. “We
played like this for a year, without tuned drum kits or a tuned bass or guitar.
The guys were more ambitious so they didn’t want to play with us. For us, it
was OK not because we said, ‘We’re the greatest!’ We just did as we could. Not
serious in the beginning.”
In all their chaos, those four songs were unusually taut. Kleenex made riotous music like a rubber band; it could tighten, or snap, or shoot in air. When some friends in the small Swiss punk scene released them as the Kleenex EP, word moved fast. The exuberant 45 made its way quickly to Britain, entering the orbit of John Peel as well as the Marxist intellectuals at the then-nascent Rough Trade label, beginning Kleenex’s affiliation with that bohemian London scene. “Ain’t You”—with its wiry riffs and chanted, pogoing hooks, its chic edge and abandon—fit well on Rough Trade’s 1980 Wanna Buy a Bridge? comp, alongside the scratchy Swell Maps and their similarly daring one-time tour mates, the Raincoats.
In all their chaos, those four songs were unusually taut. Kleenex made riotous music like a rubber band; it could tighten, or snap, or shoot in air. When some friends in the small Swiss punk scene released them as the Kleenex EP, word moved fast. The exuberant 45 made its way quickly to Britain, entering the orbit of John Peel as well as the Marxist intellectuals at the then-nascent Rough Trade label, beginning Kleenex’s affiliation with that bohemian London scene. “Ain’t You”—with its wiry riffs and chanted, pogoing hooks, its chic edge and abandon—fit well on Rough Trade’s 1980 Wanna Buy a Bridge? comp, alongside the scratchy Swell Maps and their similarly daring one-time tour mates, the Raincoats.