NFS come together in Rome in 2014 when Mike Botula, bass player from California from the school of punk rock, at the time leader of Inbred Knucklehead, with wich he played on international stages including Sziget Festival 2014, met Giuseppe Cassa, soul/blues guitarist from Molise with experience in groups of all different kinds, and most of all fond of jug bands and home-made instruments, that he is delighted to design and build.
No long after the group joins Swiss-Italian bassist Gabriele Hintermann, coming from “Errichetta Underground” band of Balkan music with which he participated in several Italian and European festivals.
Now they were only missing the rhythm section, and Giuseppe immediately thinks to an old roommate of college days that not having a drum set was used to play pots and pans, who better for a jug band! And that’s how Giuseppe Petti joined the band with his washboard and other homemade percussions finally completing the lineup.
The Band respecting the tradition of jug band began performing as buskers on the streets of Rome, immediately attracting the curiosity and enthusiasm of the audience. In short, the rumor spreads and start coming many requests from clubs in Rome and elsewhere, and invitations to participate in various festivals.
The intresting thing about the band, other than the sound, a mix of generes riminescent of vintage, are the instruments used: washboard, cigarbox, watherin can-o-phone among other curious homemade stuff, using objects found in the kitchen, garage or hardware store.
In a time when everything is dominated by technology, and where computers and software are used to generate sounds, emulate real instruments and even take their place, eliminating them and synthetically replacing the figure of the instrumentalist, NFS dig into the more animal, more human aspect of music, and help to emerge that curious, childlike spirit that causes musiciansto tap rhythms on any surface, or to blow on anything tubular that may make sound, to pick any kind of elastic band to see what kind of note it produces, making musical instruments out of objects that were created with a whole other purpose, because you can survive without an instrument, but you can’t live without music.
There are two things that machines can not replicate: Touch and errors. With the touch we can improve, but we do many errors, and we like to keep them to remind us that we are human and that our music is “handmade”.
No Funny Stuff 