Space Germs Have Attacked My Brain

On a couple of occasions back in March, I was walking down Government Street and came across a trio of street musicians playing in front of the Eddie Bauer store. I had interviewed a couple of them individually as solo artists, and now, here they were playing in a bouncy little combo called Spatiu Germene, which I was told is Romanian for “Space Germs”. Comprised of Levon (fiddle), Gabriel (guitar) and Blaine (accordion), they are usually accompanied by Ranger, their road manager / attorney. As well as playing at the Eddie Bauer spot, I have also seen them playing at the entrance several times at the entrance to Fan Tan Alley in Chinatown.

Gabe had somewhere else to go, but I was able to arrange an interview with Levon and Blaine [under the watchful eye of Ranger], and I tried to get a little background on the group.

I started by reminding Levon that I thought when I had interviewed him once before, he’d told me his name was ‘Mack’. “That was my clone,” he said “Yeah, his name was Mack, he was a pretty interesting character. It’s kind of a long story, and I’m really not allowed to say, but uh, let’s just say it was an experiment gone wrong and we just decided to split our losses.”
I commented that the music he was doing with the group was certainly very different from what Mack was doing. “Yeah, my clone is a kind of a rambler,” he said. “I don’t know what happened in the experiment, but he might’ve actually got [some] old mountain rambler genes.”

For his part, Blaine recalled my having done an interview with him. “Yeah, that was me,” he said "But that was a cover for…”
At this point Levon interrupted and said “This time we’re gonna tell you the truth. That was a cover, that [wasn’t] the real story. He was under witness protection for a while, and had to use that story, but now that he’s safe again, uh, he was actually raised by a pack of wolves in Siberia, in Russia, and that’s where he met Ranger, [who’s] like a brother to him.”

Levon and Blaine continued to tell me how the group had gotten together. Their convoluted story involved, among other things, futuristic fortune tellers, space aliens, crop circles, trailer parks in Quesnel, and crystals. The more they told me, and the more variations there were to their fantastic ramblings, I began to fear that maybe this was some kind of elaborate dupe on their part, to confuse me and then attack and take control of my brain.

Needless to say, editing the interview transcript into a viable blog post was quite a long frustrating process. I had given up on the task a number of times, but always felt somehow compelled to come back to it and try again. After several weeks, I think I have finally succeeded. You be the judge.

Whatever their story, the one thing that can be counted on when you come upon Spatiu Germene, is that you will probably find yourself being drawn to their repertoire of catchy, upbeat renderings of eastern European gypsy-jazz and ethnic-folk music. They also have a few tunes in their repertoire that are sure to be familiar to some of the passersby, including Hava Nagila and Bella Ciao.
Blaine said “We do a very souped up version of that [Bella Ciao],” and Levon added “It gets pretty fast [and] it’s pretty fun.”
As well the guys have got some original tunes. Levon said “We just wrote a song for our friend’s birthday party, it’s called Catherine’s Song. That’s one of our nicer songs.”

I haven’t seen them in recent days, so they may be out of town, but if they return, and you manage to see them in your wanderings downtown, I'm sure you'll be thoroughly entertained, although you might want to get your innoculations first.

In the meantime you can see a video of them at the following link:
Spatiu Germene busking on Government Street