After the Bazillus basement was handed over to me as a tenant after 24 years, we were able to start planning the club.
The LVZ (Real Estate Administration of the City of Zurich) handed over the conversion to the Office for Structural Engineering of the City of Zurich. The planning phase for the new Bazillus began in May 2003.
The costs for the conversion were borne by LVZ and the future rent was then calculated from the actual final costs. Initially, we assumed construction costs of about CHF 400,000. The spoilsport was, as usually, the departement of «Umwelt und Gesundheitsschutz Zürich» (formerly called Health Police).
In spring 2004 Dieter Schärer (president of the "Förderverein BazillusKlub") joined us again, because now it was about the total costs and finally about the monthly club rent, which the club had to pay. Whenever public funds were granted for the Bazillus, an association had to be established for legal reasons. Dieter and his wife Jolanda organized from their home office in Gallustrasse all the club activities with all the trimmings, as it should be. At the same time, Dieter was also responsible for all technical matters in the club, for example, to ensure that the ventilation and the fecal pump functioned properly. In addition, he also took care of everything administrative, like cash accounting, bookkeeping, etc.
See also Stories > Förderverein BazillusKlub
In the reconstruction everything had to be up to standard and the estimated CHF 640'000 was then budgeted a lot higher. Nobody could know, for example, that the ventilation system for a smokers' pub would cost CHF 110'000. A few years later, we had the problem with the smoking ban that the concert visitors went out into the street during the breaks and thus important revenues at the bar were missing.
The health department should have paid us back half of the costs!
We are not complaining, because on the part of the LVZ there was a lot of goodwill from the beginning and without their internal decision to professionally develop this basement and to take over the investment costs, the last Bazillus Club would never have come into being.
Thanks to the recurring contributions from the city of Zurich, Migros and ZKB and the membership fees, we were able to pull off our "ad hoc concerts" at least 1-2 times a week.
After the closure of the Bazillus Hirschen I started in 1988 with the "B-Flat " clubs and productions and this "label" was after 16 years in the "scene" at that time quite well known. But there was also a jazz club "B-Flat" in Berlin and in Bern someone had stolen my name, whereupon I complained to the makers. They just thought the name was "cool" and thought nothing more of it. They then changed their concert series to "Bee-Flat" and from then on a bee with a honey bucket flew from left to right on their website.
Moreover, the LVZ always assumed that the Bazillus Workshop would logically become a Bazillus Club. After all, they didn't know that illegal B-flat sessions had been taking place in the basement for over 5 years.
Understandably, those responsible for the LVZ also demanded collateral. Especially from the city. The head of culture Jean-Pierre Hoby immediately stood up for us and guaranteed the support of the city. All this took place in 2003. In addition, we had to have an association again. I met with my old buddy Dieter Schärer in 2003 and he offered for the third time to take over the whole work of the association.
Since the new Bazillus should not become a competitor to the club «Moods», I created the addition "Ad Hoc Live Club".
We opened the club on Friday, December 3 for our club scene with the band "Nurotic Soul Pearls" and on the second evening there was an unofficial celebration with us initiators, the Bazillus Association Board, the builders LVZ (Liegenschaften-Verwaltung), and the Office for Structural Engineering, the architects and future patrons and representatives of the city.
Fortunately, I was able to persuade one of the most famous jazz writers in the German-speaking area, Peter Rüedi, to hold the opening speech personally at the lectern…
The Bazillus did not book any existing bands, but for each concert different musicians were chosen, who in turn gave their best impromptu in front of a small audience. All concerts were recorded directly from the mixing desk and at a certain point I edited or remixed and uploaded them to the Bazillusplayer.
The concept was more or less taken over from "B-Flat III" seamlessly and for the most part.
For a while I had put together the ad hoc groups. Then, over time, more and more musicians took over the program as "residents" and put together their ad hocs according to their own taste.
The beginning was made by the keyboarder Valentin Bächi (Repos). Valentin was also our first soundman for a long time.
In the B-flat venues, there were only a few jazz musicians left. The scene had changed and the generations (the new "fresh audience") as well.
So in the beginning of 2004 we had jazz once a week at Bazillus. But also here it was rather funky-jazz, which could be heard on vinyl in DJ-clubs all over the city. It was not meant to compete with Moods or the free scene, such as the "Werkstatt für improvisierte Musik - WIM", Fabrikjazz, etc.
With generations, however, the old, ancestral audience also disappears and so it happened that the partly demanded, high fees and too little audience caused us to cancel "Jazz im Bazillus".
Now and then there were still jazz concerts.
So from that time on the concept was generally or mostly "rhythm affine based", on repetitive beats with real drummers, but also pre-produced material with e.g. MPC with equal instrumentalists. With horns, one also automatically thinks of classic sax solos…Our residents were those who no longer acted with solos (with subsequent clapping), but the instruments were rather and mostly used compositionally. "Just brötzing" (Freejazzer Peter Brötzmann) or simply "breckering" (Michael Brecker) was no longer in it and was considered self-centered by most residents.
Here in loose succession the most important residentgroups:
Fusion Lounge -
Tronic Repoblic
Flava Sauce
Dee Day Dub
3D Sound Lab
Mash Dub
Der grosse Bär
Lauschangriff
Tomasi & Di Katz
Share the Stage
ProReTor
Nurotic Sound
Fonk Docterz
7 projects with J.P. Bourelly
Vault
Ethnotronical Junk-Funk
Märklin Ad Hoc
Stade
Catdogs & Millionaire
Freeform Arkestra
Aravena’s Arena
Monkey Lounge Act
Not to be forgotten, of course, were all the individual ad hoc's, which musically led to a lot of mixed states.
In September 2005 Nik Bärtsch organized his successful Monday series "Mondays: Ritual Groove Music" for the first time, which was an important part for our club. The band played every Monday until August 2009 and then moved to their own club "Exil".
But Nik was already part of the B-Flat I+II in the beginning of the nineties: see => Lupe => People => Nik Bärtsch
Nik had been able to create a solid basis for his artistic venture over four years with his series 250 x.
He had upgraded our club immensely with his Montagritual and also addressed a completely new audience.
In the meantime, the operating concept had solidified:
Monday: Ritual Groove Music
Thursday: Electric Beatz and Residents
Friday: Party rentals and also other residents
Saturday: the same
Friday and Saturday nights were not part of the regular Bazillus ad hoc program.
So, in order to pay the high monthly rent, we were forced to rent out the room on Fri/Sat for parties and guest concerts. Unfortunately, after our opening, the LVZ had subsequently installed two apartments in the top attic. Although the two new tenants contractually agreed that there was a music club in the basement, they still kept calling the police. This was a rather annoying affair for us in the long run. I, now 68 years old, no longer had the nerve to settle this matter somehow. It was certainly also a reason that I inwardly decided to quit.
The new, young tenants of today's "Kauz" club had more power in their satchels. It went to the rental court and the operators won in their favor and the tenants had to vacate their apartment.
Nevertheless: the last club certainly came closest to my ideas of what "Bazillus" should be. I am very glad, we recorded the ad hoc concerts and loaded them into the Bazillus music player. Even today, the musicians involved remember this time with pleasure.
Once again, we simply lacked an amount of about Fr. 800,000 to bring the rent down to almost zero. Then we could have continued easy only with projects and workshops. Without sales parties, which only bring problems.
Zurich is too expensive for the Bazillus idea.
