Herbstwind (Autumn Wind)

Fehlfarben were one of the most impressive bands in the German punk years. Formed in Düsseldorf in 1979 by members of local punk bands like Mittagspause, DAF and Der Plan after they came back from a trip to London where they saw The Teardrops Explodes. And they started something new - they combined the rough sound of punk with German lyrics. Their first album Monarchie und Alltag is still a classic and the song Paul ist tot a highlight from these days. I always had a fondness to this band and saw them several times during the last decades. But sadly they made never a record that was that successful like their debut. More than 30 years ago they released Xenophobia an album that had class and style because they moved ahead from their early sound and moved to a different kind of sound. More guitar riffs and partial with reduced speed but added with cryptic lyrics and political statement they made in 2012 a retro sound that could lead into future.

Fehlfarben - Herbstwind

Synthesist

A few days ago I got the news that Harald Grosskopf's album Synthesists from 1980 was re-released as an anniversary edition. For this reason I searched my collection because I am sure I owned a vinyl copy long time ago. Sadly I couldn't find it any more. Probably it one of those record I lend an never got back. Grosskopf is one of the forgotten pioneers of Krautrock, played drums with Ash Ra Temple, worked a lot with Klaus Schulze and session musician for several untold bands of the  NDW in the early 80's. Finally he arrived in the ambient scene to release an album from time to time. His songs mostly have everything Krautrock and kosmische Musik stands for. Steady rolling drums prepare the easy synthesizer escapades by Grosskopf. Another great re-release I didn't expected.

Harald Grosskopf - Synthesist

This edition features also various cover versions of his songs. One is done by Kurt Dahlke aka Pyrolator founding member of DAF, Fehlfarben and Der Plan - all pioneers of new German music in the late 70`s.

Pyrolator - Synthesist

Another version was done by Prau Frick, a Berlin based musician and producer. I think I said it before. You can recognize a good song by it's cover versions.

Paul Frick - Synthesist

Schatten Voraus

In the times when punk broke and new wave began to conquer the world the music print medias mostly ignored it or told us that it was just another trend of the year and will be gone soon. The only magazine that argued with this in Germany in 1979 was SOUNDS (SPEX as the main medium for new music appeared one year later). I remember the discourses in the editorial office of the magazine about the new music and the old ones that stuck in their old musical taste praising all the yesterdays music as surpassing. As a part of the DIY-culture two SOUNDS editors formed with  Holger Hiller (shortly later co-former of Fehlfarben) a band called Geisterfahrer (wrong-way driver). Their first album is called Schatten Voraus (Shades Ahead) and a typical product of German new wave. It is a mixture of cold-wave and gothic rock that prepared the road for dark-wave. Their music was groundbreaking in Germany and sadly they never got the critical acclaim they should have and it is worth to remember them. Maybe it is the start of small series.

Geisterfahrer - Das Ufer
Geisterfahrer - Sand am Meer
Geisterfahrer - Vertrauen

Detective

One more day in the office and then time enough for the weekend to relax and fill up the battery again. This week was less stressful than the weeks before. So I have time enough to listen to some new music that arrived during the last days. One of the is a post-punk band from Münster, Germany, called Messer (knife). It is a band that is on duty for more than five years and are based on classic post-punk band like Fehlfarben in the early 80's. These days they released a new album and this a leading track from it. They use to have a succint bass and a headstrong, experimental guitar. It is a very dark and monotone sound - not for everybody's ears but something new and interesting in these days.

This song is from their album two years ago and still worth to listen.

Funky Friday

Der Moderne Man (The Modern Man) was a post-punk band from Hannover, Germany. They were in the early 80s at the wrong place at the wrong time. Too late for classic punk and thrown in the pot of the so called fucking Neue Deutsche Welle. I saw them once life and they were pure New Wave. This song is not representative for them because they most play the classic style with a dominant bass and a narrowed guitar. This 12-inch was a remix that was really new in the 80s because they were one of the first that used to get a funky bass into their sound (Fehlfarben, another years later did it very well also). I used to play this song often when I was DJ-ing in these days.

Enjoy and have a fantastic weekend.

Fehlfarben Again

In addition to my yesterday's post I got the news that Fehlfarben will release their new album these days. I found some snippets on Soundcloud and this video on youtube. What I heard was a more relaxed version of their former sound. Still having that deep new wave bass and the typical guitar licks. And singer Peter Hein is still an angry man, complaining about the things he don't like in this world.

This man above is the very young Josef Stalin in the times he was revolutionary - times before he turned into a mass-murder.

What Do I get?

Yesterday I was out with my former wife into some pubs we used to frequent often. We met a lot of people we used to stay with them for a longer/less time during the last decades. It was funny to talk to them after a few years and we had a real good time. When I came home I had a little blues and I played myself a couple of songs from decades long gone by. I don't know why but I was in the mood to listen to Fehlfarben a band from the late 70s that mean a lot to me. They made maybe the definitive sound of the German punk/new wave. Inspired by the British groups in this era they were heroes to us  because they formulated what we thought (I hope Dirk will agree). Paul ist tod is the main statement for our generation.

What I want to have I do not agree and what I cannot get like to me. I would like to get what I to what I am dreaming of.

It's reduced to a pinball game. Paul means that you play pinball with two persons, one on the right and one on the left. And finally it means, that playing together is over right now.

Fehlfarben - Paul ist tod (Paul is dead)

The Foreign Corresondent Returns - Stories About German (Rock) Music # 50

The will be the last post in this series. As said, I couldn't imagine that this series continued until now. I offered you a big bunch of music that was made by German musicians - in a lot of different styles all over the last 40 years. How to finish this series? That was the question I asked myself a lot of times. Should I feature my favorite artist, album, song or what ever? Finally I decided to none of them. Let me show you some artists/songs that came out the last years or maybe long time ago. All of them mean a lot to me in any way. So thank you for following me during the last year in this series. And I'm sure the foreign correspondent will return again if there is something new that is worth listening to.

The Foreign Correspondent - Stories About German Rock Music # 28

Robert Görl, Gabi Delgado-López, Kurt Dahlke, Michael Kemner and Wolfgang Spelmanns formed in 1979 a band that made history. Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft (or only DAF) was known as the pioneers and inspiration of electro-punk, electronic body music and house music. Their synthesizer bass-lines were also a kind of blueprint of the later acid house music. Deeply based in the late 1970s Düsseldorf punk scene they created their on do-it-yourself thing. Very new was that they used mainly synthesizers instead of classical instruments. Also their songs are very different to the ones that played in this scene. Based on a constant rhythm they put a bass-line to push the song forward.

They are till this day probably the only ones which accommodated not only dictators, but also the Messiah in a pop song: They sang in her biggest hit about 1981 the lines "dance Mussolini, and then the communism, and now Adolf Hitler, and now Jesus Christ". The republic stood on the head: Two musicians gave concerts on which one was hidden behind a technology and keyboard tower and the other in the stage edge German slogans nagged in the mike whose provocation degree reached his high point with the hit single "Mussolini".

They pull their interest in musical energy and the joy in provoking from the punk movement. When Robert Görl and Gabi Delgado become acquainted in 1978 in Dusseldorf, the music bacillus has struck them already both. Though the Görl born in 1955 is not yet a member of a volume, however, can look back at a classical education in the inhabitant on the jazz college of music in Graz. Delgado, three years younger, is Spaniard by birth and also eager follower of the growing English punk wave. The meeting place of the hour for the new punk scene of Düsseldorf is the Ratinger Hof. There some of the first German punk groups already appear like Charley's Girls, Male, ZK and Mittagspause, from which to itself later among other things the Fehlfarben which form of croup and Die Toten Hosen. After a short time Dahlke was substituted by Chrislo Haas on keyboards when he moved to Der Plan. 

The quintet also wants to break out spatially and, hence, decides to move in the punk metropolis London. There is a risqué step for five impecunious Jung's musicians who know the English scene up to now only from magazines. However, already after few club shows Daniel Miller discovers the gang and binds them as the second Act to Fad Gadget to his young courage label. There appears in March, 1980 the single "Kebab dreams" and in August with the "little ones And The bad persons" the second DAF album which is at the same time the first courage album publication. A successful starting signal for during the following years as a pointing the way setting up electronics label.

Although on the "Die Kleinen und die Bösen" still guitar and bass are for hearing and the tape attains her pioneer's status only with the following album, the electronic store which soon characterises the tape becomes evident already here. There comes a cover which provides with his Soviet propaganda motives just in England for some sensation, particularly as it comes of a German volume. However, DAF still sound organic enough to go as a pregroup with The case on tour. After bassist Kemner who leaves the troop already before the album admission and joins in Germany to the false colours Haas also has enough of the wild life on the island and founds with Beate Bartel (Ex-Mania D.) the Liaisons Dangereuses.

Some of the songs Which Mussolini („dance Mussolini“), for example, the homoerotic piece of Der Räuber und der Prinz (the robber and the prince), Greif nach den Sternen (grabbing after the stars), die Götter sind weiß (the gods are white) or Ein bischen Krieg (a little war) were textually provoking. Suitably to the songs was also her image. Just Mussolini and her appearance in the leather outfit and short, shaven haircut as a kind „Germanic counterpart of Grace Jones“ introduced reproaches in them over and over again to be fascists. Also the texts didn't shrink back which before worn vocabulary from hit kitsch, home films and NS mythology , did not strengthen this reproach. DAF have never defined her political position in the media clearly. They mentioned merely that her stylistic range reached „at least, from the Anarcho-Skin to disco Nazi“ and that they are „simply too with relish for fascists“.

It's a band you ought to listen to - real pioneers in their genre.

Enjoy and have a good weekend people.

DAF - Verschwende Deine Jugend (Waste your youth)
DAF - Die Götter Sind Weiss (The gods are white)
DAF - Der Räuber und der Prinz (the robber and the prince)
DAF - Kebabträume
DAF - Der Mussolini

The Foreign Correspondent - Stories About German Rock Music # 1

Dirk from over at Sexy Loser wrote a very good post about German bands that he watched live, that might not known outside Germany. So I take this post to start a new series about German bands from the past until nowadays. I don't have a final criterion for selecting the bands I will write about. Not only bands singing in German language but  also bands who did it in English language or only instrumentals. So be ready to be surprised what's coming up, listen and maybe give a comment.

I will start with a band that formed in 1979 in Düsseldorf and Wuppertal when the ideas of punk and New Wave arrived from Great Britain in Germany. The main idea was that everybody is able to form and practice a band - following the three-chord rule: do it yourself. Most members played together in a local band from Düsseldorf called Mittagspause. They sounded a little bit of monotone but what's made them famous was their singer Peter Hein. Nobody else had this emotional voice in bands that raised up in the late 1970s/early 18980s.

Fehlfarben origin sound was very influenced by ska music - but they get rid of it after signing a contract with EMI. From this on they were outlawed of the local scene and they were called the betrayer of the punk movement. Their first record was released in  1980 called 'Monarchie und Alltag' (monarchy and all day life) and a monster of album. This was the first successful record from a German band singing in their native language. Although most of the songs were very punk-styled they got big success with their single 'Es geht voran' even it was untypical for their sound, because the song based on a Chic-like funky riff.

All of the songs were written by the band exept 'Militürk' - a cover version of a song by Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft (DAF). This is another story to be told along the series. Over the years this record ist still worth to listen again and a lot of songs like 'Paul ist tot', 'Grauschleier', 'Das sind Geschichten' und 'Das war vor Jahren' are still one of my favorites in German music. Saw them once life in a small, sweaty and full smoked club in Stuttgart and it was amazing what power they had.

After the release lead singer Peter Hein left the band to look out for a regular job with a steady income. The band released two more regular records in which the changed their punky roots to some kind of funky tunes but also with German lyrics. The band had a few revivals over the years with changing personal and is still on tour.

Fehlfarben - Militürk
Fehlfarben - Ein Jahr (Es geht voran)
Fehlfarben - Paul ist tot
Fehlfarben - Grauschleier