DR. QUELL, Disco, die neue Wissenschaft, 1983

Posted: May 27, 2010 | Author: mischalke04 | Filed under: 80s | Tags: University | 2 Comments

Just because I know you love it so much, here´s more disco. I have never been to university, but I guees if your´re a student, it´s perfect. Disco, die neue Wissenschaft (disco, the new science) is about a disco university where all the subjects are disco-related. Universität, actually the a-side, is about college life.

A great German novelty record.

DR. QUELL, Disco, die neue Wissenschaft, 1983

DR.QUELL, Universität, 1983

ROSY ROSY, 100% Polyester, 1981

Posted: May 27, 2010 | Author: mischalke04 | Filed under: 80s | 5 Comments

“No cult records” was what I promised last time but Rosy Rosy is as close as it gets to a German cult artist. However, this record has never been re-released as far as I know, so I guess I´m still true to my guidelines.

Rosemarie Heinikel , born 1949, is a German actress, singer and author. Calling herself Rosy Rosy she became an icon of German subculture. Like Uschi Obermeier, she lived in a commune, befriended Donovan and Frank Zappa, did some early coffee-table book porn (Softgirls, 1970) and wrote her first autobiography Rosy Rosy in 1971. She sang with krautrockers Guru Guru and in 1968 recorded her first single with “The Inner Space”, produced by Irmin Schmidt, one of the founders of Can.

I haven´t read any of her autobiographies, this is just translated from her German Wikipedia, but her credentials are as cool as you could get in Germany at the time. The cult group “The Inner Space” shortly developed into Can. Their complete output has been re-released last year on CD and 180gr vinyl by Wah Wah Records.

In 1981 she wrote the lyrics and the music to these two introspective songs, produced by Achim Reichel of Rattles fame. A little bit on the Nico side of singing she reflects sarcastically about her role as a sex-symbol.

And what a hottie she was and I bet still is…

ROSY ROSY, 100% Polyester, 1981

ROSY ROSY, Erste Liebe, 1981

BOB BURROWS, I´m A Skunk, 1980

Posted: May 27, 2010 | Author: mischalke04 | Filed under: 80s | 1 Comment

I´m A Skunk sounds like Oingo Boingo, kinda between new wave and punk. Like a lot of punk novelty records this was more punk than a lot of real punk records were. It´s still more stupid, more silly and more strange than most punk records today. The sleeve also is a strange affair, it doesn´t give away what kind of music might be on the record. It´s probably also one of the reasons why it flopped and why I couldn´t find out anything about the record on the internet. The German Hansa label still is a treasure trove of forgotten music because they put out so many weird one-off records.

And they knew it…

BOB BURROWS, I´m A Skunk, 1980

BOB BURROWS, Strange Affair, 1980

ERIC BLAKE, 80´s Girl, 1981

Posted: May 27, 2010 | Author: mischalke04 | Filed under: 80s | 4 Comments

Just to add some “good” music, I had this record digitized and scanned a couple of weeks ago and wanted to post it together with the other 80´s records. Since then the Short Sharp Kick In The Teeth blog beat me to it and posted these songs before I did. I swear, before that there was no trace of the record on the internet. At least this German release has a diffrent sleeve so I´m going to post it anyway. The British EP has one additional song and a much nicer glossy gatefold sleeve.

Eric Blake were from Essex and as the info says their lead singer Julie Harding was 17 years old at the time. Other group members were Alan Baker, Ian McKenzie and Mick Fanning. 80´s Girl is a nice catchy powerpop song whereas Born To Be Special is poppy ska.

ERIC BLAKE, 80´s Girl, 1981

ERIC BLAKE, Born To Be Special, 1981

THE PERFID´S, Radio Continental, 1982

Posted: May 4, 2010 | Author: mischalke04 | Filed under: 80s, Private Pressings, Switzerland | Tags: NWBHM, Zürich | 7 Comments

When I started this blog three years ago my ambition was to explore new territory and to only “publish” material that has never entered the digital world. As much as I like the cool music of fabulous record labels like Bear Family, Charly and Ace, it would be pointless to try to find obscure stuff in their field. They and many other re-issue labels went out of their way to re-discover lost music in the 70´s and 80´s. Posting (“re-releasing”) music that they re-discovered 30 years ago didn´t pose a challenge, so my focus was on material that is still too bad or strange to ever be considered for re-release by a proper record label. Music that seems to have no commercial value today: private pressings, advertisement records or just plain weird stuff. Mostly no rockabilly, rock´n´roll, garage or soul music. No cult stuff.

Over time I have gotten less strict about my posting policies because I felt that maybe people would like to listen to more “good” music and also posted single songs (albeit digitized from my original 45´s) that had previously been re-released. Basically I turned into a DJ again, something I wanted to get away from when I started this blog.

I also got softer, because nobody else seems to care about any kind of “music blogging ethics” anyway. Blogs are the new Napster and I´m in the same boat if I like it or not. Posting material that I do not hold a copyright of, no matter how obscure it might be, is just as illegal as posting a brand new CD.

Still so far I have only gotten supportive feedback from people involved with some of the records I posted. Some even said, that they´re glad I did, because they never had a digital version of their music. A lot of artist don´t hold the copyrights to their own music anyway and are simply glad that somebody cares enough to put it out there. Unless they were cult artists or played a cult style a re-release of their music is very unlikely. I don´t really care about the legal issues, but to make it a little more exciting for me again and to get a better conscience about blogging, I will return to my initial restrictive guidelines. So expect a lot of bad records to be coming in the future…

This private pressing of the Perfid´s from Zürich, Switzerland is one such record that has never been re-released. It most probably would have, if it was in a cult style like punk or metal, but it is neither and both. Not metal enough to be metal and not punk enough to be punk. That said, it´s not a bad record at all, in fact I like it a lot. The cool thing is that they sing in a Swiss dialect that I can only understand partially, like the intro to their theme song that states that they started the group in January 1981. Besides that, I don´t know anything about this group simply because there is nothing to be found about them on the internet. Check for yourself: if you´ll search for them, you´ll find this post.

THE PERFID´S, Radio Continental, 1982

THE PERFID´S, Sackgass, 1982

THE PERFID´S, Perfid´s, 1982

BERLINER KABARETT KLIMPERKASTEN, Vorbei, 1981

Posted: April 16, 2010 | Author: mischalke04 | Filed under: 80s, Berlin Records | Leave a comment

I bought this last week for 50 cents in a thrift store. Gerald Mann is still working in Berlin today as is Jerry Roschak and the troupe of the Berlin cabaret Klimperkasten.This record hasn´t been re-released in almost 30 years and I don´t think it ever will.

I really like the song Vorbei (past). It´s from one of the many Klimperkasten cabaret plays and has the singers reminiscing about past times. It gets interesting when they get to the memories of their idealistic political ideas of the 60´s.

BERNHARD FRANK, Eingeladen, 1983

Posted: April 2, 2010 | Author: mischalke04 | Filed under: 80s, Berlin Records, Cartoon Sleeves, Comedy | 3 Comments

Happy Easter everyone! It´s springtime and finally Berlin is nice and sunny. Too bad I have to stay in all the time to work but I´m not complaining. It did not leave too much time to work on this blog though and I hope I´ll do better this month. So far it doesn´t look like it.

Found this 45 in a record store for 1 Euro a couple of weeks ago. It´s a little embarrassing but the fact that I bought it tells a lot about me. Apart from the much saner image that I might have of myself, I really do seem to be one of those “completist” collectors. I would buy any record Bernhard Frank made, even if it was really, really bad.

And this is bad. Oh man, Bernhard Frank, what did you think?!! This is a long way from his cool stuff. Then again I really like this record too. Non-German speaking people might miss some of the meaning, but there are some pretty funny lines in Eingeladen (Invited to the party of Dieter and Susi). The b-side Mit anderen Worten ( In other words) is pretty standard German Schlager fare but I still feel that Bernhard Frank can do no wrong. Bernhard Frank only wrote good songs, even if they were bad.

The local Berlin Hansa label was founded in 1964 by Christian Bruhn and the sons of Will Meisel Thomas and Peter Meisel. In 1973 they started a sub-label to promote artists and music that were a little more off-the-beaten-path than their mainstream material: der andere song (The other song).

The sleeve was designed by popular cartoonist Arne (Arne Leihberg, 1912- 1988), longtime contributer to the biggest Berlin newspaper.

Eingeladen is bad, but good bad. Simply very, very catchy, so beware: listen at your own risk. You´ll have a hard time getting the song out of your ears again…