JOCO DEV SEXTETT, Das einzige, was mir übrig blieb, 1969

 In the late 90s, coming from Hamburg I was really crazy about East-European beat music and bought a lot of records for very little money. Nobody wanted this stuff. People from East-Berlin were still throwing out their old East-German history to make room for “cooler” CD’s from the “West”. This is a really nice organ driven beat song with a good guitar break, very much like the British group the Zombies. Actually there are two songs here, a vocal, and following without pause, a very nice short instrumental number in the same style. The other songs on the record are rather boring pop songs by other artists, so I left them out.

( Pictured here is the host of “Die Notenbank” , actress Evelyn Opoczynski presenting “The Continentals” from Berlin)

“Die Notenbank” was a East-German TV-show similar to the West-German “Beat-Club” that decidedly featured amateur groups and singers. The Joco Dev Sextett from Berlin played in the very first show from 1969. Joco Dev was short for the initial band members Jörg, Conny and Detlef. This six song flexi-disc EP was issued by the daily newspaper “Junge Welt” following the first episode of “Die Notenbank”. Contrary to other East-European states all Beat music was officially banned in East-Germany in December 1965. This record was released after the political climate slowly changed again in the late 60s. Of course the groups had to sing in German now but suddenly a lot of groups who had survived the ban had a chance to come out of their forced obscurity

As much as I like the Ersatz-Beat of the “Theo Schumann-Combo” and the “Thomas Natschinski Gruppe”, it seems that by 1969 even the officials couldn`t hold back the youth any longer. Joco Dev`s bass player Jörg Schenkel started out in the Diana Show Quartett from Berlin who played a great number of shows around `64 and `65. Sadly they were never allowed to record and eventually banned.

(pictured in the background here is actor Henry Hübchen singing with “Die Klosterbrüder” from Magdeburg)

Jörg Schenkel made a cool website about the story of the Joco Dev Sextett with great Photos ( also from the first “Notenbank” show!) and Mp3s:www.jocodev.de

The pictures here are from a article about “Die Notenbank” from the East-German “Melodie und Rhythmus” magazine from January 1971.

JOCO DEV SEXTETT, Das einzige, was mir übrig blieb, 1969