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It’s raining six out of seven days, the
food is fat and people dress shitty – where am I?
Right, England. After working in
London for a month, I now am in a small town in the Midlands and I have to say,
I prefer it to London.
London is too expensive, either too posh or too fucked up (depending on where you go) and
overrun by tourists and yuppies.
I found some areas that are nice, like Hackney
or Brixton but all in all – if you have Tokyo you don’t need to go to London…
The countryside however is nice – lots of
sheep and cows and everywhere looks like Peter Rabbit is just about to jump out
of the bushes….
I didn’t go to many shows over here – the
only bands I went to see are some friends of mine from Germany called “The Lost
Rivers”, who sound very much like Jesus and the Mary Jane, with lots of
feedback, fog on stage and shoe-gazing. Definitely worth checking out if you’re
into that kind of music. I was surprised how popular they had become, even in
London.
The other band I went to see were
London-based “Thee Spivs”, who were supposed to play at a small local festival
in Hackney. The show took place in a park and we were lucky that it was one of
those few rain-free days. However, the festival started at noon and by around
seven pm thee Spivs still hadn’t played and me and my friend were too drunk to
hang around any longer. We still saw some nice bands but I don’t remember any
names… I think one was called “The Pukes”…
But let’s start with the column. After my
little excursion into the history of Punk in Germany, I felt it was a topic too
widespread, so for the future columns I would like to go back to introducing
good German bands and today I have something very rare for you: a German Mod
band…
Contrary to England, Germany never had a
very big Mod scene. Neither in the 60s nor in the late 70s/early 80s with the
beginning of the Neo-Mod movement. Best known of the few early German Mod bands
were “Die Profis” from Duesseldorf, who later became “Start!”. And it was
Duesseldorf again which had the biggest scene, apart from Hamburg maybe. But I
don’t want to talk about Die Profis today – the band I would like you to check
out on youtube is “Stunde X”.
Stunde X weren’t around too long but left
quite an impact. Although there wasn’t a very big Mod scene, they managed to
reach all kinds of people by being on one of the best-known alternative labels
in Germany at the time: “Weserlabel”.
A Punk label by origin, Weserlabel had
started to sign bands from all kinds of genres, which was quite new at the
time, since usually all the scenes kept to themselves. I remember the
Weserlabel catalogue being sent to my parents’ house starring bands like
Rockabilly band “Rumble on the Beach”, Pop-Punk band “Barbarella”, Chanson-Punk
combo “The Lolitas” and also Stunde X.
When I first listened to them I had probably
never heard the term “Mod” before. To me they were Punk, even though they wore
suits. And I believe that many others at the time felt the same.
What also boosted their popularity was the
fact that their lyrics were in German but most of all one song: “Befreit Martin
Semmelrogge”. Martin Semmelrogge is a German actor who had gained popularity
among Punks especially for his role in the movie “Die Vorstadtkrokodile”.
Semmelrogge was mostly cast to play criminals and outcasts and also used to get
in trouble with the law frequently in real life. He was eventually jailed in
the late 80s which led to the song, which means “Release Martin Semmelrogge”.
Stunde X were also supporters of
Duesseldorf soccer club “Fortuna Duesseldorf” and wrote a song for the team,
which also contributed to their fame, at least locally
Sadly they split up after releasing only 3
EPs and one LP.
However, like many bands of that era (late
80s/early 90s) they are hard to come by these days - there is not much to find
about them on the internet but if you get hold of their classic LP “Graf Porno reitet
fuer Deutschland” don’t hesitate! In my opinion one of the best German Punk (NeoMod,
Power Pop, whatever…) records!
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