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Thursday, April 17, 2008 |
A Cartoonist Exclusive. Franz Bielmeier's new book with poems, Dichtungen, is due to be published shortly. The book will also contain a CD, released in the beige-coloured literature series of his own Rondo Label. Here's an exclusive excerpt of the CD [MP3, 5.7MB]. Music by Dorian Audersch, Martin von W. reads the text. Many thanks to tec for the background infos. 
8:33:08 AM  Literature, MP3 | |
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Sunday, April 13, 2008 |
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Saturday, April 12, 2008 |
Looks as if Clox are back in business again; they'll be playing in November at FZW Dortmund. Woohoo. Here are a few early photos of the band and here's an mp3. Many thanks to Dos Ron for the infos.
3:09:38 PM MP3 | |
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Friday, March 21, 2008 |
 Time for some more gems from Franz Bielmeier's collection. Before Mittagspause, there was Charley's Girls. The band came together sometime in 1977 and their members were Franz Bielmeier, Peter Hein, Muscha, Markus Oehlen and Peter. There's even a small Wikipedia entry about the band. In March 1978 they played at the New Orleans Club in Düsseldorf; the New Orleans was some sort of a rather weird Sado-Maso club, God knows how they got to play there. They had this slot in the door, everybody was face-checked before they would let you in. It was all rather bizarre, but a great gig — apart from the photographer, who hammered his heavy Nikon onto my head, because I was jumping up and down on his probably expensive flash (without actually realising this), which he must have lost somehow in the audience and which was now rolling on the floor. But that's a different story. Here's a selection of three tracks - and I hope you don't mind the recording quality:
Then Mittagspause. Mittagspause was Franz Bielmeier (git), Peter Hein (voc), and Markus Oehlen (dr). There was a short phase when Gabi Delgado (who would later rise to international fame with DAF) used to produce some noise with a dictaphone within the band, and then later on Thomas Schwebel joined, playing lead/rhythm guitar alongside with Franz. Luckily for them, they could rehearse in the basement of the Ratinger Hof, next to barrels of beer and boxes of wine. The Hof was a second home to the band. Here are two tracks from early 1978 from those 'cellar-rehearsals':
Photo by Franz Bielmeier
Finally, another live track, now from 1979. Mittagspause played at the Okie-Dokie in Neuss as 'Gute Freunde'. Here's Herrenreiter:
As usual, enjoy. More links and infos regarding Mittagspause can be found in the entry about my podcast interview with Franz. And here's the old Sounds article Rodenkirchen is burning.
Photo by Carmen Knoebel
 The rest is history. Mittagspause then morphed into Fehlfarben, and Franz set up his Rondo Label and the new band Aqua Velva. There are rumours floating about that the complete Rondo catalogue will be remixed and republished soon. Now that would be nice. Very nice indeed.
3:05:25 PM Cult, MP3 | |
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Saturday, March 15, 2008 |
The Internet is a fabulous thing. First, I've now got the new domain zeigermann.co.uk, thanks to my (also new) service provider UKonline (who, btw, is fab). I've only got 100MB webspace there, but it should be enough shuffling stuff around and also to save me some bandwidth here at The Cartoonist.
Then, Franz Bielmeier was so kind to send me a few CDs in the post with old Mittagspause and Aqua Velva Material on them, most of it never heard before. And I've got the permission to publish a few of the songs right here, which coincides perfectly with my new 100MB webspace. Let's start with Aqua Velva; Mittagspause will follow later this month. Or next month. Or whenever I'm in the mood.
Aqua Velva, ca 1980/81
- La Cucaraca (Aqua Velva) — MP3, 3MB
- Wurm/Leberwurst (Aqua Velva) — MP3, 2.8MB
- Kohlenklau (Monroe) — MP3, 1.6MB
Enjoy.
1:23:23 PM Cult, MP3 | |
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Friday, February 29, 2008 |
A previously unreleased track by the Velvet Underground; listen to it here [Dead Flowers weblog]. Part of the Live at the Gymnasium, NYC, 1967 recording, which also features the debut performance of Sister Ray. Here's an interesting thread in a forum about the bootleg. The sound quality is amazing, all the songs almost sound like outtakes from the Banana Album sessions.[...] I can already say that, in addition to the historical importance of these five recordings, this thing rocks like a motherfucker. Update: More about the record and its history in this thread at The Velvet Underground Forum.
3:25:51 PM Cult, MP3 | |
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Sunday, February 24, 2008 |
© Copyright 2008 Ralf Zeigermann.
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