 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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