I noted with interest the bizarre interiors some of those people live in – I mean, who would hang a prominent Maxell cassettes logo on his wall?

yeah!

But I haven’t got him, unfortunately, I’m not in a position to push such a promising hit machine how it has to be done. So all I can do is put out yet another cassette of him, it will be the second in six months, and just hope he gets the recognition he deserves. It’s not that I think this would be a favor, he doesn’t need this from me, and the gig I’ve witnessed on the night of the Eurovision Song Contest in the cellar of squatted Labieu was just plain crazy. Imagine a guy sitting on a stool behind a drum kit of bass and snare drum, both hit with a foot pedal, sometimes switching to the hi-hat, playing an old no-name trashy electric guitar, singing over a second guitar amp, a bit nervous maybe at the start, but really getting off from the third song, delivering hit after hit after hit, all self-penned of course. It helps that the ladies are going crazy. And everybody knows that this is the only true sign of star material…

I didn’t have my cam with me, it’s a real pity. But I recorded the whole gig and listened to it at least 10 times since: One of the very few gigs I ever saw that had no filler at all, and that during 60 minutes.

We will put out a cassette of the gig, and in the meantime try to catch Nick Porsche if he ever hits your town. He’s uploaded some songs from this concert, but beware: MP3 just doesn’t have the power of an analog audio cassette. So watch this space for the release. And watch his MySpace for gigs announcements!

I’m a bit pissed, because I added this tape to discogs 6 months ago, and nobody seems to care. How I know? Because nobody did hit the ‘I want this’-button. Which is rather unusual for such a tape. It was self-released by the band, and there were only 100 copies made. I bought it at their gig, and I also bought a solo tape of their guitar wizard Mark Hanley. Will post it one day here, I think.

When I reactivated my cassette label last september, Bob Roke from Years On Earth sent me by happy coincidence a solo work he had done in 2003 – he did not know then that I was back in business again. Of course I was thrilled, because I was badly looking for the whereabouts of the band. So of course I asked Bob if I could release the CD on cassette. And now it’s here for the taking:

The cassette is a C50 with 15 tracks, it’s a Calypso Now exclusive release, and it goes by the number YOE-4, thus continuing the band’s work. YOE-3 was ‘Worlds Apart’ from 1984, by the way.

Bob uses dark ambient electronics combined with natural sounds or field recordings, and he is still a master of the bedroom electronics. And I remember that YOE used to build part of their equipment themselves. You hear the Years On Earth heritage, of course, but you find less of their song structures here. What always amazes me, since their first recordings, are the high quality standards. No fillers, no fiddling around with the buttons, although it definitely goes under ‘industrial’. In short, a very good production, and a very special tape. The same goes for all the Years On Earth productions, and they are all rereleased by Calypso Now at the same time!

You can order the tapes online here at the Calypso Now Shop.

• http://zhk7.blogspot.com/
• http://www.myspace.com/zanhoffmanlive
• http://zhlive.blogspot.com/
• http://zeromoon.com/zh27/
• http://www.blogger.com/profile/00802687738472758693
• http://vimeo.com/user1046797
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unVhivcKmWU

Walti Anselmo war in den 60er Jahren der wohl bekannteste Beat-Gitarrist der Schweiz und gründete dann in der hohen Zeit des ‘progressiven’ Krautrock zusammen mit Düde Dürst von den Sauterelles und Hardy Hepp Krokodil, eine sagenumwobene Truppe, deren LPs, allesamt in Deutschland erschienen, heute wohl zu Höchstpreisen unter Sammlern gehandelt werden. Ich weiss nicht mal, ob die Sachen noch erhältlich sind – Google habt ihr ja selbst, nicht wahr.

Als Stift war ich grosser Fan von Krokodil und habe damals versucht, sie so oft wie möglich zu sehen – mit dem Töffli 60 km in kalter Nacht gefahren und so -, und fast 20 Jahre später habe ich mein seinerzeitiges Idol Walti Anselmo aufgespürt und mit ihm ein langes Interview geführt. Daraus wurde dann ein zweiteiliger Artikel in Angeldust, der seine ganze musikalische Biographie bis zur Auflösung von Krokodil erzählt. Sehr gelungen, bin heute noch stolz darauf!

Was nach 1985 geschah: Anselmo tauchte zwischendurch in der Aarauer Szene um die Bermuda Idiots und Gogo auf, man konnte ihn sogar mal in Biel konzertant erleben, an der Orgel der nicht minder legendäre Jelly Pastorini von der 60er Beatcombo The Sevens. Aber mir schien, es war ihm nicht allzu wohl dabei – jedenfalls war dem Projekt kein langes öffentliches Leben beschieden.

Mojo Weideli, der schöne Mojo, der bei Krokodil mit Mundharmonika und Querflöte stark zum unverwechselbaren Sound beitrug, war bis vor ein paar Jahren Barmann in der Aktionshalle der Roten Fabrik, allerdings nur noch ein Schatten seiner selbst. Er ist 2005 gestorben. Bilder von Krokodil, übrigens, gibt’s hier, auf der offiziellen Homepage. Dort finden sich auch weitere Infos.

Anselmo Teil 1

Anselmo Teil 2

Today I have the impression there’s quite some fans of this period of homemade electronic music who are on the lookout for music from Years On Earth, and for more infos, of course. That’s why I’ve decided to upload some tracks from “Worlds Apart”, their third tape, and also the material they sent me, as well as the letters we’ve exchanged. I hope we’ll hear from them again some day. As for now, they seem to have been disappeared, and by reading their letters, this comes as no surprise – they weren’t that interested in exposure back then already.

So enjoy the music – you can also get their tapes from me, as long as I still have some of those covers (just a handful). As for the money after covering costs, by the way, it will all go into microcredits – i’m thinking about using kiva. The tapes sound so much better than it’s possible for an MP3, hope you kept your deck!

Years On Earth – Worlds Apart

Download audio file (Dreams Carry.mp3)
Download audio file (Madness in Motion.mp3)
Download audio file (On The Ice.mp3)
Download audio file (Let The Power Fall.mp3)

Press the playback button

To download right-click

• Dreams Carry
• Madness In Motion
• On The Ice
• Let The Power Fall

You can download all the printed material I have from them, it’s a PDF (3.5 MB) – right-click on this link here.

Fixed my Revox today. I always say: Never throw anything away. You could use it one day. Probably just the day after having disposed of it. You know that.

To cut a long story short: I have 3 Revox machines, one is working, one isn’t any more, the third was given to me by my hifi vendor just in case I could use some spare parts. This year I was several times on the edge of throwing those latter two away! Lucky me I didn’t. Because today I wanted to copy some reel-to-reel masters onto my computer to mp3 them for your listening pleasure. When doing so the machine started to make some weird sounds, and I detected that in the heat of the summer a small rubber wheel that presses the tape to the recording head had literally melted! Ok, so that has been fixed now – to order the part from Revox would have cost real money, that’s where the money is made, on the replacement parts. Plus I would have waited 10 days for delivery, at least.

So here we are, ready to copy the summer masters. You’ll hear about them soon. For now, just a glimpse into the charts hungry side of Calypso Now. Summer 1984 saw the release of the famous Cassingles (’Splendid – The Sound Of Young Switzerland’), Summer 1986 the sampler ‘Chart Attack’, followed by ‘Guitar Town’ in ‘87 (summer, of course), a sampler with bands from Geneva, at that time the capital of swiss garage. Remember: The Maniacs, The Needles, The Faster.

I’ll give you some tracks of Splendid and Guitar Town soon. Today, to celebrate my newly fixed Revox, the first three tracks from ‘Chart Attack’.

Chart Attack Compilation 1986 – The Reaction, Eugen, Hydrogen Candymen

Download audio file (The Reaction - Thoughts.mp3)
Download audio file (Der Boese Bub Eugen - Ich will alles.mp3)
Download audio file (Hydrogen Candymen - I can't stand this love goodbye.mp3)

Ajust playback volume to 10 and press the play button!

(pic shows back cover of Chart Attack, graphics by Martin Schori, thank you)

To download right-click

• The Reaction: Thoughts

or

• Der Boese Bub Eugen: Ich will alles

and

• Hydrogen Candymen: I can’t stand this love goodbye

Peopleism (for Google to use hehehe): Max of The Reaction now works for SUISA, Stephan Ramming of Eugen for NZZ am Sonntag, Lori Hersberger from Candymen is a world famous biennale triennale documentale artist

Tired, have to go. Had too much work restoring certain cassette masters, finding the right hardware and, much more difficult, the right software. Am using Audacity now, a great open source program. A bit more difficult to use than Goldwave, what I used before, but better quality, at least on my hardware.

You know how it is, when the first note hits it right home. This is how it is: It is rare. But they did it. Incredible.

Ever heard of the Lucien Dubuis Trio? Could be, they’ve been around since quite some time, they played Willisau, they are Swiss, they will be big. Believe me. I’m just listening to their new CD. It’s on enja. Oh, I already said that. But enja… The home of Guido-Westerwelle-Contemporary-Jazz, the fetish of every Revox Head Cleaner. Or do I mix it up now with ECM now? Whatever, whoever – they took the money from the label (enja…) and made something unheard until now.

On the jazz level you hear bits of Arthur Blythe, maybe, seventies jazz rock licks from guitar whizz kid Marc Ribot (well, pretty grey by now), but above all this CD is about Sounds And Rhythm. And about the fun you can have when a very young trio of immaculate taste teams up with mildly crazy Marc Ribot. And about the moog-defying sound of a bass clarinet. About the Daniel-Humair-was-yesterday-drumming of Lionel Friedli. Not that I don’t like Daniel Humair, of course. No, I love him. Well, shucks, have a look at the trailer. Come back after.

Since you’ve been away, I heard: a hardcore dance track, a Zappa-like ditty, now they are playing a folksy tune, could be drunken sicilians locked in a studio messing around with the instruments they found. Steve Marcus, to give you another reference, used to indulge in stuff like that. But Steve Marcus never played so good, of course. Highly entertaining.

But don’t be fooled: It’s not a nice little record, it’s a record that will be played in clubs, and people will stop their talking for a moment and wonder, who this might be. And there’s no greater compliment for a record these days.