WARMER MIXTAPES #438 | by Bernhard Mueller [the boy called hedge] of $chwarzer Freitag
1. Kraftwerk | Autobahn
In the early 70s at school, a music teacher played the LP Autobahn of Kraftwerk, a new Krautrock group, who came, nearby my home, out of Düsseldorf, during his lesson. This didn’t interested me very much at that time – but looking back, I should have been thankful for this lesson. It was a new form of music composing.
2. Golden Earring | Radar Love
The first albun I bought, was the first long-player of the Dutch group Golden Earring, with their famous song Radar Love, which I loved for the strong rhythm and vocal part.
3. Uriah Heep | Lady In Black
In the mid 70s I went to a dance school for pair dances. I heard a lot of chart busters. Out of that time I will mention Uriah Heep - Lady In Black. At home I rebuilt a cellar to a part room. A good friend of mine installed coloured Disco lights and we made parties there, having a lot of fun. I loved this song for its strong melody and I could dance cheak Blues with the girls.
4. David Bowie | Wild Is The Wind
Meanwhile my music taste changed, when I heard the first David Bowie songs. Wild Is The Wind (a great Rumba or Beguine Rhythm song on Station To Station with a melanchic melody. I loved it.
5. The O’Jays | For The Love Of Money
One of the most impressive Black Soul song for me was the O’Jays song For The Love Of Money, which I loved for its special effects, (Funky rhythm, Dub-delay, reverse tape in the vocal tracks).
6. Steely Dan | Kid Charlemagne
At the end of the 70s I also heard Amercian Alternative Jazz Funk bands like Steely Dan (The Fez, Kid Charlemange, The Royal Scam) or Nu Wave bands like Talking Heads (Once In A Lifetime, Psycho Killer). Until that time I only consumed music, f. e. to dance on it or only to listen to it.
7. Sex Pistols | Pretty Vacant
For my younger brother and me, this was – as for many others of my generation – the last impulse to create alternative D.I.Y. music by ourselves. So it was not easy to compose songs by my own. But we started, like may other ones with simple – mainly naive – plastic punk songs, which we recorded and overdubbed on two compact cassette players.
8. Yazoo | Don’t Go
My sisters boyfriend and a DJ in Oberhausen brought new Post-Punk music stuff to Germany. We heard John Peel on BFBS every saturday night, too. So in our prefered New Wave Discos... Yazoo - Don’t Go and many other first electro tracks were played. I loved this song for its strong analogue bass, which seems to be produced with a Sequential Pro One, that I owned too at that time. But the perfection of glamour was the strong voice of Alison Moyet as singer.
9. Blancmange | Blind Vison
Like many other English bands of that time Blancmange used only Electronic music instruments. They combined lovely melodies with strong, dancable rhythms. My brother worked at a local young city magazine. So, we were able to interview this band in the Bochum Zeche during their first concert tour in Germany.
10. Bronski Beat | Smalltown Boy
What a unique debut, what an amazing voice (Jimmy Sommerville)! Some of the most imaginative and strongest and soulful Dance songs of the eighties.
+11. Heaven 17 | The Best Kept Secret
At the end of 1982 we decided to form a new band. At that time Heaven 17 were our biggest idols. Their 2nd album Luxury Gap was our music Bible - our personal benchmark. One of my favorite songs of that album is: The Best Kept Secret. There had been many parallels between them and us - we thought: their industrial environment (they came from Sheffield, we from the Ruhr Area), their preference of Black Funk and Soul Music, the electronic touch and sometimes lyrics with social relevance. In 2010 I visited the first Heaven17 concert in Germany. I’m glad to have gotten a signature from Glen Gregory and Martyn Ware, two of the original band members, on my Luxury Gap album cover.
+12. Run-D.M.C. | It’s Tricky
In 1986 my band split off. I finished my exame at a German Design College. So my song-writing was interupted for a while. But I used Run-D.M.C.’s It’s Tricky for my exame as soundtrack for an unpublished trickfilm.
+13. Depeche Mode | Behind The Wheel
In 1990 I had the luck to create the promotional graphic artwork for TDK and the European part of the Urban Jungle Tour of the Rolling Stones in my agency. The promotion was a great success for both. But while working on the layouts, I heard the famous 101 album of Depeche Mode with the great life recordings of: Behind The Wheel and other famous Depeche Mode songs. The strong hook melody comined with the straight 4/4 rhythm turned me on. But the magic of many Depeche songs is the harmonic chord movement.
+14. Prince & The New Power Generation | Walk Don’t Walk
On a shooting trip in Miami, I bought the Diamonds And Pearls album with a holographic cover and this song. I loved this genius musician for years. This song and album, I think, is a bit more Jazzier, than many before.
+15. Talk Talk | Life Is What You Make It
Beside of these main artists, I intensively heard Talk Talk in the 90s. I loved this crazy rhythm, but also the melody instrument and the melancholic singing.
+16. Alexander O’Neal | What Is This Thing Called Love?
Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis were one of my my most loved and visible producers. They produced the first albums of Alexander O’ Neal. So this great song, too. For me this is a perfect combination of Dance Music and sensible Rhyhthm And Blues lyrics, sung by a black artist. I bought a songbook!
+17. $chwarzer Freitag | xx4
In 1984 and 1985 our band $chwarzer Freitag released two tracks on two rare alternative synth samplers in Germany: Trigger In Trigger Out and xx4 on Confirm Conformity and xx4 on Elektronische Klangesellschaft. Both songs were mainly instrumental songs and stood under the influence of minimal synth sound with a bit of Black Hip Hop music. By using the Roland TB 303 Bassline and the TR808 drum computer, these songs can be seen as one of the first Acid or Detroit Techno tracks, which didn’t come out of Detroit - related to Paul Haig’s 19, Afrika Bambataa’s Planet Rock or Grandmaster Flash’s The Message, too. Shortly after my 50th birthday I found a book in a Cologne book shop about the German New Wave scene in the 80s. It is written by Frank Apunkt Schneider and named Als Die Welt Noch Unterging. I was perplex, when I read the name $chwarzer Freitag and a small text about the samplers in the discography of this book. So I thought: Could eventually someone be interested into my music?... I contacted the author and gave him some more background information onto these obscure minimal synth band and researched on the web. There I found some information on Discogs.com. about the albums, too. My brother and I decided to publish there a small band info. And I decided to come out of my home-recording studio in March 2010 to go public. So, you can hear my songs on my websites on MySpace, Lastfm.de and Soundcloud.
+18. Depeche Mode | Corrupt
At the moment I often hear songs out of the Deluxe Box of Depeche Mode’s Sound Of The Universe with a remix of Corrupt by Efdemin, a Berlin electronic artist. I love this song for it’s reducement in rhyhthm, esp. the percussion part, which carries the whole song.
+19. Faithless | Miss You Less, See You More
On my intensive playlist is a Best of Faithless album, also this track. I love the fast rhyhtm combined with the aggressive synth part.
+20. Hot Chip | One Life Stand
A newer group, I hear is: Hot Chip. On their album One Life Stand are many other outstanding songs. I love the vocal combination, the often singing in duets of two band members. F. e. on Keep Quiet, too.
+21. The Boy Called Hedge | To Be A Punk
Perhaps any of you would like to listen now into my own songs, too. Someone compares the music style with The Wake or Section 25 - but that’s a matter of opinion. This song is an outstanding part of my personal and music history.
