Sunday, January 4, 2015

Rarely Heard: Die Haut - Our Captain Speaking



I suppose it was 1981, maybe 1982, I convinced my pals to drive up to a small town near Munich called Ampermoching to see Red Crayola play in a small tavern there. I didn't realize it in beforehand, but a then quite unknown band called Die Haut were playing as support.
The tavern had no real stage, just a back room, and in one corner the Red Crayola's equipment was all set up. There was only a small audience and in came three (maybe four) guys dressed in black shirts and pants and placed themselves in front of us. I don't remember any instruments. Some bass-driven monotonic music came from somewhere, and I recall the guys started making wild erratic dance movements, no singing. To be honest the whole thing appeared to me quite ridiculous, and I was glad, when the whole performance ended after about half an hour.
Years later I heard that Die Haut had been an important cult band pioneering the Neue Deutsche Welle (New German Wave) of music. Trouserpress.com says about the early Die Haut: "Rising out of Berlin's post-punk bleakness, die Haut ("the skin") is a largely instrumental quartet with Beefheartian and psychedelic overtones but possessing a disciplined ferocity that yields a strikingly Germanic sound." However, later on they would add vocals and play a more straightforward punk sound till their demise in 1997. Guest vocalists live and on recordings include: Nick Cave, Kid Congo Powers, Anita Lane, Debbie Harry, Paul Outlaw, Mick Harvey, Jeffrey Lee Pierce, Blixa Bargeld, Lydia Lunch, Alexander Hacke, Arto Lindsay, Kim Gordon, Cristina Martinez, Laurie Tomin, Alan Vega, Louisa Bradshaw, Danielle de Picciotto, Gordon W.

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