A1 Wenn’s draußen grün wird (When it gets green outside)
A2 Laß mich nicht gehn (Don’t let me go)
A3 Komm und spiel mit mir (Come and play with me)
A4 Schau nicht hin (Don’t look there)

B1 Jeder Mann, der dich sah (Every man that saw you)
B2 Kalt und weiß (Cold and white)
B3 Sonntag (Sunday)
B4 Danke für den Abend (Thank you for the Evening)
B5 Baden gehn (Going for a swim)

(play all tracks)

with Manfred Krug, Günther Fischer, Reinhard Lakomy, Fred Baumert, Wolfgang “Eddie” Greiser, Wolfgang “Zicke” Schneider, Wolfgang “Büchse” Winkler, Matthias Schmidt, Hermann Wolfframm, Reinhard-Lakomy-Choir, String-Ensemble Otto-Karl Beck

Back with the second album of Manfred Krug. Nearly the same personell as on the first record with one big exception : Reinhard Lakomy on the organ.
Reinhard Lakomy was another great composer and singer who did stay in the GDR until it’s end. He started with doing pop music, later in the 80s he mainly did really great records for kids because he was fed up with pop, aswell as some amazing electronic records with a modular moog he bought from Tangerine Dream in the 80s and still owns (one of three worldwide). Records from him will pop up here eventually.
Anyway, as said both had a “professional” relationship in the beginning, later started becoming something like rivals (altough Lakomy states in his autobiography that he was simply not “interested in him”) and after Krug left the GDR Lakomy outright hated him and even went so far to avoid him during a meeting in the 90s (after Germany got united and they could have met again.)

But let’s put those things aside and let’s concentrate on the music, written again by Günther Fischer. The tracks :

A1 Wenn’s draußen grün wird (When it gets green outside) is simply the bomb. An intro which sounds like Love Unlimited Orchestras “Bring it on up” but was actually released three years earlier than “Music Maestro Please” instantly grabs your attention and paves the floor for a real smasher about the coming of spring and love. This is a track I play in about every single one of my sets, no matter what season it is.

B2 Kalt und weiß (Cold and white) a song about the search for a specific woman again (this record is mainly about women and seasons) that starts rather folky (?!) but picks up tempo after a while. Great again the conversation in the song, he meets the woman he dreams about finally in a shop where she is buying a dress with another guy for their wedding. Tough luck.

B3 Sonntag (Sunday) is a song about the first Sunday after the end of winter, just a great “easy-going” song about the time when winter is gone and spring finally arrives.

B5 Baden gehn (Going for a swim) is another great “easy-going” song about going to the beach and all the things you can do and see there… I guess you know what.

One more link for today, someone made a “Manfred Krug”-tributeprofile on myspace, so you can be friends with him. I am ofcourse.

Again the links to his two CD-ReIssues : Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com for the CD containing this and the first record from and you can get the second ReIssue of the third and fourth LP also on Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com. Or try gemm for the vinyl.

As a note, I won’t post about his third record. The reason is not that it’s bad or not worth it, but rather that it’s filled with jazzed/funked and easy-listening covers of songs like “Greensleeves” or “Que sera”. It’s good aswell, but the idea of this page is to inform you about really original music which means I am not going to post any of the countless eastern records with cover-versions of western songs. So the fourth one from him will be next.

Karel Gott was the Megastar of the eastern countries, there is no doubt about that. He started in czecheslovakia but his music was not even stopped by the iron curtain and he is still recording songs and does shows all over the world, including the US and Japan. One example of his work is the titlesong for “Biene Maja” (no idea what the title was in other countries, just look below for a picture), a show which was broadcasted all over the world.

Altough he was a real pop-singer his work was always very fresh and ad-hoc. Also he did all he could to reach wider audiences, most of his songs are avaiable in versions of several languages, including czech, german, russian, english, italian and more.

This record is one of his works from the time when he really started to go international, the interesting thing is that although most of the songs on this record are in german language and it was aimed at the german market (and thats the west- aswell as the eastgerman market, to be precise) the whole record was recorded by Supraphon in Prague, Czecheslovakia and Amiga just licensed it for eastern germany.

The song I chose is a A5 – “Der allerletzte Liebestrank” and its my heads-up for all crate-diggers and samplers out there. Do you know the feeling when you want something really bad but just can’t reach it ? Its the same with this song, the drums are really fresh but there is not one moment in that song where they are really playing alone, there is always some other instrument or the voice over it. Things like these drive me crazy sometimes Also take note of the synth-sounds, that record is from ‘75 and it was mainstream-pop.

You can look for Karel Gott on www.gemm.com, there are really loads of records around, but be aware that he is really a “pop-singer”. His records from the seventies are mostly funky though.

And there is some more excellent information about Karel Gott on Maisies World.