Opel aisle
| Opel aisle | ||||
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| Studio album by Die Toten Hosen | ||||
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Publication |
1983 |
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| Label (s) | Skull | |||
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Format (s) |
LP, CD, MC |
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Punk rock |
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Title (number) |
15th |
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running time |
36 min 21 s |
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| occupation |
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Studio (s) |
Studio in Langendreer |
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Opel-Gang [ opɛl-ɡæŋ ] (“ Opel Gang ”) is the debut album by the Düsseldorf band Die Toten Hosen . It consists of 15 fast-paced German-language pieces of music that are musically based on British and US punk bands . The album was produced by Jon Caffery and was first released in the summer of 1983 on the Totenkopf label . Opel-Gang has been re-released several times over the years, most recently in 2007, along with 16 other albums by the band, it was remastered and reissued. The album was awarded a gold record for more than 250,000 copies sold by 2006 .
Design of cover and booklet
The front of the cover shows all the band members busy repairing an Opel Rekord that has been unscrewed. The faces of the musicians cannot be recognized. The front man of the band Campino recalled in an interview with Jan Weiler in 2007 : “This visage covering was such a principle in our first photos. We have it but not for long persevered. "For the back of the album cover, the cover page of the book was Opel Rekord B / C from August 1965 from the series now I help myself by Dieter Korp used.
The booklet contains all the lyrics and looks like hand-written. The first letter of the word "Hosen" is represented by trousers that are mirrored on the waistband. The band's emblem at that time is a small skull, drawn with a few lines, decorated with a flower in its mouth. As text and music authors, only the nicknames of the band members are given and not, as in later publications, the real names. Andreas Meurer designed the booklet and the manuscript .
Emergence
The band consisted of five people in 1983. All were self-taught on their instruments. Trini Trimpop was officially the group's drummer. During the recordings for the album Opel-Gang , however, front man and singer Campino played the drums in the songs Midsummer Night's Dream and Army of Losers, and Andreas von Holst played all the instruments in various songs on the album, i.e. electric guitars , electric bass and drums. The second guitarist was Michael Breitkopf . Andreas Meurer played a two-string electric bass. The band members wrote some of the lyrics together, but Campino had most of them. The music comes mainly from Andreas von Holst, with the exception of the play Reisefieber by Andreas Meurer and the drinking song Bis zum bitteren Ende , for which Campino is completely responsible. All band members developed the music for Modestadt Düsseldorf and Schwarzer Mann together.
With the exception of the social educator Trini Trimpop, all band members were students in 1983. Campino reported that he had written high school exams in the morning and recorded the record in the evening. The recording studio, located in the Langendreer district of Bochum , could only be rented by the hour and on weekends for cost reasons. In the summer of 1983 the band recorded the songs as an amateur in less than ten days. The contact to the British sound engineer Jon Caffery, who had already worked with the Sex Pistols , was put in place by Jochen Hülder , manager of Die Toten Hosen. Hülder knew Caffery from his tour with the Berlin women's band Malaria! .
The band had released the song Reisefieber in April 1982 as their second single, and the song Opel-Gang was released in the spring of 1983 as the B-side of the single Bommerlunder . The track list on the album corresponds to the set list of the band's live programs at the time. The title Opel-Gang was originally meant to be mocking, but the song was quickly taken as an expression of sympathy for a fringe group with which the band wanted to identify. Campino described it as follows in 2002:
“ That was a total fooling around on the Opel Prolls, who were heating the area with their lowered carts. But the piece has outlived its real meaning and developed in a direction that we ourselves would not have suspected. At one point we talked to an Opel person who thought the song was really cool, and at some point I also realized that tinkering around with the car can be really fun. And then I learned how to spin a wheel and etch away the asphalt. I suddenly found that good and suddenly we all had Opels. I also learned to appreciate the prolls, although we initially found them completely wrong. So we could always have a good laugh at ourselves. "
The entire production of the album was financed by the band itself and released in the summer of 1983 under the label Totenkopf , for which Trini Trimpop and Jochen Hülder signed. Shortly after the appearance of Opel-Gang , the band was sponsored for an album presentation by a record shop in the pedestrian zone at Frankfurt train station. There was free beer and liquor until the police forcibly cleared the shop.
Text and music, track list
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The lyrics are all written from a first-person perspective and in colloquial language. All songs are German-language, fast and short punk rock pieces in four-four time . Lyrically, they deal with the everyday life of the band members and their environment. The title sequence begins with the instrumental piece Tote Hose . The instrumentation on the album consists of two electric guitars, electric bass and drums. Campino is the front vocalist on all pieces, and most of the band members sing the chorus together.
The almost two-minute title song Opel-Gang is about a clique who have fun tinkering with cars on Saturday afternoons and then driving them around the area. The intro consists of a drawn out, distorted electric guitar tone. This is followed by two stanzas with eight verses each that rhyme at the end. The two- fold refrain and the coda consist of the repeated repetition of the sentences “We are the guys from the Opel gang. We all left behind. ”In contrast to the verses, which Campino speaks rhythmically and quickly, the refrain is melodic and is sung by the musicians together.
In alone in front of your house or your father the boxer the story of a young man is told, waiting four hours before his girlfriend's house to be let in secretly from her. When he notices that she has long had a visitor and that he is being cheated on, he makes a row and thus ensures that his rival receives blows from the girl's father. In the song Ülüsü , the prejudices against German-Turkish relations are formulated from the point of view of an opportunist who fears that his acquaintances will reject a friend of Turkish origin.
The narrator in the song Money is suddenly given drug money and doesn't know how to get rid of it. The man with the briefcase, whom the narrator recognizes in the song Schwarzer Mann , scares him. In the fashion city of Düsseldorf, the band mocked their hometown, “where no one has any worries.” Andreas von Holst introduces the fast, short punk rock piece, the text more aggressively spoken than sung, with a 46-second melody on the acoustic guitar. In an interview with Jan Weiler in 2007, he recalls: “ Greetings from Peter Bursch . I think I was on page 14 of his exercise book. I thought that didn't sound bad at all, we could use that as an intro. "
The advantages of the brothels are in the song Kontakthof sung while the protagonist in There has been nothing a fling denies. In the title Midsummer Night's Dream , the band members sing in a choir: “We stay on the playground on our bench: alcohol, droning, lots of singing.” And Hofgarten consists of the slogan: “Fuck, fuck, blow, everything on the lawn!”, Which the Later had the tape printed in large format on T-shirts. The person in the travel bug goes too far out into the Wadden Sea . The flood surprises her and only her body can be recovered. At the beginning of the song you can hear an aborted, premature deployment of Campino . The text about Willi has to go to the home addresses the issue of upbringing .
With the song Wehende Fahnen and the refrain “With waving flags we will go under”, the band expressed their attitude, “despite their dilettantism, the tough struggle with the restrictions, the average talent and chronic existential needs imposed on them, became a skilful version to get away from himself ”, as Campino put it in the band's biography Until the Bitter End in 1997.
Up to the bitter end is a drinking song , built on the chords C, F and G. The text consists of two quatrains that rhyme in pairs at the end in monosyllables.
Music videos
Reisefieber is the band's first music video and was shot by Jörg Sonntag for Radio Bremen on a dike in northern Germany. It shows the band unpacking garden furniture including a parasol and organizing an unusual picnic in stormy weather. At the beginning of the film we see Michael Breitkopf , as with kilt wearing leather jacket and a bagpipe playing.
Publications
Opel-Gang was released for the first time in August 1983 as a long-playing record and as a compact cassette on the band's own label Totenkopf with a number of 20,000 copies. After the band signed a contract with the record company EMI , the second edition of the album was released on EMI that same year. There was also a limited "wedding edition" of the album, which was also sold in 1983 by EMI and to which the single Hip-Hop-Bommi-Bop was added. The inside cover of the issue shows a photo of the five band members with their film brides from the music video for the single Eisgekühlter Bommerlunder . Since the end of 1983, various editions of the album, also in CD format , have been issued by Virgins Schallplatten GmbH , with which the band was under contract until 1995. Opel Gang was released in Argentina through Tocka Discos in 2003.
To mark the 25th anniversary of the band in 2007, Opel gang from the band's own company JKP was reissued, all tracks were remastered , the cover of the first vinyl LP was enclosed as a poster and a new booklet was designed. This contains an interview of the band with Jan Weiler . The album contains 15 additional songs, most of which were released as singles from 1982 to 1983. Breakfast grain , The adventures of little Haevelmann and the version of Bis zum bitteren Ende were recorded in 1982 by Campino, Andreas von Holst and the bassist Hans Runge in Berlin and on the sampler Ein Vollrausch in Stereo - 20 foamy mood hits on the label “Vielklang / Schnick Schnack ”published for the first time. When we are ready , there is a live recording from the SO36 in Berlin on April 30, the 1,982th
- Additional title:
- Jürgen Englers Party - 1:26 (Music: Campino, by Holst / Text: Campino)
- No man's land - 2:41 (Campino, von Holst / Campino)
- Army of Losers - 4:23 (Campino, von Holst / Campino)
- Opel-Gang - 1:59 version of the single Bommerlunder
- Nice Christmas presents - 3:02 (Breitkopf, Campino, von Holst, Meurer, Trimpop / Campino)
- Willi's white Christmas - 2:35 (Breitkopf, Campino, von Holst, Meurer, Trimpop / Campino)
- Knecht Ruprecht's last ride - 3:46 (Breitkopf, Campino, von Holst, Meurer, Trimpop / Campino)
- Criminal Tango - 3:32 (Trombetto / Feltz )
- Alone in front of your house or your father the boxer - 2:26
- It's over - 3:09 (Campino, von Holst / Campino, Meurer, Trimpop)
- The adventures of little Haevelmann - 2:29 (from Holst / Campino)
- Breakfast grain - 1:57 (from Holst / Campino)
- Until the bitter end - 3:08
- We are ready - 1:59 (Campino, von Holst / Campino)
- Hip Hop Bommi Bop - 4:34
resonance
The magazine Musikexpress put the album in their list Made in Germany - The 50 best records in Germany from February 2001 at number 36. Rolling Stone counted Opel-Gang among the 50 most important punk records from 1982 to 1989. Julia Maehner wrote in 2011 in the The accompanying review that the debut album has little to do with today's “pants” and that they “would mess their way through 15 simple pieces like a school band”. She continued: “The blunt homage to the fashion city of Düsseldorf and the notorious Hofgarten didn't give us an inkling of how clever the band was, but with Until the Bitter End they had a hymn that is still in the program today. The lightheartedness with which every 'Whoa-Oh' is thrown here could never be achieved again. "
The Rheinische Post stated that on the debut album Opel-Gang was “speed trumps”, that the artwork was “school desk scribbles” and that a few songs lasted longer than three minutes. With waving flags it would become a “perseverance slogan against the disintegration of punk” and “should not be missing at any party”.
In his autobiographical novel Dorfpunks , published in 2004, Rocko Schamoni recalled that the album "rose like a domestic Never Mind The Bollocks comet over the northern German punk sky". “This record gave our movement a new boost. Nothing else was heard, only Opel gang . A new spirit spoke from the texts; they were no longer as tightly political as the Slime texts, for example , but more open, playful and interpretable. You could sing along to the melodies first class, the sound was wonderfully crooked. ”The album was an“ important record for the Berlin band Die Ärzte , who produced their first EP Zu Schön um sein sein at about the same time that Opel-Gang was released ", As Bela B. put it in an interview in the Musikexpress in February 2002 and as Markus Karg put it in the group's biography in 2001:" Bela and Farin , already big fans of ZK , the forerunner of the pants, crouched together excited in front of the record player and listened to this record, which was so different from the usual German punk at the time. With their debut album, Die Toten Hosen had created a masterpiece. Bela and Farin admired the lyrical versatility and the brutal guitar sound. For Die Ärzte, this album was an enormous encouragement. "
Robert Lechner asked himself in the August 1983 Musikexpress whether one could play with dignity what would still be labeled punk without a more differentiated approach. Die Toten Hosen would “confidently affirm” this question and leave the “punks' camp, which has degenerated into a sorry ghetto, far behind”. They are "pieces in the best point tradition, as they did not come into being at the heyday of this variety in England".
Hollow Skai, on the other hand, wrote in his biography about Die Toten Hosen from 2007 that the “ Clash Choirs on Opel Gang” sounded more like “Boy Scout songs”. He continued to refer to Lechner's review and noted that "one could hardly cheer up a somewhat rumbling-sounding album more widely."
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jürgen Seibold : VIP Die Toten Hosen Paul Zsolnay Verlag, Vienna 1992, ISBN 3-552-05005-1 , p. 10.
- ↑ Die Toten Hosen "Opium for the People" in the IFPI database DE AT CH
- ↑ a b c d Jan Weiler : Children, how time flies ... Die Toten Hosen tell - Jan Weiler listens to 1982-2007 . Booklet for the new edition 2007, part 1: Opel-Gang .
- ↑ a b Hollow Skai : Die Toten Hosen . Hannibal, A-Höfen 2007, ISBN 978-3-85445-281-2 , pp. 82-84.
- ↑ Over the years they have worked very, very hard on their musical skills. Die Toten Hosen, January 2001, archived from the original on May 18, 2009 ; Retrieved October 20, 2013 .
- ↑ a b Bertram Job : Until the Bitter End ... Die Toten Hosen tell their story . Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1996, ISBN 3-462-02532-5 . Pp. 80-81.
- ↑ Bertram Job: Until the Bitter End ... Die Toten Hosen tell their story . P. 71.
- ↑ Quote: Campino in conversation with unclesally * s in 2002.
- ↑ It became a film that no longer played on the screen… Die Toten Hosen, October 2000, archived from the original on February 2, 2009 ; Retrieved October 20, 2013 .
- ↑ Die Toten Hosen: Magazine for the tour people, animals, sensations . Universa Medien Verlags GmbH, Dortmund 1992, p. 21.
- ↑ Die Toten Hosen: Until the bitter end - The songbook with all lyrics and all songs . Bosworth 2012, ISBN 978-3-86543-735-8 , p. 239.
- ↑ Questions to DTH - Part 25 with Campino. (No longer available online.) December 22, 2005, archived from the original on September 11, 2013 ; accessed on March 25, 2018 .
- ↑ Bertram Job: Until the Bitter End ... Die Toten Hosen tell their story . Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1996, ISBN 3-462-02532-5 . P. 74.
- ↑ Die Toten Hosen: Until the bitter end - The songbook with all lyrics and all songs . Bosworth 2012, ISBN 978-3-86543-735-8 , p. 49.
- ↑ DVD Die Toten Hosen: Reich & sexy II - Your most successful videos , comments from the band on the individual music videos.
- ^ Made in Germany - The 50 best records in Germany , Musikexpress , Issue 2, February 2001.
- ↑ Julia Maehner: The 50 most important punk records: 1982 to 1989. Rolling Stone , July 7, 2011, accessed on January 6, 2013 .
- ↑ Explained: The albums of the dead pants. RP Online , p. 1 , accessed January 6, 2013 .
- ↑ Rocko Schamoni : Dorfpunks . Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek bei Hamburg 2004, ISBN 978-3-499-24116-1 , pp. 184-185.
- ^ Wolfgang Hertel: Punks Pirates, Paranoia. Musikexpress edition February 2002, p. 21.
- ↑ Markus Karg: An oversized guinea pig eats the earth . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf 2001, ISBN 3-89602-369-1 . P. 23.
- ^ Robert Lechner: Die Toten Hosen - Opel Gang . In Musikexpress, August 1983 edition, p. 56.
literature
- Die Toten Hosen : Die Toten Hosen - Until the bitter end - The songbook with all lyrics and all songs . Bosworth 2012, ISBN 978-3-86543-735-8 .
- Hollow Skai : The Dead Pants . Hannibal, A-Höfen 2007, ISBN 978-3-85445-281-2 .
- Jan Weiler : Children, how time flies ... Die Toten Hosen tell - Jan Weiler listens to 1982–2007 . Booklet for the new edition 2007, part 1: Opel-Gang .
- Rocko Schamoni : Dorfpunks . Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek bei Hamburg 2004, ISBN 978-3-499-24116-1 .
- Jürgen Seibold : VIP Die Toten Hosen Paul Zsolnay Verlag, Vienna 1992, ISBN 3-552-05005-1 .
Web links
- Lyrics to the album
- Opel-Gang at Discogs (contains music samples)
