Amiga (record label)

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Amiga logo, 1950s to 1969
Amiga logo, from 1969
Helgolandlied AM1435, Walter Jenson with his orchestra, Berlin 1952

Amiga (own spelling also: AMIGA ) was a music label of the music publisher Lied der Zeit Schallplatten-Gesellschaft mbH , Berlin, founded by Ernst Busch . In 1954 it was transferred to the state-owned GDR sound carrier producer VEB Deutsche Schallplatten Berlin and was now subordinate to the Ministry of Culture in the VEB . Amiga should cover the range of popular music. This included beat, rock and pop music as well as jazz, hits, folk music and popular instrumental music. Amiga was founded on February 3rd, 1947 and existed until 1994. Since then, the repertoire of more than 30,000 titles (of 2,200 record productions and 5,000 singles) has been marketed by BMG Berlin Musik GmbH, now Sony Music Entertainment . Amiga continues to be used as a brand name for the release of sound carriers from the GDR era .

repertoire

The core repertoire of Amiga consisted of dance and entertainment music by artists from the GDR. The allocation of musical genres and the selection of artists, their pieces and texts were subject to the state guidelines of the GDR cultural policy . Schlager and rock / pop each accounted for 25% of the total output, blues / jazz and folk each 15%, the rest was made up of mood music, children's songs and light classical music. After the emergence of rock 'n' roll and beat in the 1960s, the “hard beat” was quickly frowned upon, instead pieces with a “song-like” character were preferred in the rock / pop area.

Occasionally, productions carried by Amiga, above all by Karat , Silly , the Puhdys and City , were taken over under license in the Federal Republic of Germany, including from the West German record label Teldec . In the field of free jazz , on the other hand, Amiga took over "western" recordings of free music production from GDR musicians, for example from the Ulrich Gumpert Workshop Band and the trio Kowald - Smith - Sommer and released them as an Amiga record. In the late 1980s there were also co-productions with western contract partners. Among other things, some recordings were made by Eastern artists in the West Berlin Ariola studio or were overseen by Western guest producers.

Licensed productions

In addition to artists from the GDR, selected singles and LPs by artists from western countries were also released under license from the mid-1960s onwards , due to the overall small supply of western music and the usually low editions - Michael Rauhut mentions a contractual agreement of 10,000 copies per license pressing - were usually sold out quickly. In most cases, no single albums were licensed, but a compilation of tracks from several albums by the artists (e.g. Greatest Hits by Depeche Mode or The best of The Alan Parsons Project ). The first licensed LPs included albums by the Beatles and Bob Dylan in the 1960s . In the early 1970s, due to the more restrictive cultural policy and the scarce foreign exchange, there were mostly only license pressures from Eastern European interpreters such as Czesław Niemen or Omega , before numerous license pressures from well-known ones again in the late 1970s, and especially with the falling popularity of national productions in the 1980s Performers from the USA, the United Kingdom and the Federal Republic of Germany appeared. Jazz and blues licenses appeared within the Amiga Jazz and later the Blues Collection series , including BB King , Klaus Doldinger , Mahavishnu Orchestra , Champion Jack Dupree , Howlin 'Wolf , Bessie Smith and others.

The selection of the Western productions pressed under license also followed cultural and political considerations. The licensed publications offered within the GDR itself had to "combine artistic quality with a bourgeois-humanist or socialist attitude". Compared to so-called licensed productions , which were primarily offered for foreign exchange in Intershops , less restrictive requirements applied.

Sampler

In addition to individual albums, numerous samplers were published, including 1964/65 Big Beat I and II or the series Hallo, which appeared in 16 episodes from 1972 to 1976 (some with a poster). From 1976 to 1989 the annual compilation The great successes appeared . With the sampler series Kleeblatt , which appeared in over 20 episodes, four bands or performers, each with several titles, were presented on one album from the late 1970s. Under the name Amiga-Quartett , records in single format with four tracks each were released.

Cover and packaging

The record covers of all publications were designed by the company's own design department and produced by VEB Gotha-Druck . The lead time for a publication there was up to half a year.

The LPs (mostly single LPs, double LPs, LP boxes or the like were released only very rarely) were delivered in a simple four-colored LP sleeve, mostly with a neutral inner sleeve. Inserts or covers in special formats were rare exceptions. For the license pressings, too, mostly separate LP covers were designed, which were often based on the design of the original editions, but were also often changed to include political details. In the band photos on an LP by Herbert Grönemeyer, for example, the drummer had been retouched because he had moved from the GDR to the Federal Republic in 1978. In the case of an LP by John Lennon, an excerpt from the US Constitution contained on the cover was dispensed with.

The singles released from time and financial difficulties at times only in neutral envelopes or uniformly shaped hole cover. Even if the singles had individually designed covers, these were often very simple. The cover design of numerous Amiga singles consists only of writing, and the three Beatles singles published in 1965 each use the same cover motif. Basically, with this cost-saving process, Amiga differed significantly from the record companies in the Federal Republic of Germany, which used complete print designs.

pads

According to the former Amiga director Jörg Stempel , the VEB in the vinyl factory in Potsdam-Babelsberg had a pressing capacity of twelve million LPs per year in 1979. In addition there were four million singles and four million music cassettes from another production facility. Production always had to be busy. It was filled with licensed productions.

The Amiga productions with the highest editions were the following albums:

Pricing

The price for an Amiga long-playing record was fixed at 16.10 GDR marks . Those Amiga LPs with numbers starting with 845 were sold for 12.10 GDR marks, such as folk records or music productions for children. There were also fixed prices for double albums, singles and music cassettes . Occasionally, remaining stock was sold at a lower price.

literature

  • Birgit and Michael Rauhut : AMIGA. The discography of all rock and pop productions 1964–1999 . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-89602-189-3 .
  • Werner Josh Sellhorn : Jazz-GDR facts, performers / discographies / photos / CD . NEUNPLUS11 / Edition Kunst, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-936033-19-6 .
  • Eberhard Kroll, Jochen Kleine-Horst: First general rock, pop and hit LP catalog of the GDR. Data, facts, collector prices . Volume 1: LPs from the AMIGA 850/855 series (1963–1984). IP Verlag Jeske / Mader GbR, Berlin 2000.
  • Mathias Brüll: Jazz on AMIGA. The jazz records of the AMIGA label from 1947 to 1990 . Pro Business, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-937343-27-X .
  • Frank Oehme, Bernd Meyer-Rähnitz, Joachim Schütte (eds.): The Eternal Girlfriend - from Lied der Zeit to VEB Deutsche Schallplatten Berlin. A company discography of shellac records from AMIGA, ETERNA and LIED DER ZEIT . albis-international, Dresden and Ústí 2006, ISBN 80-86971-10-4 .

Movies

  • 2017: Amiga - The sound of the GDR. Director: Heike Sittner, MDR ( www.mdr.de )

Web links

Commons : Amiga  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rainer Bratfisch: The jazz scene in the GDR. Ch.links, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-86153-370-7 , p. 291.
  2. ^ Hansjürgen Schaefer in Wicke / Müller: Rock music and politics . Berlin 1996
  3. ↑ "The West only cooks with water". Conversation with Jörg Stempel, in: Junge Welt , November 9, 2019.
  4. ↑ Portrait at musik-base.de, accessed on November 3, 2017