German American friendship
| German American friendship | |
|---|---|
 Gabi Delgado-López (left) and Robert Görl (right) |
|
| General information | |
| origin | Wuppertal , Germany |
| Genre (s) | Electropunk , EBM , Neue Deutsche Welle , Industrial |
| founding | 1978 |
| Founding members | |
| Robert Görl | |
| Gabi Delgado-López † | |
| Kurt Dahlke (until 1979) | |
| Wolfgang Spelmanns (until 1981) | |
| Michael Kemner (until 1980) | |
| Current occupation | |
Drums, synthesizers |
Robert Görl |
| former members | |
singing |
Gabi Delgado-López † |
Synthesizer, saxophone , bass |
Chrislo Haas † (1979–1981) |
The German American Friendship , also known by the acronym DAF , is a band from Wuppertal . Some music critics consider the band, along with Kraftwerk and Can, one of the most influential German groups in the field of electronic music .
history
The band was founded in 1978 in Wuppertal by Robert Görl (drums, electronics), who was trained in classical and jazz , the musical autodidacts Gabriel "Gabi" Delgado-López (vocals), Kurt "Pyrolator" Dahlke (electronics; later with Der Plan , Fehlfarben and A Certain Frank ), Michael Kemner (bass; later Fehlfarben and Mau Mau ) and Wolfgang Spelmanns (guitar; later Mau Mau). The forerunner band You rehearsed the stock exchange in Wuppertal in the old “Leichenkeller” of the nationally known socio-cultural center . Chrislo Haas (electronics ( Korg MS-20 ), bass, saxophone; later Liaisons Dangereuses ) replaced Kurt Dahlke in 1979, before the group finally reduced to the core Robert Görl / Gabi Delgado-López, who created the image, during a tour of England in 1981 or the concept of the group redefined and thus also became commercially successful.
DAF are considered pioneers and inspiration for the genres of Electropunk , Electronic Body Music and Techno . The years 1980 to 1982 as well as the albums Die Kleine und die Böse and Alles ist gut are considered highlights, for everything is good they received the German Record Prize .
1979–1981 founding phase
In 1979, before the recording of the first record A Product of German-American Friendship , singer Gabi Delgado-López left the band, but then returned. Accordingly, the record is also a purely instrumental work . A product of the German-American friendship consists of 22 untitled instrumentals, often only seconds long. The record demonstrated the will of German punk and new wave in the late 1970s / early 1980s . The album was released on the Warning label by keyboardist Kurt "Pyrolator" Dahlke , which a little later renamed Ata Tak and became one of the most influential early NDW labels (including Der Plan , Andreas Dorau and Pyrolator ). Kurt Dahlke left the band when DAF decided, after signing a contract with Virgin , to go to Great Britain and look for international success there. He was replaced by Chrislo Haas (electronics, bass, saxophone; later Liaisons Dangereuses ), who soon introduced the DAF sequencer sound together with Robert Görl . In the same year, the new line-up released the singles Kebab-Träume and Ich und die Demokratie on this label , shortly afterwards Michael Kemner left and DAF shrank to the quartet Robert Görl / Gabi Delgado-López / Chrislo Haas / Wolfgang Spelmanns.
In 1980 the combo achieved its international breakthrough with the album Die Kleinen und die Böse . Her style (reduction of the musical instruments used, unusual synthesizer sounds, monotonous spoken chants, provocative, sometimes Dadaistic -looking texts) significantly influenced the Neue Deutsche Welle .
The LP was divided into a studio A side, added to Konrad "Conny" Plank's studio (including Kraftwerk , Neu! , Ultravox ) and a live B-side, recorded at London club The Electric Ballroom , where the opening act von Wire performed and, according to Robert Görl, “played them on the wall”. The little ones and the bad ones appeared on the London-based Mute Records label by Daniel Miller .
After a joint tour, Robert Görl and Gabi Delgado-López pushed Chrislo Haas and Wolfgang Spelmanns out of the band in order to realize a considerably reduced concept.
1981–1982: The Delgado-López / Görl phase
So DAF shrank to the final “classic” line-up: The following album Alles ist gut as well as the follow-up albums Gold and Liebe and Forever from 1981 and 1982 brought the commercial and artistic breakthrough. Some of the songs, Der Mussolini (“Tanz den Mussolini”) for example, the homoerotic piece The Robber and the Prince , Reach for the Stars , The Gods Are White or A Little War were lyrically provocative. Their image also matched the songs. Especially Mussolini and her appearance in a leather outfit and short, shaved haircut as a kind of "Germanic counterpart to Grace Jones " brought them repeatedly accusations of being fascists. The texts, which did not shy away from the worn-out vocabulary from Schlager- Kitsch, Heimatfilme and Nazi mythology, reinforced this accusation. DAF have never clearly defined their political stance in the media. They only mentioned that their stylistic spectrum would "at least range from anarcho-skin to disco-Nazi" and that they were "simply too lusty for fascists".
1982–1986: dissolution, solo activities
When Forever appeared, DAF had already disbanded. Robert Görl and Gabi Delgado-López released English solo albums in 1983 with Night Full of Tension and Mistress, respectively .
Robert Görl took on the role of multi-instrumentalist for the first time on Night Full of Tension as well as the vocal part and delivered a solid, but unsurprising synth-pop album. He was supported vocally by Annie Lennox from the Eurythmics , in return for Görl's drumming on their 81 debut album In the Garden . The album was released again on Mute Records .
Gabi Delgado created a funk or jazz album with Mistress , supported by session musicians. The six-song album was released by Virgin .
1986–2003: 1st Step to Heaven , solo activities
In 1986 DAF was reactivated by both to produce the English-language, disco- sounded album 1st Step to Heaven especially for the American market. Both Görl and Delgado-Lopez played the instruments on this album and took over the vocals, with a dubious result: only the song Absolute Body Control was able to build on the level of earlier pioneering works, critics and fans reacted largely negatively to the album. Then DAF parted again and Gabi Delgado, who held the rights to the DAF name, recorded the maxi-single The Gun together with Klaus Jankuhn (musical partner of DJ Westbam ) as a replacement for Robert Görl in 1987 , which was the first German house - Plate applies at all. Virgin published Best of DAF in 1988 , which exclusively contained the duo's classics from 1981–1982, and Görl and Delgado-López were active as DJs and solo artists in the house / techno sector, but could not achieve the attention of the DAF by far always had. From 1996 to 1999 Delgado-López released two albums as DAF / DOS with Wotan Wilke Möhring, who is also known as an actor , the "DOS" in the name is often taken as the Spanish word for "two", ie "DAF 2".
2003–2006: Fifteen new DAF songs
In 2003 Robert Görl and Gabi Delgado , who had meanwhile converted to Buddhism , tied in with the sound of the early 1980s with the single Der Sheriff and the comeback album Fifteen New DAF Songs and went on a world tour. Chrislo Haas died in Berlin in 2004.
In November 2005 Gabi Delgado-Lopez stated that he was not interested in a new album or in further appearances with DAF. This meant the third breakup of the band. The sequences and songs that Robert Görl had already created for possible further DAF releases, he recorded in a solo album - at least partially. At the end of May 2006 he released the first single Strange Love .
2007: DAF party , the revival
In 2007 there was an extraordinary revival: Robert Görl brought Thoralf Dietrich , singer of the minimal electronics band Jäger 90 , on board. He performed with him at the five-year anniversary festival of the EBM concert organizer Electric Tremor in Dessau in spring 2007 under the name DAF.Partei . Thoralf Dietrich took over the part of Gabi Delgado-López and Robert Görl traditionally sat on the drums. The original backing tapes from the 1981 DAF tour were used for this concert.
Since 2008: last years
On August 13, 2008, DAF played a concert as part of the c / o Pop (Cologne On Pop) Festival on the occasion of their 30th anniversary . They have also been on tour again since 2010 and also played at various festivals in 2011 and 2012.
In 2017 Miriam Spies and Rüdiger Esch published the authorized band biography Das ist DAF . A box set of the same name with the five studio albums from 1979 to 1982 was released in the same year via Grönland Records .
Gabi Delgado-López died in March 2020 at the age of 61 in his adopted home, Portugal.
reception
- In the early days, the alternative pub Grün In in rural Gevelsberg - Silschede was the band's domicile.
- After the tour of England and the reduction of the band from a quintet to a duo in 1980, Gabi Delgado-Lopez and Robert Görl took an apartment in the London district of Finsbury Park. They were inspired by the clothing style popular among young people in this district at the time and styled themselves in the skinhead / rude boy look. Photos of it and their statements about them were documented in an interview with the German music magazine SOUNDS.
- Jürgen Teipel used the DAF song title " Waste Your Youth" for his documentary novel about the "New German Wave" that started in the late 1970s / early 1980s.
- DAF also appears in the film Waste Your Youth . They are played by Denis Moschitto (Delgado-López) and Josef Heynert (Görl). DAF are represented both on the CD compilation of the same name on the occasion of the book and on the actual film soundtrack .
- Under the title Tanz den Adolf Hitler , a line from the DAF song Der Mussolini , the film and culture critic Georg Seeßlen published the first of two volumes of his overview Fascism in Popular Culture in 1994 .
- In the song Das Land der Vollidioten by the South Tyrolean band Frei.Wild there is the line: "We don't dance Adolf Hitler, we don't dance Mussolini ..."
Discography
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Albums
- 1979: Product of German-American friendship
- 1980: The little ones and the bad guys
- 1981: everything is fine
- 1981: gold and love
- 1982: forever
- 1983: Live in Berlin 1980
- 1986: 1st Step to Heaven
- 2003: Fifteen new DAF songs
Compilations
- 1988: Best of DAF
- 1989: Hitz-Blitz (US compilation for the years 1986–1987)
- 2009: The best from DAF
- 2017: This is DAF
Singles
- 1980: kebab dreams
- 1980: I and reality
- 1981: The Mussolini
- 1981: The robber and the prince
- 1981: love at first sight
- 1986: Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?
- 1986: Pure Joy
- 1987: The Gun (maxi single)
- 2003: The sheriff
- 2010: You are DAF
literature
- Jürgen Teipel: Waste your youth . A documentary novel about German punk and new wave. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2001, ISBN 3-518-39771-0 .
- Rüdiger Esch: Electri_City. Electronic music from Düsseldorf 1970–1986 . Suhrkamp, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-518-46464-9 .
- Philipp Meinert and Martin Seeliger (eds.): Punk in Germany. Social and cultural science perspectives. Transcript-Verlag, Bielefeld 2013, ISBN 978-3-837-62162-4 , p. 288.
- Miriam Spies and Rüdiger Esch: This is DAF: German-American Friendship - The Authorized Biography . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf Verlag, 2017. ISBN 978-3-862-65663-9 .
- Sven-André Dreyer , Michael Wenzel, Thomas Stelzmann: No breathing space - music from Düsseldorf. Droste, Düsseldorf 2018, 192 pages, ISBN 978-3-7700-2067-6
Web links
- Homepage of Robert Görl
- DAF at laut.de
- German American friendship at Discogs (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Dance the Berlusconi. In: plattentests.de .
- ^ German American friendship. In: groenland.com (accessed March 22, 2018).
- ↑ Sounds 03/81: The robber and the prince In: subkultur-ost.de. Retrieved May 25, 2020
- ↑ festivalguide.de ( Memento from April 24, 2011 in the Internet Archive ).
- ↑ magistrix.de ( Memento from February 21, 2014 in the Internet Archive ).
- ↑ a b Chart sources: DE1 DE2 AT