The jukebox

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In the early decades of the Austrian radio station Ö3, the Musicbox was the defining radio magazine for many young people. For a long time, it divided the Ö3 audience into two groups of listeners: those who listened to Ö3 almost exclusively between 3:05 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. and those who turned off the station at this time . In this sense, the term “Taxlerknick” associated with the Musicbox describes both the hasty movement with which Viennese taxi drivers and other regular Ö3 listeners reflexively turned off the station for an hour after the “3 p.m.” radio news, as well as the resulting drop in audience ratings .

history

The Musicbox ran from October 1, 1967 to January 13, 1995. It was initially broadcast daily between 3:03 and 4 pm, on Saturdays as a " Pop Museum" or occasionally as an "LP Museum" and on Sundays as a "Pop Concert". From November 1972 the Musicbox was available every day except Saturday and from March 1977 only Monday to Friday. In its final years, the program was broadcast between 10:15 p.m. and 11:00 p.m., most recently between 9:05 p.m. and 10:00 p.m.

As a demanding minority program, the Ö3 Musicbox was a listening island or a foreign body within the entertainment channel Ö3. Committed to the intellect and counterculture, the radio broadcast cultivated a critical examination of contemporary exhibitions, books, movies, pop concerts, records as well as social discussions, developments and topics in its contributions.

The "Box" had a sworn fan base scattered all over Germany, which consisted of high school students, students, artists, dropouts and young employees. Many who could not hear the program broadcast live between 3:05 and 4 p.m. recorded it on a music cassette in order to be able to listen to the weekday program with a time delay.

“The most interesting show was - until it was finally discontinued or moved to FM4 - the 'Music Box'. In a ' Kurier ' interview at the end of September 1968, the program manager Hubert Gaisbauer explained: The 'Music Box' is the only program on Ö3 with literature, but the freedom of fools that is granted is only exercised in moderation: 'We can play records for this that cannot be played anywhere else because they are either too long or too extreme. ' A collection of well-known names from other professions were presented as moderators and disc jockeys . ... The 'freedom of fools' for the 'music box' has not yet been used as intensively to create a counter- public as in the 1970s and 1980s , when it was the ORF's only link on subcultural and youth policy issues. The switch-over reflex that prompted most Austrian offices to switch to Ö Regional at 3 p.m. punctually - i.e. with the start of the 'Box' - was not yet observed in 1968. "

- Paulus Ebner , Karl Vocelka : The tame revolution

The Ö3 music box was a core part of the youth department. In the early years, the program was specifically identified as a “program by the youth editorial staff of Austrian Broadcasting”. The ORF management often found editing the “Box” uncomfortable. That is why Hubert Gaisbauer , the head of the department responsible for the broadcast, had problems with ORF general manager Gerd Bacher again and again because of alleged “leftism” : “There have even been attempts by - now I almost said the authorities  - by those responsible, in our group as well To transplant people into where it was said that there are also young people, and not just those who prefer what you are promoting. But they actually didn't hold up, so that one can say who has endured it with us for a long time, or we with him, that was of one mind with us. ”In spring 2008, Wolfgang Kos also addressed the alleged“ leftism ” : “By the way, in the Ö3 youth editorial team there were by no means“ leftists ”at the helm (even if Gerd Bacher was fun to call us that), but good do-gooder with a Catholic background. The "left" Catholicism was, that is often forgotten, one of the most important driving forces critical of the system. "

Permanent employees of the Musicbox editorial team included Hermi Amberger, Nora Aschacher, Stefan Biedermann (DJ DSL), Martin Blumenau , Günter Brödl , Werner Geier , Michael Geringer, Walter Gröbchen , André Heller , Alfred Hütter, Alfred Koch, Alfred Komarek , Wolfgang Kos , Thomas Mießgang, Fritz Ostermayer , Rainer Rosenberg, Michael Schrott and Katharina Weingartner . In addition, over the course of around 27 years of broadcasting history, numerous occasional employees have designed some individual contributions and some entire programs.

In addition to the Musicbox , there was also the almost half-hour evening program Minibox (later ZickZack ), which was conceived as a “youth program for working young people” and was devoted to topics such as the world of work, “first love” and sexual education, in the 1970s .

In the winter months of the 1970s, when the "Box" started late or completely canceled due to the transmission of ski and other sporting events, the listeners of the Musicbox clearly felt that they were only a tolerated minority, stepchildren of the mass broadcaster Ö3.

Over the years, a large number of “box” employees of the first, second and third generation migrated to the “cultural broadcaster” Ö1 . The majority of the third, fourth and fifth generation of Musicbox employees switched to the FM4 youth channel when it started.

The 1960s

The first edition in October 1967 was moderated by Frank Elstner , who was brought to Vienna by then ORF general manager Gerd Bacher of Radio Luxemburg as a radio "development worker", where he appeared under the pseudonym "Franc". The music box - Star of the early years but was André Heller , who awarded for good new releases oranges and lemons for bad. Heller interviewed for the jukebox pop stars such as Andy Warhol , Frank Zappa , John Lennon and Yoko Ono .

The 1970s

Among other things, the weekly series "The Complete LP ", broadcast on Thursday , which presented selected music albums in full, was particularly popular : for example Brian Eno's Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) (1974) or Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here (1975). From the 1970s onwards, specialty programs and series about Bob Dylan , The Kinks , The Rolling Stones and important musical outsiders were characteristic. Thanks to these portraits, recordings of insider tips such as John Cale , Kevin Coyne , Nick Drake , Shel Silverstein and Loudon Wainwright III were heard for the first time in Austria . But albums by Austrian bands such as Bilgeri & Köhlmeiers Owie lacht (1973), Schönherzs / Rigonis Viktor (1975), Franz Morak's debut album (1980) and Sigi Marons 5 vor 12 (1981) attracted widespread attention thanks to the “box”. With Bob Marley and his reggae music, an entire style of music found its first stage in Austria. Otto Waalkes , who was presented by the editorial team as "Blödler Otto", also became known through the program. Another longstanding focus of the Musicbox was the blues . Based on the Vienna Blues Club, Hans Maitner and Dietmar Brunnbauer regularly organized programs between 1974 and 1979 on current and historical trends in this musical genre: The highlights of this blues track were the broadcasts of live recordings by American artists in Austria (legendary: JB Hutto with the Houserockers live in Hernals 1976). The special effect of the Musicbox could also be recognized by the fact that, as a result of the radio portraits and the associated demand, albums and books could then also be obtained in bookshops and record stores in Austria that were previously difficult to find in Germany, England or USA had to get.

The 1980s

In 1980 Wolfgang Kos , who was involved in building up the Musicbox from the start , took over the management of the show. In the 1980s there were daily small series, such as the "audio exhibition" "miniatures", in which selected artists could create a radio minute (53 one-minute pieces by musicians, visual artists, authors, composers). Another series focused on the playback of selected pop songs that lasted a maximum of one minute. Together with the music, literature was also cultivated: In addition to young, unknown authors, the Musicbox presented literary insider tips and outsiders, such as the German writer Rolf Dieter Brinkmann , the Tyrolean insider tip Helmuth Schönauer , but also the newly crowned Nobel Prize winner Elias Canetti in its own programs. Michael Köhlmeier presented his first novel Der Peverl Toni and his adventurous journey through my head himself, chapter by chapter, in the "Box". On the occasion of the 200th anniversary of Goethe's Italian trip , the long-time “Box” editor Michael Schrott followed the tracks of the Weimar Privy Council acoustically in a series. The broadcast sheet was always very wide: ETA Hoffmann's modern novel Lebensansichten des Katers Murr was also the content of a music box . The selected passages of the novel were performed by the then Burgtheater rebel and Austropop star Franz Morak - who later became State Secretary for Art and Media. Literary texts were always spoken , quotes mostly by professional radio speakers and actors ( Fritz Grieb , Peter Gruber , Franz Katzinger ), while the editorial contributions were mostly read by the editors themselves.

The 1990s

Due to the postponement of the traditional afternoon broadcast in the late evening as part of the Ö3 reform in 1993, the “box” lost many regular listeners. Due to the dwindling number of listeners, the traditionally controversial minority offer Musicbox was threatened with discontinuation, but this could be prevented by protests and signature lists of committed "Box" employees and listeners until it was finally ended by the conversion from Ö3 to format radio areas and the Expansion of the ORF broadcasting chain to include the “alternative mainstream” / youth culture broadcaster FM4 could no longer be avoided. The last music box went over the airwaves on January 13, 1995.

The "legacy" of the Musicbox

Older listeners who grew up with the “box” in the 1970s rate the Ö1 broadcasts associated with Wolfgang Kos and Michael Schrott ( Diagonal - radio for contemporaries , playrooms , playrooms special ) as a continuation of the music box . In contrast, sees the younger listeners generation that only the later juke has experienced in FM4 the successor of sophisticated Ö3 program ( music box , Popmuseum , Radiothek , overnight express u. A.).

Musicbox - "Signations"

The Musicbox had an unmistakable " signature " ( signature melody) in the 1970s : It consisted of the first 7 seconds of James Brown's Choo-Choo (Locomotion) followed by Ten Years Afters Speed ​​Kills (from the LP Stonedhenge ), that of the sound of a locomotive, which switched from one stereo channel to the other, whereupon the whole thing was stopped loudly by a locomotive whistle or a locomotive signal. The track Skoobly-oobly-doobob , also from the LP Stonedhenge by Ten Years After, formed the additional characteristic melody for the “Musicbox” series “The Complete LP”. The characteristic melody that has been used since the mid-1980s was just as memorable and consisted of an excerpt from the song "Yü-Gung" by the Einstürzende Neubauten edited by Holger Hiller .

Four quotes about the music box

  • Al Cook (blues legend): “When the musicbox was founded in 1967, it was a great hope for the up-and-coming austrian music culture. after the long years of idle commercial radio, an institution was created with the station ö3, which also allowed representatives of the non-commercial muse to articulate themselves via a mass medium and to speak to the listeners. Of course, it also happened that all kinds of amateur and crazy people squeezed between quite interesting and worth hearing contributions. But that just means free media politics. over time the wheat separates from the chaff anyway, but you have to bring in the harvest first. with all this 'progressive pop music', as it was called back then, the blues was made popular and socially acceptable ..... and i was the man from the very beginning, then the legendary Hans Maitner came along with his cult series 'living blues' and in the middle of the 70s the blues enjoyed a reputation that it will never have again as long as it is denied in the mass media and the quota barrier is placed in front of its feet. with bogdan roscic, the era that felt like spring in prague ended. we know what has become of ö3 .... a preprogrammed, quota-horny (s) hit radio. good night vienna. "
  • Walter Gröbchen ( Musicbox editor): “When at 3 p.m., more precisely: five minutes after 3 p.m., the signature of the 'Musicbox' sounded, half of Austria switched to regional waves. The other half, however, either listened intently or irritated the torrent of words and music that followed. Names like Kos, Schrott, Hütter, Koch, Brödl, Geier, Forcher, Blumenau, Hiess, Distl / Dee are just as fixed terms in the socialization history of a generation as 'The complete LP'. The 'Musicbox', like its counterpart ' ZickZack ', is the responsibility of the ORF department 'Youth, Society, Family' (does something like that still exist today?), Set itself the task of simultaneously transporting and reflecting pop apart from the Ö3 mainstream . "
  • Michael Schrott ( Musicbox editor): “The Musicbox was simply the program that did what the others didn't. That is, the music was playing in the music box that was not played in the rest of Ö3, and the reports were playing that could not be heard on the other radio. Such programs no longer exist today. In the meantime, the various editorial offices really cover a lot of areas, you couldn't do a program today that says we do what everyone else doesn't do, so you couldn't fill this program anymore. "
  • Andreas Ungerböck : “When I heard the name Werner Kofler for the first time, it was fittingly on the radio. As so often, I lay or sat in front of my parents' radio and listened to the 'subversive' Ö3 program Musicbox. It may have been 1975, and it could have been the voice of the future museum director (Ö3 moderators like to be museum or circus directors) Wolfgang Kos who purred this name in my ear, along with an excerpt from a book that minutely describes a childhood and Youth in Carinthia worked up and that was called Guggile. "

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Today's Programs. Ö3 15: 03-16: 00 . Arbeiter Zeitung , September 18, 1971
  2. ↑ Today on the radio. Ö3 15: 03-16: 00 . In: Arbeiter Zeitung , September 19, 1971
  3. ↑ AZ radio and television week from 5.-11. March . Arbeiter Zeitung , March 4, 1977, pages 7-10
  4. ^ Paulus Ebner , Karl Vocelka : The tame revolution. '68 and what remained of it . Ueberreuter, Vienna 1998, p. 93f.
  5. ^ So in the Arbeiterzeitung , October 1, 1967, p. 7, accessed on October 11, 2012
  6. ↑ Hubert Gaisbauer: Statement on the Musicbox ( Memento of the original from February 15, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / oe1.orf.at
  7. ↑ Wolfgang Kos : Austria 1968: Thawing and airing . “Comment from the others”. In: Der Standard , April 4, 2008. p. 47.
  8. ^ Franc from Radio Luxemburg on "Ö3": 5000 letters per week . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna October 1, 1967, p. 7 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
  9. ↑ Graf + Zyx: Miniatures, a listening exhibition of the Musicbox .
  10. ↑ Michael Schrott: Italian Travel. Tape instead of writing instrument . ( Memento of the original from September 7, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / oe1.orf.at
  11. ↑ In Austria for signature tunes (English signature tunes ), s. Herbert Fussy, Auf gut Österreichisch , Vienna 2003
  12. ↑ Al Cook : Statement on the Musicbox  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.blues.at  
  13. ^ Walter Groebchen : As yesterday was today. A look back at the music and pop culture of the “ideal zone” Vienna '78 -'85 (Chapter IV. Tour Retour: Bluebox - Musicbox) .
  14. ↑ Michael Schrott: Statement on the Musicbox ( Memento of the original from July 17, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / oe1.orf.at
  15. ^ Andreas Ungerböck: Deux ou trois choses que je sais de lui . Encounters with Werner Kofler. In: kolik .