A little bit of horror show
| A little bit of horror show | ||||
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| Studio album by Die Toten Hosen | ||||
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Publication |
1988 |
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| Label (s) | Skull, Virgin | |||
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Format (s) |
LP, CD, MC |
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Punk rock |
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Title (number) |
12 |
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running time |
42:26 |
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Studio (s) |
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A little bit of horror show is the fifth studio album of the band: (The songs from Clockwork Orange and other dirty melodies subtitles) Die Toten Hosen and contains half the incidental music which the band for Bernd Schade Forest production of A Clockwork Orange at the Kammerspiele Bad Godesberg wrote .
The piece is based on Anthony Burgess ' novel Uhrwerk Orange and Stanley Kubrick's film adaptation . Together with Ralf Richter , who played the main role, Uwe Fellensiek , Ingolf Lück , Oliver Stritzel and many others, the band performed at the Kammerspiele Bad Godesberg in Bonn from June to October 1988 . They took on extra roles and performed the pieces of music live as transitions before the respective files.
The album was supplemented by six more pieces of music that did not belong to the Bonn production, but thematically fit the plot, so that a concept album was created. Sequences from Beethoven's 9th Symphony , played by a symphony orchestra, run like a red thread through the album and connect the individual songs with one another. The title alludes to the term “horror show”, derived from the Russian “charascho” (“хорошо”) and the slang Nadsat used by Alex and his friends (“Droogs”) .
Track list
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Chart positions Explanation of the data |
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Titles marked with * were recorded at the Schauspielhaus Bonn.
- Here comes Alex - 3:53 (Music: Meurer / Text: Campino ) *
- 1000 good reasons - 3:33 ( Breitkopf / Campino)
- One step too many - 2:22 ( from Holst / Campino)
- I do n't know - 2:08 (Campino) *
- The color gray - 3:52 (Campino) *
- 180 degrees - 4:33 (Meurer / Campino)
- More of it - 5:10 (from Holst / Campino)
- Payday - 2:42 (Breitkopf / Campino) *
- 35 years - 2:15 ( Rohde / Campino, von Holst)
- Sample - 3:55 (Campino / von Holst) *
- Test picture - 3:17 (Campino)
- Bye, bye, Alex - 2:59 (Rohde / Campino) *
Background and meaning of the lyrics
The focus is on the life story of the character "Alex", invented by Burgess, and takes up the socio-critical aspects that the novel hides again. The opening title Here comes Alex describes the violence with which the protagonist and his gang proceed, One Step Too Much is about Alex's arrest and The Color Gray about the dreary everyday life in prison. In payday , exemplar and Bye, bye Alex is about the forcible rehabilitation by the state loses in Alex brainwashed his personality.
The other songs are integrated into the plot of the concept album, but do not relate directly to Alex, but rather establish a connection between the fictional plot of the novel and reality. In the booklet of the album this is explained with a text written in Nadsat as follows:
“ But it's not just the story of our honorable Droog Alex, but also that of a whole host of other Malitchicks who live here today in our vast country. Because the bunch of bumpy Vecks who scold society is at least as bezumnie today as it was back then ... "
The song 1000 good reasons deals with the topic of national pride. In a step too describes how fast you can get with the law in conflict and at 180 degrees it comes to customization and control in a compliant about society.
More of it describes the greed for “more power, more money, more fame, more speed, more hate or more sex”, up to and including the loss of character, from the addict's point of view. 35 years refers to the time the man referred to in this song stood on the assembly line sorting hooks for shower curtains. Single and retired for a year, he doesn't know what to do with his life anymore. In the song Testbild , a person describes that every evening they plan to leave everything behind in order to start a new life in a different place. However, her journey ends every evening in the pub, and in the end all she has left is resignation.
Singles
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music
The pieces of music that the band had already rehearsed for the production of “A Clockwork Orange” were recorded by Jon Caffery using a 24-track recorder after the official performance in the theater . He connected the device directly to the stage box in the theater . The production team and the band had no opportunity to listen to the finished recordings in the theater during production. The music production under "real conditions" on the theater stage should make the music on the album appear less stiff and sterile. The remaining tracks were recorded in the Prussian tone in Berlin and in the Maskot studio in Cologne.
It is consistently hard rock music using the instruments commonly used in this genre, such as drums, electric guitars and electric bass.
Even two decades after it was first published, the music title Mehr vom was often in the set lists of the live concerts, mostly in connection with Campino's climbing actions over the amplifier towers to the stage roof.
Music videos
Two music videos were released for the album, both of which were directed by Walter Knofel : Here comes Alex from 1988, which shows the musicians on a garbage dump, and 1000 good reasons from 1989, which was filmed during a live concert in Bonn. Even before filming, it was clear that the band would have to play the song several times to ensure a good recording. In order not to embarrass themselves in front of everyone, a few fans waiting in front of the hall were let in in the afternoon and only shot in a relatively small group.
New edition 2007
For the 25th anniversary of the Toten Hosen, the album A Little Bit of Horror Show was remastered. Cover and booklet have been revised and provided with graphics by Michael Roman . Jan Weiler has written a new, second leaflet that contains an interview with the band. The CD was supplemented by the B-side of the single Hier geht Alex and other older demo recordings and previously unreleased tracks.
Additional title
- To the boss (thanks later) - 2:10 (from Holst / Campino)
- Jo sings (Das Wort zum Sonntag) - 0:46 (from Holst / Campino)
- Love song - 3:50 (Breitkopf / Campino)
- Color gray - 3:51 (Campino)
- Payday - 2:43 (Breitkopf / Campino)
- Sample - 3:51 (from Holst / Campino)
- 1200 degrees - 4:35 (Breitkopf / Campino)
- Once in four years - 4:49 (Breitkopf / Campino)
- Black Sheriffs - 3:39 (Campino / von Holst)
- Cigarette machine - 2:04 (Campino, Hanns Christian Müller )
resonance
A little bit of horror show entered the German charts in November 1988, stayed there for 53 weeks and reached number 7 as the highest position. The album also reached seventh place in the Swiss charts and the album came to number 22 in the Austrian charts On the 30th anniversary of the release date, in November 2018, the album made a new entry at number 3 in the German charts, at number 41 in the Austrian charts and at number 74 in the Swiss charts. The vinyl record of the new edition was at the top of the German vinyl charts . This made Die Toten Hosen the first band to top the charts for the second time, and Laune der Natur also reached the top position last year .
Edgar Klüsener reviewed for Metal Hammer in 1989 that "this latest dirty piece of vinyl from the Düsseldorf Alt-Punx is another step of the band in the direction of 'Heavy Rock German tongue'". "Die Hosen" would be harder than ever before and toying "more than obviously increasingly with AC / DC and other representatives of the traditional hard rock corner". So you would have been a case for the magazine too. "Hard rock with German lyrics that still doesn't sound strange and bumpy, so it works".
Individual evidence
- ↑ Die Toten Hosen: Magazine for the tour people, animals, sensations . Universa Medien Verlags GmbH, Dortmund 1992, page 65.
- ↑ Fryderyk Gabowicz : Die Toten Hosen. Live backstage studio: photographs 1986–2006. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-89602-732-8 , pages 18-19.
- ↑ Charts Surfer Germany
- ↑ Hit parade Austria
- ^ Swiss charts
- ↑ Booklet for the album, page 2.
- ↑ Droog = friend, Malitchicks = boys, Vecks = people, bezumnie = crazy, according to the Nadsat Lexicon after Stanley Edgar Hyman
- ↑ Quote from the original text.
- ↑ Information about the composers only in 2007 on the new edition
- ↑ Hollow Skai : The Dead Pants . Hannibal, A-Höfen 2007, ISBN 978-3-85445-281-2 , page 90.
- ↑ Booklet for the new edition 2007, page 5.
- ↑ DVD Reich & sexy II - Your most successful videos , band comments.
- ↑ Michael Kerst: With the ancient record Toten Hosen create a chart sensation. In: Express . May 11, 2018. Retrieved November 11, 2018 .
- ↑ Die Toten Hosen - A Little Bit of Horror Show (vinyl). officialcharts.de, accessed on February 2, 2019 .
- ↑ Die Toten Hosen - Laune der Natur (vinyl). officialcharts.de, accessed on February 2, 2019 .
- ↑ Edgar Klüsener: Die Toten Hosen - A little bit of horror show , Metal Hammer, Issue 1, January 1989, p. 63.
Web links
- Lyrics to the album
- Benjamin Maack: 40 years of A Clockwork Orange - We felt: This is our film article in Spiegel Online from June 21, 2011.