Hong Kong Syndicate

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Chart positions
Explanation of the data
Albums
Never Too Much
  DE 56 03/10/1986 (2 weeks)
Singles
Too Much
  DE 24 02/17/1986 (11 weeks)
Concrete & Clay
  DE 26th 10/13/1986 (13 weeks)

Hong Kong Syndikat , also Hong Kong Syndikat , was a German pop band from the 1980s.

Band history

At the beginning of the decade, the decorator and disc jockey Bruno Grünberg, the graphic artist Hartmut Möller and Gerd Plez, who knew each other from their youth in Bremen , met in what was then West Berlin . They founded Hong Kong Syndicate, got a record deal with Teldec after a short time and released their debut album Erste Streich .

The first single , Berlin stays Berlin , contains, as the title sample, a short excerpt from the speech of the then US President , Ronald Reagan , during his visit to West Berlin on June 11, 1982 . While the band sang mainly in German on the first record , they recorded the following albums in English - also to orientate themselves on the English-speaking market.

In 1984 Hong Kong Syndicate gave a concert in New York ; in August of the same year, the group recorded their second LP Olympia in London , which was produced by Rusty Egan , a member of the band Visage . On this album , among others, is the drummer Curt Cress heard. In 1985 the album Never Too Much followed , which made it to number 56 in the German album charts . The singles Too Much and Concrete & Clay were successful, the latter the cover version of an oldie from Unit 4 + 2 .

Hong Kong Syndicate could not continue the previous successes; the 1987 long player Des Teutons Pas Nippons was a flop . Two years later, in 1989, the band split up. Gerd Plez later worked as a copywriter for Falco .

occupation

  • Bruno Grünberg Jr. (Born April 1, 1956) - vocals, synthesizer
  • Gerd Plez (actually Gerhard Folke Plätz ; born October 4, 1956) - vocals, synthesizer
  • Hartmut "Hardy" Möller (born May 9, 1952) - guitar
  • Gerd Grünberg - vocals
  • Hanns Schmidt-Theissen - keyboard, saxophone

Discography

Albums

  • 1982: first coup
  • 1984: Olympia
  • 1985: Never Too Much
  • 1987: Des Teuton's Pas Nippons

Singles

  • 1982: Berlin remains Berlin (release: September)
  • 1984: Berlin
  • 1984: Samba Olec
  • 1985: Too Much
  • 1986: Concrete and Clay
  • 1986: Girls I Love
  • 1986: Flash
  • 1987: No More Sorrow
  • 1989: Real Men Don't Eat Gummibears
  • 1994: Unusual
  • 1998: Sugarcane

literature

  • Graf, Christian: The NDW Lexicon. The German New Wave - Bands and Artists A to Z . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3896025295 .

swell

  1. ↑ Chart sources: Singles albums
  2. ↑ Reagan visits West Berlin, June 11, 1982 (from 0:00:20) on YouTube , accessed on May 25, 2020. The song was republished in 1984 under the shorter name Berlin .

Web links