Lutz Ludwig Kramer

Lutz Ludwig Kramer (* 14. January 1954 in Potsdam ) is a German musician, singer, guitarist, actor and former communard the Commune I .

Life

Kramer was born in Potsdam as the son of the actor and music and film producer Kurt Kramer and the opera singer Edita Weiss and grew up in West Berlin. At the age of three he already appeared in films, and in 1967 he took part in a larger film role in the ARD film “Die Klasse” directed by Wolfgang Staudte . From 1959 he received classical piano lessons.

In 1965 he founded his first group as a singer and guitarist "The Ugly Things", named after his role models The Pretty Things . He was inspired u. a. also by the local band "The Safebreakers" around the singer Udo Arndt and Lukas Dammer, Kramer's first guitar teacher.

At the end of 1966 he was the founder of the group "The Agitation", later Agitation Free , which he founded with Christopher Franke , Michael "Fame" Günther, Lüül and from October 1967 Michael "Micki" Duwe in the Eichkamp estate . Parallel to the emerging psychedelic music, the group turned to free improvisation , which they got to know through Kramer's guitar teacher at the time, the jazz guitarist Johannes Rediske .

For Kramer, “the musical new beginning was not only supported by an artistic component, but also by a socially critical component in the course of the political search for orientation of the time.” This manifested itself in the choice of the group name Agitation Free (free from agitation). He joined Commune I because the Communards loved the "experimental spacer rock from Agitation Free and offered the band a practice room in their house."

Agitation Free with front man Kramer soon became the "musical loudspeaker of the radical left in Berlin", like the Central Council of the roaming hash rebels , because they "wanted change now and immediately". Kramer also implemented this attitude and refused to accept recordings that were a. were made in Thomas Kessler's “Beatstudio” at Pfalzburger Straße 32, Berlin-Wilmersdorf with the reason “I don't need canned food, I play for the here and now.” As early as 1969, the SFB / Berliner Abendschau, ARD, made a report about this Beat studio. The comments were almost groundbreaking about the still very young avant-garde band Agitation Free with its founding members Ludwig Kramer, later Walpurgis and Christopher Franke, shortly afterwards Tangerine Dream for 18 years. "They make an effort to continue the beat that they see in electronics ... that's all." Later bands like Nina Hagen, Ideal, Neonbabies and Rammstein produced their first albums here. Krenz describes Agitation Free with frontman Kramer as an electronic musician from the very beginning. Groups like Agitation Free brought a new and very experimental style to German pop music, which was later marketed under the term " Krautrock ". Under Kramer's direction, Agitation Free took up “the musical-visual concept of Pink Floyd , but created their own sound through their ability to improvise.” The Tagesspiegel wrote under the title “Rausch, Aggression und Laissez Faire” about a performance by Agitation Free with Kramer as the front man “In the concert at the TU, the groups Agitation Free and the groups Tangerine Dream and Amon Düül entertained expanding sound processes for hours, which reminded one of the ritual musical models of exotic tribes in their repetition. Visually, the atmosphere was aggressively charged by films in which, for example, mealworms fidgeted in a kind of "Aquarium-Auschwitz" ... However, if the works of the musical avant-garde are used as standards of music-critical reflection, then the improvised musical processes must necessarily be just as anachronistic as formulations set new stone age appear. The repertoire of knocking and beating musical gestures, tapes of noise, the complete lack of formal musical conceptions, have strictly barbaric features. It seems unreasonable, however, not to want to take note of the fact that at the moment it is less important to write masterpieces than the sums of the epoch - and who could formulate them? - but to find forms of communication in which this society is represented. Works, when their time comes, will come. The group “Neue Musik Berlin” is to be thanked for an initiative in which they modestly resigned and only took on arranging functions. Those who wanted could have experiences in these six days, the consequences of which for musical life are hard to imagine. More and more interesting things can hardly be expected from a concert series. "

Agitation Free appearances in the Zodiak Club on Hallesches Ufer, in which an “anarchist attitude” prevailed, resembled music happenings that “opened up mind-expanding and mind-expanding, psychedelic, different ways of experiencing ... and emotionally questioning the acquired and the familiar” in which the boundaries between The audience and the group broke up. Instruments were distributed so that audience and artist melted into one. "

Musically, Agitation Free was inadequate in this phase, “loud, noisy, ugly and very punk-like” while for Kramer “screaming out on partially out of tune instruments was a musical expression of this time, not unlike punk. Breaking up song structures like we did: that was political ”.

Kramer saw himself not only politically as a free spirit and played a. a. with the embryonic clay stone shards from Rio Reiser , Tangerine Dream , Guru Guru , Can and Amon Düül II .

In the spring of 1970, Kramer left for musical reasons Agitation Free (u. A. He rejected the use of synthesizers) He rose in the group Walpurgis , which is a "mix of West Coast rock and psychedelic rock romantic embossed with long improvisations based on guitars and organ and Piano parts ”, in which Kramer could bring his singer-songwriting qualities to bear.

After the dissolution of Commune I, Kramer went to Thailand , where he dealt with the Buddhist faith and u. a. worked as a handicraft trader. In 1978 he returned to Germany and settled in Griesheim .

He worked for ESOC before taking up the geriatric care profession. Through further training he qualified as a lecturer for nursing professions, headed a geriatric nursing school in Frankfurt am Main and worked as a consultant for company organization at Caritas in Offenbach am Main , where he ran a nursing home called St. Ludwig for people with dementia .

His passion for painting, which he had been practicing since the 1960s, reawakened and his pictures were among others. a. exhibited in the building of the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe. In addition, he was involved in local theater groups as a director.

A live reunion with Agitation Free in Berlin's Tränenpalast in November 1997 inspired him to build a home studio and he recorded his first solo CD “Being Content” by hand, playing and singing all the instruments. The album, which was released in 2000, features “song-oriented West Coast Rock and Beatlesque Pop paired with long, improvised, guitar-heavy Krautrock pieces”. The German Rock e. V. Magazin certified the album "flawless fresh music with a mixture of mainstream hippie sound ... that mixes all the good ingredients of the 70s with art and imagination to one ear that one likes to eat."

At a concert in Griesheim in 2000 on the occasion of the album's release, u. a. Manuel Göttsching , the Kramer u. as an influence on the early Ash Ra temple , on guitar and percussion.

Kramer worked on a second solo CD Crossing The Lines , supported by Manuel Göttsching, Frank Diez and Lüül , which has not yet been released.

In April 2016 his album “As we are drifting” will be released. a. recorded with Johannes "Alto" Pappert ( Kraan ), Axel Heilhecker ( Wolf Maahn & die Deserteure, Sunya Beat) and his former bandmate Burghard Rausch ( Agitation Free ).

Significance in music history

Lutz Ludwig Kramer is considered to be the co-founder of the Berlin School (electronic music), a variant of electronic music, the best-known representatives of which are the groups Ash Ra Tempel , Agitation Free , Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream . Kramer's position in electronic and improvised music in Germany, which later became known as "Krautrock", is primarily based on his musical pioneering role, whereby his artistic attitude corresponds to his political commitment.

Discography

• 1972: Queen of Saba (with Walpurgis)
• 2000: Being Content (Solo)
• 2016: As we are drifting (Solo)

literature

• Lutz Ulbrich : Lüül. A musical life between Agitation Free , Ashra, Nico, the Neue Deutsche Welle and the 17 hippies . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-89602-696-8 .
• Detlef Krenz: The zodiac on the Hallesches Ufer in Seidel, Wolfgang (Ed.) Shards. Music, politics and the effect of clay stones shards , Ventil Verlag, Mainz 2005, ISBN 3-931555-94-1 .
• Günter Ehnert, Detlef Kinsler: Rock in Germany: Lexicon of German rock groups u. Interpreten , original edition: Taurus Press, Hamburg 1984, ISBN 3-922542-16-6 , page 434.
• Christian Graf: Rocklexikon Deutschland , Verlag Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, 2002, ISBN 3-89602-273-3 .

Web links

• Homepage of Lutz Ludwig Kramer
• Agitation Free Website
• Kramer entry in German Rock Lexicon of the German rock, pop, metal and electronic music scene.
• http://www.rockarchiv.infopartisan.net/haschrebellen/index.html

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Lutz Ulbrich : Lüül. A musical life between Agitation Free, Ashra, Nico, the Neue Deutsche Welle and the 17 hippies .
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Interview with Ulrike Rechel “ Eclipsed ” magazine 6/2007.
3. ↑ ^{a b} essay by Marco Neumaier
4. ↑ ^{a b c} Detlef Krenz: The Zodiak on the Hallesches Ufer in Seidel, Wolfgang (Ed.) Shards. Music, politics and the effect of clay stones shards .
5. ↑ Encyclopedia Beat Studio
6. ↑ Wolfgang Burdl quoted in the Tagesspiegel 1968, full article available at www.lutzludwig.de
7. ↑ Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser in the song magazine IEST 68, quoted by Neumaier, Marco “A flight of eyes and ears to the last heaven. The German rock scene around 1969 "
8. ↑ Christopher Franke in an interview with Rudy Koppl
9. ↑ See interview with Ulrike Rechel “Eclipsed” magazine 6/2007 and Jerry Kranitz
10. ↑ Kramer in an interview with Jerry Kranitz
11. ↑ Progarchives - "The Ultimate Progressive Rock Website"
12. ↑ Caritas Association Offenbach / Main e. V.
13. ↑ Report on bundesverfassungsgericht.de ( memento of the original dated December 24, 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. 
14. ↑ Jerry Kranitz quote
15. ↑ Review by Kurt Mitzkatis