Mardi Gras.bb

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Mardi Gras.bb
General information
Genre (s) Blues , brass band
founding 1992
Founding members
Jochen “Le Docteur” Wenz
Uli "Mr Twister" mug
Erwin Ditzner
Christian Otto "Sugarlip" Engelhardt
trombone
 Robert "Buster" Göhring
Christl Marley
Sigi Geiberger
Uli Schünemann
Trumpet
 Christian Ehringer
Big drum , percussion
 Laurent Leroi
Tenor sax, piccolo flute
Mattl Dörsam (guest musician)
Current occupation
Electric bass, sousaphone
 Uli "Reverend" mug
former members
see below, "Timeline of Mardi Gras.bb members"

Mardi Gras.bb (also Mardi Gras.BB ) is a German band whose style is a mixture of "black music" such as blues , brass band, big band , soul and funk and "white music" such as chanson , rock , pop , Punk , old country , psychedelic and other moves. A simple genre assignment is therefore hardly possible.

The band name Mardi Gras.bb (French: fat Tuesday) is based on Shrove Tuesday in New Orleans, whereby the ".bb" does not stand for brass band, but for "bold bold" (double bold ), so the band name symbolically means: "Fat Tuesday - it doesn't get any fatter!"

Since 1999 Mardi Gras.bb has produced and published ten studio albums. According to the record label, the group has sold over 180,000 albums worldwide to date.

history

Beginnings (1992 to 1998)

Mardi Gras.bb was mainly founded in the early 1990s by the former Guru Guru bassist Uli Krug . In 1992 he traveled with his long-time friend and bandmate, the Heidelberg saxophonist Sigi Geiberger, for a four-week stay in New Orleans , Louisiana . The trip served, among other things, to visit the music scene there. After returning to Mannheim , Krug was given the task of creating a dance in the May evening in the old fire station .

Krug developed a concept that he initially called "Mannheim goes New Orleans". In addition to Sigi Geiberger, he recruited the trained physician and Jochen Wenz, who he already knew as a substitute guitarist for Sanfte Liebe , who worked as a singer and guitarist . For almost ten years, Wenz had been able to gain experience with wind parts and their arrangement in the context of musical projects. Krug, Geiberger and Wenz hired various musicians, including Krug's former soft love and Guru Guru colleague Erwin Ditzner , to put their brass band idea into practice. The evening was finally successfully completed with an 11-member band.

It took Krug and Wenz a few months to get back to the project. Both developed the idea of ​​further developing the brass band concept as an independent one, even beyond cover versions, with Wenz as the main songwriter and arranger. A short time later they performed for the first time under the name "Mardi Gras Brass Band". The band consisted of Krug, Wenz, Geiberger, Ditzner and other musicians, some of whom had already helped out with the aforementioned dance in May, including trombonist Christian Otto Engelhardt. A first, self-produced short album "Movement" was published in small numbers in 1993 (the four tracks on it are all by Jochen Wenz), followed by "Live im Capitol " in 1994 and 1995 by the second studio album "Big Brass Bed", which is now by Jochen Wenz was described as "completely unsuccessful". Some time after this album its name in was Mardi Gras.bb changed.

Contract with Hazelwood (1999)

The former co-owner of the German record distributor EFA , Ulrich Vormehr , established contact between Mardi Gras.bb and producer Gordon Friedrich from the Frankfurt label Hazelwood Vinyl Plastics , which at the time was still based on US Jazz-punk bands like Saccharine Trust and The Universal Congress Of concentrated. Even today, Wenz and Krug see this contact as a key moment for the band, as Friedrich, according to them, made it possible to develop into what Mardi Gras.bb would later stand for.

In 1999 Mardi Gras.bb released their first studio album, "Alligatorsoup", on Hazelwood. The album was critically acclaimed. Some of them were enthusiastically received and opened the way for the group to their first major label deal.

Contract with Universal (2000 to 2003)

The debut album "Alligatorsoup" was well received by the jazz division of Universal Records , whereupon Universal signed a contract with the band and took over the distribution of the next album, the 2000 "Supersmell", while Hazelwood continues to be label home of Mardi Gras.bb stayed. According to Jochen Wenz, the unusual contractual structure between the band, Universal and Hazelwood stipulated that Mardi Gras.bb Universal delivered a fully produced album (Hazelwood was still responsible for the production) for which they were paid. Universal was then responsible for deciding what to do with the album.

The agreement with Universal comprised a total of three Mardi Gras.bb albums, starting with “Supersmell”, which was released in 2000. With this album, DJ Mahmut , who was only used sporadically on the Hazelwood debut, became a permanent member of the ensemble. “Supersmell” contains the single “Psychoflute”, for which a music video was produced for the first time in the band's history ; it rose to position 1 in the German club charts. “Psychoflute” is the formation's most successful single. As a result, in 2000 a video was made for the piece "Down Down Down". The piece came from Hazelwood's debut "Alligator Soup"; in the video, however, the cover of the then current album "Supersmell" was shown several times.

Problems arise when promoting the album because the Universal Advertising Department uses an image of a young man with a bared penis. This picture is classified as pornographic by official bodies , which among other things means that the entire first edition of the then edition of the music magazine Spex , including the accompanying CD, had to be crushed. Since then, Spex has been the only German-language music magazine that completely ignores the band's further activities. Nevertheless, "Supersmell" is just like the first single, a great success and also an international breakthrough for Mardi Gras.bb - followed u. a. Performances in Moscow, London and Montreux .

In 2002 the album "Zen Rodeo" was released, which produced the single " Kung Fu Fighting " - a brass band version of the hit by Carl Douglas - and the "Hop Sing Song EP". The title song of the EP is dedicated to the Chinese chef of the TV family Cartwright , while the EP also brings together all the remixes of Mardi Gras.bb pieces available to date .

Mardi Gras.bb have also been successful in other European countries, especially in France and the Benelux countries, which earned them an appearance at the Cannes Film Festival in 2002, followed by a concert filmed by arte 2006.

The album "Heat", released in 2003, once again showed the strong changeability of the band - danceability, samples and z. Sometimes strong funk influences determined the picture, the jazz influences that were still present before had almost completely disappeared. Universal released a single from "Heat" ("Old Nu York"), but did not subsequently renew the contract with Mardi Gras.bb.

In addition to the group's unconventional style changes, the decisive factor here was also the consolidation of the Universal Group, which also fell victim to the Motor Music label after the record sales collapsed in the early 2000s (see crisis in the music industry ).

Back from the Major Label (2004)

After the end of the contract with Universal, the publishing rights remained with Universal, but the publication of the sound carriers was now again solely up to Hazelwood, initially with distribution by Cargo Records , and since January 2007 by Indigo .

Even before the release of the successor to “Heat”, Mardi Gras.bb was working on the soundtrack of the 1920s German feature film What uses love in thoughts . The 1920s also gave a rough framework for the "29 Moonglow" published in September 2004. After "Heat" was very danceable and had strong funk influences at times, large parts of the successor went in a direction that was more Dixieland and blues influenced. According to Jochen Wenz, the album was also the end of a five-album cycle that began with "Alligatorsoup", in which ten decades of music history were to be freely interpreted. After completing this cycle, the group should be realigned.

As a reaction to the fact that Mardi Gras.bb continued to enjoy sustained popularity in France - according to Jochen Wenz, they played in France on average in front of an audience twice as large as in Germany - a special French version of was released in April 2005 after the original album "29 Moonglow", which contained two additional titles in French. This was the first edition of a Mardi Gras.bb album published specifically for a specific country and also the first time the group had released pieces in a language other than English.

While the various band members pursued other activities after the release of “29 Moonglow” and the accompanying tour, the three core members Jochen Wenz, Uli Krug and Erwin Ditzner started the project The Mighty Three .

The Mighty Three (2005)

The core of the band, consisting of the founding members Jochen Wenz, Uli Krug and Erwin Ditzner, began in late 2004 / early 2005 with some initially secret appearances as a trio under the name The Mighty Three . The Mardi-Gras.bb approach has been radically reduced here. The concerts were only intended as special events for fans and some journalists, while some members of the full band were engaged in other projects, they quickly developed a momentum of their own, within the framework of which an album was recorded within a few days. This album, which is much more guitar and bluesy than full band albums, was released in September 2005 under the band name Mardi Gras.bb , but with the full title "Mardi Gras.bb ... introducing The Mighty Three" (for example: "Mardi Gras.bb introduces: The Mighty Three "), which partly reflects that it is not the previously known Mardi Gras.bb constellation. For a while after the album was released, The Mighty Three cast toured alongside the full cast, e.g. T. were in the same city, where on two consecutive evenings two concerts - one as The Mighty Three and one as Mardi Gras.bb .

Realignment and farewell to Doc Wenz (2006 to 2013)

Members of the Mardi Gras bb (2007)

The turning point marked by The Mighty Three also left some traces in the full cast. Already in the summer of 2006 they played some concerts where new material was presented. Especially the guitar, which hardly appears on previous albums, appears much more clearly like in The Mighty Three , but without typical Mardi Gras.bb peculiarities such as the groove-heavy brass section having lost their position within the music. In the meantime, the band also contributed the music for the Swiss film We'll Be Again by Stefan Hillebrand and Oliver Paulus , in which they also played a small role.

The next studio album “The Exile Itch” was released on February 2, 2007. The first edition, limited to 3,000 copies, includes a DVD with the title “The Unveiling of The Exile Itch” as a bonus. This is a complete concert recording from UT Connewitz , Leipzig, recorded in June 2006. In addition, the DVD contains the two music videos for “Psychoflute” and “Down down down” as well as a short interview special that was published on the occasion of the publication of "Zen Rodeo" was produced in 2002. An approximately one and a half month tour of Germany for the album begins on February 7, 2007 in the old fire station in Mannheim, the place where Uli Krug and Jochen Wenz worked together for the first time in the early 1990s as part of Krug's “Mannheim goes New Orleans” project occurred. During the tour, the album "Pentalogy - The Very Best of 1999-2004" will be released in March, a compilation of the best pieces from the five-piece cycle from the debut "Alligatorsoup" to "29 Moonglow".

In 2012 the band was accompanied by the film director Jonas Grosch for several weeks . The documentary A Silent Rockumentary was made during the production of their tenth album and on a concert tour in North America . The tenth album, titled Crime Story Tapes , will be released in October 2012. In 2013, after 21 years of founding member and front man Jochen "Doc" Wenz, he announced that he would be leaving after the tour, which ran until December 2013, was completed. In interviews he explains that the decision was made around 2006. On the one hand, he had the feeling that he had tried everything with the group that seemed interesting and feasible to him. On the other hand, he wished to say goodbye to the rigid recording and tour cycle that had severely restricted his private life. Two events in 2012/13 gave reason to take this step: firstly, the bankruptcy of the home label Hazelwood Vinyl Plastics , and secondly, that producer Gordon Friedrich had to end the collaboration due to health problems. The group played their last concert with Wenz on December 20, 2013 in the jazz club in Braunau am Inn .

Back to the roots as a live band (since 2014)

After leaving front man Jochen Wenz, Ulrich Krug remained as the second essential source of inspiration and core of the group. Since then, under his leadership and with changing line-ups, the focus has been on live performances, with Wenz's vocal parts being mainly performed by female singers such as Barbara Lahr .

Members

The line-up of Mardi Gras.bb fluctuates more or less strongly from album to album. Over time, however, a core has developed around the founding members, the members of which are briefly presented below.

  • Uli Krug (called "Reverend", born in 1952 in Zeitz ): Sousaphonist, founder and band by saying "spiritual center" of Mardi Gras.bb . Previously was the bassist of the Krautrock group Guru Guru . Krug is involved in several Mannheim-based projects (including Reverend's Revenge and Coleümes ). Also active as a project companion for the Mannheim city anniversary 2007.
  • Jochen Wenz (called “Doc”): singer, arranger and guitarist of Mardi Gras.bb , together with Krug also founder of the group. Trained dermatologist , which is also the reason for his nickname. Since he, like all members of the group, still needs a source of income outside of Mardi Gras.bb , he says he still practices as a dermatologist at times.
  • Erwin Ditzner (called "Sir"): Percussionist and snare drum player of the band, like Krug and Wenz founding member. Krug already knows from the time together with Guru Guru , Gentle Love , Ax Genrichs Riff and the Erwin Ditzner Trio with Sigi Geiberger. In the summer of 2007 Ditzner decided to leave the band and had his last appearance at the New Year's Eve concert in the same year in the Karlstorbahnhof in Heidelberg .
  • Robert Solomon: Trombonist on all Mardi Gras.bb albums with full cast (i.e. with the exception of "The Mighty Three" (2005)). Also active as a trombonist with the ska band The Busters and the Farin Urlaub Racing Team .
  • Christian Ehringer (called Chris Bishop): Trumpeter and flugelhorn. With us since the beginning. Studied jazz trumpeter. With Laith al Deen since 2006.
  • Uli Röser (called "Bluegrass"; initially also "Loose Hip"): studied jazz trombonist, to be heard in full on every album with the exception of "Supersmell". Has another main project with the Trio Boheme and also plays with other artists and projects as a live and studio musician (including the Glenn Miller Orchestra , Bobby Burgess Bigband ).
  • Lömsch Le Mans (born 1966): saxophonist and clarinetist of the band; trained as a classical clarinetist. Mainly active in jazz formations, u. a. in various duos and trios (including with Mardi-Gras.bb colleague Erwin Ditzner), as well as in the Underkarl group (with Sebastian Gramss ).
  • Dj Mahmut: responsible for phonography and fragments (samples and scratches), has had several publications in the hip-hop field since 1994.
  • Javier de la Poza (known as “el Tigre”): born in Madrid: bass drummer and cajón player (2004 to 2007). Since Erwin Ditzner left (December 2007) he has been playing the entire drum set.

Discography

Albums

As a Mardi Gras Brass Band

  • Movement (1993)
  • Live at the Capitol (1994)
  • Big Brass Bed (1995)

As Mardi Gras.bb

  • Alligator Soup (05/1999)
  • Supersmell (08/2000)
  • Zen Rodeo (03/2002)
  • Heat (10/2003)
  • 29 Moonglow (09/2004)
  • Introducing The Mighty Three (09/2005)
  • The Exile Itch (02/2007)
  • Pentalogy - The Very Best of 1999-2004 (03/2007)
  • My Private Hadron (09/2008)
  • By Humboldt Picnic (04/2010)
  • Crime Story Tapes (10/2012)

Singles / EPs

  • Psychoflute (10/2000)
  • Singlesmasher (EP) (04/2001)
  • Kung Fu Fighting (03/2002)
  • Hop Sing Song (EP) (07/2002)

DVDs

  • The Unveiling of the Exile Itch (02/2007)

Filmography

Timeline

Timeline of Mardi Gras.bb members since 1999 by album
Alligator
Soup (05/1999) 		Supersmell
(08/2000) 		Zen Rodeo
(03/2002) 		Heat
(10/2003) 		29 Moonglow
(09/2004) 		Introducing the Mighty Three
(09/2005) 1 		The Unveiling of the Exile Itch (Live DVD)
(02/2007) 2 		The Exile Itch
(02/2007) 		My Private Hadron
(09/2008) 		By Humbold Picnic
(04/2010) 		Crime Story Tapes
(10/2012)
Founding members
Jochen "Doc" Wenz Singing , guitar , percussion , piano , organ
Uli "Reverend" mug Sousaphone , "spiritualization", double bass , electric bass
Erwin "Sir" Ditzner Snare drum , percussion
Rhythm section
Laurent Leroy Big drum
Drago von Traben Big drum
Javier de la Poza Drums, bass drum
Florian von Schlechtriemen Snare drum, percussion
Trumpet Section
Chris Bishop Trumpet, flugelhorn Trumpet, flugelhorn
Michael "Miami" shoe Trumpet
Ralph "Mosh" Himmler Trumpet
Martin Tipper Trumpet
Thomas Siffling Trumpet
Florian Wehse Trumpet, flugelhorn
trombones -Sektion
Robert Solomon trombone trombone
Uli "Bluegrass" Röser trombone trombone trombone
Frankie Delane trombone
Chris Perschke trombone
Bernhard Vanecek trombone
Franz Johannes Golz trombone
Saxophone / clarinet section
Steffen "La Rose" Weber Saxophone, clarinet
Christl Marley saxophone saxophone
Lömsch Le Mans Saxophone, clarinet Saxophone, clarinet
Gary Offsteen Saxophone, clarinet, flute Sax., Sure., Fl.
Andreas Pompe Saxophone, clarinet, flute
Mathias Demmer Saxophone, clarinet
Hans Martin Eberhart saxophone
Guests
Two horses Wind chimes, singing
Kaneoka One triangle
DJ
DJ Mahmut 3 Record player , samples Record player, samples
  • 1 Not a full band album, but - as indicated in the title - only recorded by the core trio.
  • 2 Concert recording from the UT Connewitz from June 2006. First released as a bonus DVD for the album "The Exile Itch"
  • 3 Bourgeois Mahmut Altunay

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Südkurier. Accessed May 4, 2017.
  2. ↑ a b with Jochen Wenz ( Memento from May 18, 2003 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ Rolling Stone - Mardi Gras.bb: The Farewell of the Voodoo Doctor (12/12/2013) Retrieved on July 14, 2018.
  4. ↑ Exberliner - Bye bye, bb: Mardi Gras.bb ( December 4, 2013) Accessed on July 14, 2018.
  5. ↑ Mardi Gras.bb Faceboook - We are on tour (02/02/2013) Accessed on July 14, 2018.
  6. ↑ https://hazelwood.de/mardigrasbb/