Music Stromers

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Music-Stromers was a band in the GDR .

Band history

The Music-Stromers were founded as a skiffle band in East Berlin at the end of the 1950s . The founding members were Gerhard Hugo Laartz , Peter Schadetzky and Gunter Stein. Originally founded as a trio, the band appeared as a quintet from 1960 and at times also as a sextet. The line-up around front man Laartz changed several times. In addition to the founding members, Jürgen Grosser, Dieter Fischer, Dieter Finke, Fred Baumert, Peter Wagner, Dieter Wienicke and Wolfgang Sachs played in the band.

With the beat movement spreading rapidly in the GDR , the band transformed into a beat band in early 1964. The former line-up included Hugo Laartz, Fred Baumert , Dieter Finke, Torsten Kraft and Wolfgang Sachs. Just one year later, Laartz reformed the band again. In addition to the two guitarists Laartz ( rhythm guitar ) and Baumert (melody guitar), Wolfgang Greiser (bass guitar), Jochen Gleichmann (organ) and drummer Udo Reichel were part of the 1965 cast. When Baumert left the band a year later, Herbert Dreilich came for him . Dreilich, who later founded the rock band Karat , had been banned from performing in the Halle district several times and had therefore moved to East Berlin. He quickly developed into the band's front man with the Music Stromers . With him the music became much harder. The band mainly covered titles by The Who , The Spencer Davis Group and Jimi Hendrix . Due to the 60/40 rule , more and more own titles were created, bypassing the German language, predominantly instrumental pieces, which, however, were unmistakably similar in style to Western models. As the perfection of emulation grew, so did the band's popularity. The band's domicile at the time was the “House of Young Talents” on Klosterstrasse. While the beat bands' stage clothing was originally rather conservative, the Music-Stromers surprised their fans with Sergeant Pepper’s uniforms that were modeled on the Beatles . The new style of the band and the rapidly growing fan base increasingly led to confrontations with the GDR authorities. Already in 1962 with an administrative penalty for violating the 60/40 rule, the band was suddenly banned from performing in 1968 .

Laartz, who had been banned from continuing to perform with this line-up, was forced to dissolve the Music-Stromers. In August 1968 he founded the Modern Septet , which in 1970 became the Modern Soul Band .

See also

literature

  • HP Hofmann: Beat Lexicon . VEB Lied der Zeit , Berlin 1977.
  • Michael Rauhut: Beat in the gray area GDR rock 1964 to 1972 - politics and everyday life . BasisDruck Verlag GmbH, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-86163-063-X .
  • Roswitha Baumert: A soul band is playing here today . In: Melodie und Rhythmus, Ost-Berlin, issue 5/1984.

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