Nothing (band)

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Nothing
General information
origin Dusseldorf , Germany
Genre (s) New Deutsche Welle , punk rock
founding 1981, 2009
resolution 1983
Website www.nichts-band.de
Founding members
singing
 Andrea Mothes (until 1983)
(born March 5, 1955)
guitar
 Michael David Clauss (until 1982, since 2009)
(* 1959)
bass
 Christopher Scarbeck (until 1982)
Drums
 Tobias Brink (until 1983)
(born October 26, 1959)
Current occupation
guitar
 Michael David Clauss (until 1982, since 2009)
singing
 Sabine Kohlmetz (since 2009)
bass
 Ufo Walter (since 2009–2012)
Drums
 Josef Kirschgen (2009–2012)
Drums
 Eric Harings (2009-2012)
bass
 Joachim Krämer (from 2012)
Drums
 Björn Sondermann (from 2012)
former members
guitar
 Stephen Keusch (1982-1983)
bass
 Peter Szimanneck (1982-1983)

Nothing is a German band from Düsseldorf that was founded in 1981 and was one of the most important representatives of the Neue Deutsche Welle in the early 1980s . The band's music shows clear punk influences. After two successful and one less successful album, the band split in 1983. In 2009 they were re-established.

history

Prehistory (1978–1981)

Tobias Brink learned to play the drums from 1978 as a founding member of the Düsseldorf punk band KFC . In early 1980, Michael Clauss joined KFC as the new guitarist. When the first studio album … last hope was released in January 1981 , there was a conflict with band boss Tommi Stumpf .

Beginning as an independent band

Michael Clauss and Tobias Brink stuck to their style, but moved in a new direction that should be groundbreaking even before the creation of the Neue Deutsche Welle. Nothing today is considered a pioneer and trailblazer for this type of music.

Michael Clauss brought his former school friend Christopher Scarbeck into the band as bassist. Scarbeck had almost become the German disco dance champion two years earlier and occasionally worked as a dancer in WDR music shows such as record kitchen and bananas .

At the same time the search for a suitable singer was started. Krishna Goineau (later with Liaisons Dangereuses ) was initially considered a favorite, until they finally agreed on Tobias Brink's new girlfriend and later wife Andrea Mothes.

Michael Clauss was looking for an extraordinary name for the band - a name that should remain present after hearing it once. When he saw a bottle of corn brandy with the label Nothing on it, the idea occurred to him. He named the band Nothing and put together a new program in their rehearsal room in the Kultur-Schlachthof in Derendorf in just two weeks. Two weeks later, the album Made in Haste was recorded in just four days of studio time .

Clauss and Brink's guitar and drums were partially used by previously unpublished songs and given their own new lyrics, such as the guitar riff and drums of the KFC piece Hotel Arosa , which was never published (the latter renamed to Scheiße ). As early as March 1981, the founding and line-up of Nothing was announced in the music press, which was in the process of producing a demo tape “with eight or nine titles”.

The demo tape triggered such unexpected reactions that the Düsseldorf independent label Schallmauer-Records released it as an album in June 1981 under the title Made in Eile . The independent Boots-Vertrieb in Hanover took over the sales . The music press received the album mostly benevolently:

  • Musikexpress: "[...] clearly skilled pop music with German lyrics."
  • Sounds: "Nothing is heavy-pop [...] Happy Untergang from Düsseldorf."
  • Spex: "Finally a good German LP again."

The song Radio was particularly noticeable due to its catchy tune, so bassist Chris Scarbeck played it to Bananas director Rolf Spinrads. He was enthusiastic and did not invite anything to record a video for the September 8, 1981 broadcast. Since it was foreseeable that radio had the potential to be a hit, the band and Schallmauer-Records decided to release the song as a single in time for the broadcast on the major label CBS Records .

Breakthrough and success as a major label band

The Bananas broadcast on September 8, 1981 suddenly made nothing known nationwide, by the end of the month 7,000 singles and 20,000 LPs were sold, by the end of the year a total of 10,000 singles and almost 40,000 LPs. After seven months as an independent band, 70,000 records had already been sold, although the record was difficult to obtain due to poor distribution. Fan mail was piling up in the label's office, usually with the urgent request to tell where you could buy the record. So the label Schallmauer decided together with the band to give up the path as an independent and to use a major label for distribution. As a result, WEA took over sales.

In October 1981 there was nothing for the ARD early evening series Gastspieldirektion Gold in front of the camera, for which some songs were filmed in the Munich Rigan Club on October 24, 1981. However, the corresponding episode Charlie and Nothing was broadcast until over a year later, when the band had already split up.

Nothing went on tour in Germany from mid-November to early December 1981 and then went back to the studio to record their second LP. The band had offers from five major labels , which were pitted against each other, and WEA Records in Hamburg finally won the bid . Schallmauer was involved in the contract as a production company.

The second Nothing album Tango 2000 was released on January 28, 1982 and stayed in the German album charts for 15 weeks (March 8 to June 14, 1982), where it rose to number 22. Again, it was largely positively received by the music press:

  • Musikexpress: "[...] a band with a sense of style [...] a music [...] that is simple and courteous and still says something about Germany '82."
  • Sounds: "A hard rock band that rejuvenates the early KFC style (the first LP) and is now enriching it with some samples from the Cure , Police , Marianne Rosenberg collections ."

But there were also critical voices, since the band's independent status had given way to commercial exploitation. The independent magazines took this very seriously: Spex: "Tango 2000 is not the worst LP of my life, but very mediocre."

On February 10, 1982, nothing went on a four-week tour of Germany that had been booked by a professional Hamburg concert agency (Blindfish). The concerts were completely sold out. In Hamburg there was a police operation in front of the Club Onkel Pö with 800 visitors remaining at the door, so that larger halls had to be found and the concert agency attached a mini-tour through Austria and Switzerland. Further concerts were to follow, already in larger halls, some of them were also sold out several times , as in Hamburg ( market hall ).

The Neue Deutsche Welle did the rest. In the meantime, this genre, whose protagonists were bands like Ideal , DAF , Neonbabies and nothing, had become an all-dominating mass movement in the musical landscape. Music with German lyrics was in demand again, so that new bands like Trio and Joachim Witt , Hubert Kah and Fräulein Menke followed quickly.

On March 18, 1982, the single light was released, which was also presented on March 22, 1982 on ZDF in Désirée Nosbusch's youth program Musicbox . Fittingly, nothing was played on an almost dark stage and only lit with a few spots. The B-side of the single Ein deutsches Lied , however, also attracted the attention of the Bravo lyrically and gave rise to many discussions about German lyrics in pop and rock music.

In June 1982 the single Tango 2000 was released, a tango disco parody with a concise, unmistakable tremo guitar. This piece was to be the band's greatest success, the single and LP Tango 2000 hit the German sales charts shortly after their release, the single briefly made it into the top 20.

Alongside radio, Tango 2000 is still the best-known nothing song and has been published on numerous compilations . The piece Tango 2000 , together with the piece Eisbär von Grauzone, has become an integral part of today's dark wave and gothic scene and is considered to be a basic work due to its cool melancholy.

In the summer of 1982 it finally came to a break, band boss Michael Clauss left the band to start a solo career: “We didn't really have a big problem with each other. The direction we were taking was simply too retracted for me and I wanted to do something different. "

End of the band

Andrea Mothes and Tobias Brink decided to continue the band with two new members: Stephen Keusch, former guitarist of the Bochum band Bertha and Friends , and Peter Szimanneck on bass. A new album From the Beyond was recorded in Hamburg at the usual rapid pace and released in January 1983. The band managed to recreate the nothing sound despite the lack of Clauss' incisive guitar playing with the new members, but the album could not follow up on the band's great successes. A three-week tour through Germany booked for March 1983 had to be canceled due to Brink's injury. The band then broke up.

Start-up

In 2009, band founder Michael Clauss received a request from the organizer of the Judgment Day festival in Dornbirn and decided to perform there again under the name Nothing . In the run-up, a first appearance with a new cast took place at a district festival in Düsseldorf in August. This was followed by a performance in Austria in October, a concert in Cologne in December and a short tour of Germany in March 2010. The new line-up included, in addition to Clauss, bassist Ufo Walter , drummer Josef Kirschgen and singer Sabine Kohlmetz.

In February 2011, the Düsseldorf independent label Electrique Mud released a new studio album entitled “ Signs on Storm” . Vom Ritchie von den Toten Hosen took part in the recordings as a guest drummer after Kirschgen canceled the studio appointment at short notice. Although there were no finished songs yet and the musicians played together with this line-up for the first time, they recorded the album in just three hours. The Ox-Fanzine described the record as “not a new masterpiece, but solid” and praised the new singer, who sounds similar to Andrea Mothes from the original line-up. The album was also praised in Sonic Seducer . In the opinion of the reviewer, it is “mature” and “finally makes all tired people want to punk rock again”.

After the dissolution

Michael Clauss founded the new band Belfegore immediately after leaving , with which he also had international success. After the end of Belfegore, he went to Paris for a short time to work with Tobias Brink on George Nicolaidis' (ex- Fehlfarben ) synth pop project GI-Joe . However, neither was featured on their only single, which was produced before the two of them joined.

Tobias Brink then retired from the music business. He studied medicine and now works as a senior physician in a neurological clinic in Lower Saxony. Michael Clauss completed an apprenticeship as a naturopath in 1989 and ran the heavy rock project Speedway Jesus & The Fake ID with the Milles brothers (Krombacher MC) at the same time , but did not make it to a record deal despite several major festival appearances . Today he runs his own health center in the center of Düsseldorf.

Christopher Scarbeck stayed in France and became an actor there, after which he moved to Texas. Keusch and Szimanneck continued to work in the music business. a. for Nena and Extrabreit .

Discography

Albums

  • Made in a hurry ( sound barrier , June 1981)
  • Tango 2000 ( WEA , January 28, 1982)
  • From the beyond ( WEA , February 1983)
  • Signs of a storm (Electrique Mud, February 4, 2011)

Singles

  • Radio / Hello Potato Salad ( CBS Records , September 1981)
  • Lights out / A German song ( WEA , March 18, 1982)
  • Tango 2000 / Nothing is forever ( WEA , June 1982)
  • Venus gives you nice hours (Horrorscope) / Sometime ( WEA , February 10, 1983)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Interviews with Meikel Clauss and Tobias Brink. In: Jürgen Teipel : Waste Your Youth . Suhrkamp Verlag 2001, p. 255.
  2. ↑ Musikexpress 11/1981, p. 15
  3. ↑ Musikexpress 9/1981, p. 56
  4. ↑ Sounds 1/1982, p. 14.
  5. ↑ Interview with Tobias Brink. In: Jürgen Teipel : Waste Your Youth . Suhrkamp Verlag 2001, p. 308
  6. ↑ Sounds 1/1982, p. 15.
  7. ↑ Ox # 87 , December 2009, p. 50
  8. ↑ Musikexpress 11/1981, p. 15.
  9. ↑ Stage announcement by Michael Clauss, Nothing Concert, Düsseldorf, Golzheim Festival, August 29, 2009.
  10. ↑ Musikexpress, 5/1981, p. 5.
  11. ↑ Hermann Haring in Musikexpress 9/1981, p 56th
  12. ↑ Thomas Buttler in Sounds 9/1981, p. 65.
  13. ↑ Ralph Otto in Spex 7-8 / 1981, p. 27.
  14. ↑ Sounds 1/1982, p. 14.
  15. ↑ Musikexpress 11/1981, p. 15.
  16. ↑ Musikexpress 1/1982, p. 29.
  17. ↑ Bravo 13/1982, p. 50.
  18. ↑ Interview with Meikel Clauss. In: Jürgen Teipel: Waste Your Youth. Suhrkamp Verlag 2001, page 309.
  19. ↑ Chartsurfer.de website.
  20. ↑ Michael Ruff in Musikexpress 3/1982, p. 54.
  21. ↑ Xaõ Seffcheque in Sounds 3/1982, p. 61.
  22. ↑ Dirk Scheuring in Spex 2/1982, p. 27.
  23. ↑ Bravo 13/1982, p. 50.
  24. ↑ Gothic No. 65, September 2009, p. 123.
  25. ↑ Musikexpress 4/1983, p. 8.
  26. ↑ a b Joachim Hiller: Tango 2009 . Interview with Michael Clauss, Ox-Fanzine # 87, December 2009, p. 50.
  27. ↑ Joachim Hiller: Tango 2011 . Interview with Michael Clauss, Ox-Fanzine # 94, February / March 2011
  28. ↑ Joachim Hiller: Review of characters on storm , Ox-Fanzine # 94, February / March 2011
  29. ↑ Georg Howahl: Review  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on signs of storm , Sonic Seducer, issue 2/2011@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.sonic-seducer.de  
  30. ↑ GI Joe: (I'm sorry) Don't worry tonight. published November 1985.