The stimulators

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The stimulators
Stims on the bridge chicago 300x300.jpg
General information
origin Munich , Germany
Genre (s) Jazz , Latin , Ska , Blues
founding 1998
Website www.stimulators.de
Current occupation
Lead guitar
 Peter Schneider
Lead vocals, guitar
 Oliver Stephan
Trumpet, vocals, percussion, keyboard
 Florian Sagner
Drums, lead vocals
 Oscar Pöhnl
bass
 Uli Lehmann
Congas, bongos, timbales, percussion
 Hans Mühlegg
Saxophone, flute, percussion
 Marcio Tubino

The Stimulators are a German band that combine elements of Ska , Latin , Blues , Jazz , Reggae and Rock into their own style. The band - not to be confused with the New York hardcore formation of the same name active in the early 1980s - writes most of their material themselves or covers songs by other artists and puts them in a different context. For example the Chuck Berry classic Johnny B. Goode , which they play in a Latin version, or the Cuban folk song Guantanamera , which they add a hip-hop beat to and incorporate classic themes by Eric Satie into the song.

The Stimulators, Live in the Schlachthof, Munich, 2006

history

The Stimulators were founded in Munich in October 1998 as guitarist and band leader Peter Schneider after a year-long stay in San Diego, California, where he played in the bands of Ike Turner, Ren Woods (Carwash, Roots ) and George Semper, to Germany returned.

The CDs Voodoo Swing and Secret Mission were used by loudspeaker manufacturers for demonstration purposes, and so led to the band's national fame. Some songs of the stimulators were taken from their own CDs and released on samplers with artists such as Ray Brown, Hugh Masekela, Terry Evans, Kari Bremnes and others.

Between 1999 and 2009 the band released 7 CDs and 2 DVDs. In 2003 and 2004 the Stimulators toured Europe with James Brown.

The band members

Peter Schneider - lead guitar, band leader
Born in Munich, Peter Schneider went to South America at the age of 18, began to study music in Porto Alegre and then lived for a while in New York. At the age of 20 he first became known in Bavaria as the guitarist of Willy Michl. Then he played with Marius Müller-Westernhagen, Hans Söllner, Konstantin Wecker and others. In 1985 he began to record solo records and in 1990 he founded his first band, the Peter Schneider Bluesband. In 1996 he went to America, played in the Ike Turner Band, with Ren Woods and the George Semper Group. When he returned to Germany a year later, he founded the Stimulators.

Oliver Stephan - lead vocals, guitar
Oliver was born in Bavaria, but grew up in Africa and England because his father was a foreign correspondent. After studying in England, where he already played in bands and came into contact with punk and ska, he moved to Munich, where he founded Germany's first ska band, the Nighthawks, in 1978, which had two hits in 1979 ( Belle Blue and Shanty Town ) had.

Florian Sagner - trumpet, vocals, percussion, keyboard
Florian Sagner was born and raised in Geretsried in the Isar valley near Munich. He started playing the trumpet at an early age and gained his first experience in his father's Dixieland band. After school, he studied classical music at the Salzburg Mozarteum. Before joining the stimulators, he leads some of his own formations, which mainly play modern and Latin jazz. In recent years he has been playing as a session musician with the likes of Jamaram , King Banana and others. A few years ago he started producing lounge music in his own studio and played lounge concerts with a DJ under the name Florian Sagner's Groove Department. He has released one solo album so far and one of his tracks is on the Cafe Del Mar label (Dreams 4)!

Oskar Pöhnl - drums, lead vocals
Oskar Pöhnl was born in Weiden and discovered the blues for himself at the American Folk and Blues Festival in 1965. He played in the Al Jones Blues Band, with Sonny Rhodes, Tommy Tucker, Champion Jack Dupree and Louisiana Red, among others in Montreux and the North Sea Jazz Festival. At the Stimulators, in addition to his work as a drummer, he also increasingly became a lead singer.

Uli Lehmann - Bass
Uli was born on the southern Weinstrasse in the Palatinate. His first professional gigs took him with a beer tent band to the Arab Emirates and Hong Kong. Then he began to study jazz bass in Munich. He played in the bands of ALI, Lisa Fitz, Ringsgwandl, Meilhammer & Schlenger, Steve Clayton, Ludwig Seuss and the Peter Schneider Band before he came to the stimulators.

Hans Mühlegg - congas, bongos, timbales, percussion
Hans grew up in Murnau. There he founded the band "Fretless" with school friends. As he got deeper and deeper into the world of percussion, he first studied with the Cuban Caesar Granados in Munich and then deepened his knowledge during long stays in Cuba and North Africa. After a short interlude with Bayon and the Ludwig Seuss Band, he came to the stimulators.

Marcio Tubino - saxophone, flute, percussion
The saxophonist Marcio Tubino, from Porto Alegre, Brazil, came to Germany with the group "Raiz de Pedra" through the Munich record company Enja Records. He has been living in Munich for a few years now and tours all over Europe with a wide variety of formations. The best known are Egberto Gismonti and Alegre Coreira (guitarist of the Zawinul Syndicate). He's not really a permanent member of the Stimulators, but has played on all of their CDs since 2003 and has been to many of their concerts.

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