Wise guys

This article covers the German music group. For the former British big beat and hip hop band, see The Wiseguys .

Wise guys
Wise Guys (2011). From left to right: Edzard Hüneke , Daniel Dickopf , Nils Olfert, Ferenc Husta and Marc Sahr.
General information
Genre (s)	A cappella / vocal pop
founding	1990
resolution	2017
Website	wiseguys.de
Last occupation
Vocals ( baritone / vocal percussion )	Daniel "Dän" Dickopf (1990-2017)
Vocals (baritone / vocal percussion)	Edzard "Eddi" Hüneke (1990-2017)
Vocals (baritone / vocal percussion)	Marc "Sari" Sahr (1990-2017)
Voice ( tenor )	Nils Olfert (2009-2017)
Vocals ( bass / vocal percussion)	Björn Sterzenbach (2016-2017)
former members
Vocals (bass)	Christoph Tettinger (1990–1995)
Vocals (baritone, vocal percussion)	Clemens Tewinkel (1990-2008)
Vocals (bass, vocal percussion)	Ferenc Husta (1995–2012)
Vocals (bass, vocal percussion)	Andrea Figallo (2012-2016)

The Wise Guys ( English for "clever guys") were a German music group that emerged from a Cologne school band in the early 1990s . The group sang mostly a cappella and described their style of music as "vocal pop". The group disbanded in July 2017.

Wise Guys (2010)

Wise Guys (2017)

history

Foundation of the group and beginnings

Daniel Dickopf , Edzard Hüneke and Marc Sahr attended the Hildegard-von-Bingen-Gymnasium in Cologne-Sülz from 1981 to 1990 . Her classmates Christoph Tettinger and Clemens Tewinkel were there, with whom the other three founded a brass group that was gradually transformed into a rock band . Individual songs have already been performed a cappella at school events. Since graduating from high school in 1990, the group only made vocal music , as they could no longer use the instruments that were loaned out by the school. Had after the band members had learned that she amongst staff's reputation as a know-it enjoyed, they called in 1990 Wise Guys ( Engl. For "cleverness Meier"). Hünekes' one and a half years of community service in Brussels temporarily turned the group into a quartet . The other singers have since joined the First Cologne Barbershop Choir . In spring 1994 they took third place in the German competition for barbershop quartets; however, this style of music never played a prominent role in their repertoire and has not been featured in their stage program since the mid-90s.

To earn some money, the Wise Guys sang on the streets in the early 1990s. There a singer from the Cologne dialect group Höhner became aware of her. This later helped them to become better known. They were also booked for birthdays, company parties or weddings and gave small concerts in schools and community halls. When Christoph Tettinger left the group in April 1995 for professional reasons, Ferenc Husta took over the bass part. He was the first band member who did not come from Cologne. Tettinger remained connected to the group in a manager and consultant role.

First CD releases and TV appearances

The first album Dut-Dut-Duah! (1994) was mostly in English and about two thirds contained cover versions . As a result, the group concentrated on German-language, rhythmic original compositions. The Wise Guys became known to a larger audience through their two appearances in 1996/1997 on the ARD game show Geld oder Liebe . The first time Hüneke appeared on the show as a single candidate, the second time they were booked as a music act. In 1996 Hanspeter Hommelsheim produced her self-marketed CD Haarige Zeiten . Since 1997 the Wise Guys have lived exclusively from their income as musicians. In the same year, the third album was released, Everything in the green area , it was the first album with the producer Uwe Baltrusch and, like the follow-up album, was released by Electrola . With the live album (2000) the group switched to the label Pavement Records.

Germany-wide breakthrough

In 2001, the Wise Guys became known nationwide with the song and video Jetzt ist Sommer and the album Ganz far ahead . Your recent albums reached top places in the Media Control - charts ; The album Klartext climbed to number 10, the album Radio reached third place and in 2008 the album Frei! at number 2 in the German and at number 67 in the Austrian charts. It was the group's first album that stayed in the top ten of the German album charts for more than a week and is also in the Austrian charts. It stayed in the top 50 for nine weeks. For the album Frei! they received their first gold record in November 2009 for more than 100,000 CDs sold.

In December 2008, Clemens Tewinkel left the group for professional reasons; his successor was the tenor Nils Olfert, who until then had sung in the Kiel band Tiffany. In January 2010 the album Klassenfahrt was released . It rose to number 2 in the German Media Control album charts and number 48 in the Austrian charts and thus achieved the band's best placements in both countries. Since 2010 the Wise Guys have appeared partly accompanied by the Jördis-Tielsch-Band . In 2011 the group switched to the Universal Music Group . In January 2011, the Wise Guys received their second gold record for over 100,000 sold CDs of the album Where the pepper grows , which was released over six years earlier. On August 17, 2012, the Wise Guys were awarded two more gold records for the albums Radio (2006) and Klassenfahrt (2010) from their former record company Pavement Records .

In May 2012 the album Zwei Welten was released as an a cappella version and in September in a version with a pop sound with instrumental accompaniment. The double album earned the Wise Guys their fifth gold record in December 2012. In 2012, Ferenc Husta announced his departure from the group at the end of the year. Andrea Figallo took his place at the beginning of 2013 . In March 2013, the Wise Guys were awarded the Echo in the Crossover category for the album Zwei Welten . After the scandal at the 2018 Echo Awards , members Dickopf and Olfert returned the award in protest.

Contrary to the usual practice, the Wise Guys ended the two worlds tour after one year instead of two as before and were on the road with the antidepressant program in 2013 and 2014 . No album was released for this program, only a single download with the title song. The album Achterbahn , which Figallo produced on his own, was released in September 2014 and also contains some songs from the previous antidepressant tour. The roller coaster tour only ran for one year until you released the new album Laufen on September 4th, 2015 .

Dissolution and follow-up projects

In February 2016, the Wise Guys announced that they would disband the group in the summer of 2017. The bass Andrea Figallo gave his last concert in March 2016. Björn Sterzenbach, who sang with the Berlin a cappella group MuSix and then with the Dutch a cappella group Rock4 Bass and was most recently a news presenter at Hitradio RTL Sachsen , took over the bass voice in April 2016. The main reason given for the band's dissolution was the wish of the members to reorient themselves professionally.

For the two official farewell concerts in front of around 15,000 fans, the Wise Guys returned to the place where they started their careers on July 8 and 9, 2017, the Kölner Tanzbrunnen. The former band members Clemens Tewinkel and Christoph Tettinger as well as other musical companions such as Bodo Wartke , the Höhner and the Bläck Fööss were also there . The group gave their last concert on July 16, 2017 in Regensburg .

While Sahr initially withdrew from the public for private reasons after the band broke up, Hüneke went on tour as a singer-songwriter from March 2018 . Dickopf, Olfert and Sterzenbach together with Clemens Schmuck and Ingo Wolfgarten founded the a cappella band Old Friends . At their concerts, in addition to new songs, well-known hits by the Wise Guys can be heard here and there.

Concerts

Since the Wise Guys appeared almost exclusively with self-composed German-language songs, the concerts were mainly limited to German-speaking countries. Concert tours to other countries, such as the USA and Canada, which had been organized by the Goethe Institute there, or appearances such as in Poland in 2005 were exceptions. Occasionally they also made guest appearances in London, Luxembourg and Strasbourg.

Various major events were added to the usual concert program every year. This included both open-air performances and particularly extensive concerts such as the Total Night and Special Night . With their annual concert in Cologne's Tanzbrunnen in 2001 they broke a world record: with 12,500 visitors, it was the best-attended vocal concert of a single group. The Wise Guys appeared regularly at the Katholikentag and the German Evangelical Church Congress . The concerts at the Kirchentag were the largest in the history of the Wise Guys. In 2005 35,000 people came to the concert in Hanover, 70,000 in Cologne in 2007, 65,000 in Bremen in 2009 and 22,000 in Dresden in 2011. For this concert the festival site had to be closed early because the maximum capacity had been reached. Another 10,000 people were able to watch the concert on screens. In 2013 the group's biggest concert took place in Hamburg. Over 75,000 people came to a concert there. In 2015, 30,000 were welcomed in Stuttgart and in 2017 another 55,000 in Berlin. This was also the group's last concert at the Kirchentag. They also gave at the XX. World Youth Day and a concert at the Ecumenical Church Congress 2010 . They also performed in June 2010 at the final concert of "! SING - DAY OF SONG" in the Veltins-Arena in Gelsenkirchen as part of the project RUHR.2010 - European Capital of Culture .

After the concerts, the band usually put on a so-called "afterglow". What was initially only accepted by a few fans, over time became an integral part of every concert. Usually the band then sang one or two songs in the entrance area of ​​the venue (without any reinforcement), presented social projects and then gave autographs.

social commitment

The Wise Guys held regular benefit concerts. Half of the donations they received were passed on to a local and the other half to an international institution. In 2004 the Wise Guys sponsored the Butterflies project , which is dedicated to the street children of Delhi , India. They also supported the Weltbessermacher campaign by Misereor and the KjG , with which children and young people should experience and pass on the fun of social engagement through their own campaigns. The donation volume for each concert was documented on their website. Other projects of the band were Primacanta , which promotes singing in schools, and Lacrima of the Johanniter Unfallhilfe , where children with strokes of fate are offered a place to mourn.

Aggro Huerth

On a class trip , the first album with Nils Olfert, the Wise Guys tried their hand at rap music again. In addition, they formed a hip-hop duo, consisting of band members Marc Sahr ( MC Deutschmakk ) and Nils Olfert ( Soulsprotte ). Based on Aggro Berlin they called themselves Aggro Hürth. After the track Hamlet , Ich bin aus Hürth was another aggro Hürth track recorded on a Wise Guys album in 2012. On June 21, 2013 the first Aggro Hürth mini album was released with the name Mein Herz macht Bumm! . Due to trademark problems with Aggro Berlin, the album was only allowed under “A. Hürth ”.

Discography

→ Main article : Wise Guys / Discography

Studio albums

year	title	Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements (Year, title, rankings, weeks, awards, notes)			Remarks	[↑]: treated together with the previous entry; [←]: placed in both charts
		DE	AT	CH
1994	Dut-Dut-Duah!	-	-	-	First published: 1994
1996	Hairy times	-	-	-	First published: 1996
1997	Everything in the green area	-	-	-	First published: August 29, 1997
1999	scandal	-	-	-	First published: 1999
2001	Way ahead	DE49 (3 weeks) DE	-	-	First published: August 27, 2001
2003	Plain text	DE10 (8 weeks) DE	-	-	First published: February 17, 2003
2004	Where the pepper grows	DE13 gold (11 weeks)DE	-	-	First published: November 8, 2004 Sales: + 100,000
2006	radio	DE3 gold (15 weeks)DE	-	-	First published: May 5, 2006 Sales: + 100,000
2008	Free!	DE2 gold (26 weeks)DE	AT67 (1 week) AT	-	First published: February 15, 2008 Sales: + 100,000
2010	school trip	DE2 gold (19 weeks)DE	AT48 (2 weeks) AT	-	First published: Jan 29, 2010 Sales: + 100,000
2012	Two worlds - a cappella	DE3 gold (29 weeks)DE	AT5 (3 weeks) AT	CH45 (1 week) CH	First published: May 25, 2012 Sales: + 100,000
	Two worlds - instrumented[DE: ↑]		AT58 (1 week) AT[CH: ↑]		First published: September 14, 2012
2014	Roller coaster	DE2 (13 weeks) DE	AT17 (1 week) AT	CH37 (1 week) CH	First published: September 26, 2014
2015	Runs with you	DE6 (7 weeks) DE	AT22 (1 week) AT	-	First published: September 4th, 2015

Awards

• 2006: Teacher Welsch Prize , awarded by the Cologne regional group of the German Language Association
• 2013: ECHO Pop in the Crossover category for the album Zwei Welten

literature

• Tobias Bungter: Wise Guys - The Book . Dabbelju Verlag, Cologne 2008, ISBN 978-3-939666-08-0 .
• Edzard Hüneke, Roland Wagner: Now is your time. My way of enjoying life . Kreuz Verlag, Freiburg (Breisgau) 2012, ISBN 978-3-451-61097-4 .
• Verena Koll & the wise guys: WISE GUYS: We had a good time The authorized biography . With a greeting from Eckart von Hirschhausen. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, 2016, ISBN 978-3-86265-581-6 .

Web links

Commons : Wise Guys  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Official website of the Wise Guys
• Wise Guys at MusicBrainz (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Information about the band on the Wise Guys website, accessed on June 28, 2019.
2. ↑ Wise Guys Video Blog - Episode 23: On the Street , accessed June 28, 2019.
3. ↑ Clemens leaves the Wise Guys. The Wise Guys carry on ( Memento from December 15, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
4. ↑ Change to Universal - We have a new record company ( Memento from March 12, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
5. ↑ “Radio” and “Klassenfahrt”: Two more gold records! ( Memento from February 23, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
6. ↑ Unfortunately no joke: Ferenc stops ( memento from March 12, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
7. ↑ Husta leaves the Wise Guys. Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger from March 8, 2012, accessed on June 28, 2016.
8. ↑ Our new bass: (drum roll) ... ( Memento from November 4, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
9. ↑ Returning my "Echo". Website of the "old friends", accessed on June 28, 2019.
10. ↑ Nils on "Echo". Website of the "old friends", accessed on June 28, 2019.
11. ↑ Information about the album "Achterbahn" on the Wise Guys website, accessed on June 28, 2019.
12. ↑ Information on the album “Laufen bei dich” on the Wise Guys website, accessed on June 28, 2019.
13. ↑ "We had a good time" - a wonderful journey comes to an end. Wise Guys website, accessed June 28, 2019.
14. ↑ The great farewell. Augsburger Allgemeine from July 17, 2017, accessed on June 28, 2019.
15. ^ Farewell concert of the Wise Guys in Cologne. General-Anzeiger Bonn from July 10, 2017, accessed on June 28, 2019.
16. ↑ Eddi Hüneke's website , accessed on June 28, 2019.
17. ↑ Information about the band on the website of the "old friends", accessed on June 28, 2019.
18. ↑ Wise Guys on bandliste.de
19. ↑ "About Us" on the Wise Guys website, accessed June 28, 2019.
20. ↑ Overview of the concert formats on the Wise Guys website, accessed on June 28, 2019.
21. ↑ Free to the Wise Guys. Kölnische Rundschau of May 15, 2007, accessed on June 28, 2019.
22. ↑ The WISE GUYS at World Youth Day in Cologne , August 17 of 2005.
23. ↑ Wise Guys: Sun - Peter: Rain. Academy of Journalists of the Ecumenical Church Congress on May 14, 2010, accessed on June 28, 2019.
24. ↑ Sing acapella again. WDR Extra from June 6, 2010, accessed on June 28, 2019.
25. ↑ How does a Wise Guys concert actually go? Wise Guys website, accessed June 28, 2019.
26. ↑ Social engagement. Wise Guys website, accessed June 28, 2019.
27. ↑ Information about the album “Klassenfahrt” on the Wise Guys website, accessed on June 28, 2019.
28. ↑ Information about the album "Zwei Welten" on the Wise Guys website, accessed on June 28, 2019.
29. ↑ Gold for “Where the pepper grows” ( memento of the original from June 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed January 19, 2011.