2 Verstorbene - ein Nachruf

Judging it by the its start only, 2018 is already worse than 2017. On January 4 we had to learn from the press that Mag. Michael Truppe had died on December 26, 2017.

It's always shocking to us survivors when the great killer, that he had fought for some time and that tried me too, has won one more victory and takes so many young people from the face of this earth. Mag. Truppe was only 37 years old. That's the same age as my younger child. We often were not of the same opinion on the interpretation of media law and were also placed on opposite sides of some confrontations. But most of his arguments I could always respect and comprehend. Anyway, in these topics he was a formally educated expert while I am a self taught amateur.

© Katharina Stögmüller/RTR

He surely has, as his colleagues wrote, "enriched our lives with his keen expertise, his humanity and his fine sense of humor". And his extensive knowledge especially of European media regulation, not self evident in his country. I also highly esteemed the noble restraint he showed in his intercourse with people in the political, judicial and commercial fields he worked in. Even at the get-togethers where most others tend to drink and fraternize too much, he always kept his friendly calm, sobriety and a correct distance.

Requiesce in pace, Mag. Michael Truppe!

More tragedy

On Sunday, January 7, 2018 the great killer also took away Isabelle Geneviève Marie Anne "France" Gall. Since winning the Eurovision Grand Prix de la Chanson for Luxembourg with Poupée de cire, poupée de son, a Gainsbourg composition she was an international popstar in all of Western Europe and for a long time one of the foremost ambassadors for the budding French and German friendship. In her home country of France she was mostly known as a yé-yé singer.

Until his also untimely death she was married to, and had a productive and successful partnership with French singer-songwriter colleague Michel Berger (born Michel Jean Hamburger). The couple had two children, one of which, Pauline, died young and the other survives to this day and is now a complete orphan, having lost father, mother and sister.

Gall had to cope with untimely death quite often. In 1986, during a trip to Africa, co-worker Daniel Balavoine tragically perished in a helicopter crash. The song "Évidemment", written by Berger and sung by Gall, was a moving homage to their lost friend and appeared on Gall's album Babacar. That album also contains "Ella, elle l'a", Berger's tribute to black art in general, Ella Fitzgerald in particular and France Gall's most famous and maybe also most rememberable work.

In 1992 France Gall had to suffer Berger's death from a heart attack at the age of 44 years only. As if that were not enough she herself was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1993, from which she recuperated after successful treatment. Gall's elder daughter with Berger, had been diagnosed with cystic fibrosis soon after birth. Berger and Gall entered into a pact to alternate their professional projects to take care of their daughter, but Pauline died of it in 1997. After that Gall has made only occasional public appearances. And now she has gone from us due to an infection complication to an undisclosed type of cancer at 70, far too young these days to die.

May you sing with your family in the sweet hereafter, if there be one, Isabelle!

Dixie Chicken

Long before the Dixie Chicks there was the Dixie Chicken (and the Tennessee lamb of course). For people with a sometimes more down to earth musical taste like us here in Jamaica, the song was one of the highlights in any Little Feat concert. Lowell George († June 29, 1979) played and sang it in a way that one could only love. And thanks to YTBS we can also not just write about it but simply show it to you, the p.t. audience.

This version also has the then still young but now surviving and still going strong Emmylou Harris and the fabulous Bonnie Lynn Raitt who had already provided backing vocals in the studio, two ladies that we adore, in it. The third Little Feat studio album took its title from that signature song and was also the first one we really perceived and then bought, we must admit. If you like white New Orleans style Rythm and Blues, that record could be called a must. So here's the beef:

Lowell George was born in Hollywood, California and had his first appearance on Ted Mack's Original Amateur Hour at the tender age of six. He joined Frank Zappa's The Mothers of Invention at age 23 and at 24, upon being either fired or leaving by mutual agreement, formed his own band Little Feat.

Mr. George seems to have led an indulgent lifestyle of binge eating, alcoholism, and throwing speedballs (if you know what that is). He died from a heart attack at Arlington, Virginia and age 34 and was cremated in Washington D.C.. His ashes were then flown back to Los Angeles, where they were scattered from his fishing boat into the Pacific Ocean.

From Chicken to Chicks and 30 years back to the future

Speaking of Dixie Chicken, it is a shame that there are no articles on the Dixie Chicks yet in this magazine. We were sure we had praised them in 2003 when they harshly spoke out against the Bush jr. administration and the President o' th' UnitedStates himself.

During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, the band performed a concert in March of that year at the Shepherd's Bush Empire Theatre in London. During the introduction to their song "Travelin' Soldier", Natalie Maines, a native of Texas, said: "Just so you know, we're on the good side with y'all. We do not want this war, this violence, and we're ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas."

Not Ready To Make Nice

What followed was everything from death threats to radio bans. And although their royalties slimmed down quite a bit and the venues they sold out were reduced in numbers and size the Dixie Chicks did not give in. The good country girl sisters Martie Erwin Maguire and Emily Erwin Robison stood by their outspoken singer. It took Neil Young and other great protesters in rock and country some years and many news programs to come out against the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9 B.C sent his legions into Germany and lost them while 3 girls from Texas publicly denounced it even before it had begun to ruin every bit of stability in the middle east and more than half of America including nearly all of the press and TV stations had nothing to say but "hurray for America and democracy export".

The Dixie Chicks responded in their own style with a song and published Not Ready To Make Nice which we deem a more than adequate answer. But here we will show you a different song that we like a lot, for it touches so nicely on when we left the province that is not quite but definitely was our Texas equivalent back there in Austria:

And us, us, we've been a long time gone an' will be gone even more, soon.

Said she could hear me singin' in the choir, me, I heard another song. I caught wind and hit the road runnin', and Lord, I've been a long time gone.

Now they sound tired but they don't sound Haggard. They've got money but they don't have Cash. They've got junior but they don't have Hank. I think, I think, I think, the rest is a long time gone.

Post Scriptum: It will be about Bonnie Raitt soon, a guitar playing and singing redhead who looked the same in the 90ies and early 2000s as she did in the 70ies. Marvelous. And Emmylou of course, our darling of all times. Both deserve a post anytime but we have missed out on it so far. Here's a glimpse of Bonnie performing "one of her favorites from Luck of the Draw" with Allison Krauss on the fiddle and harmony. plink, nix,    praise or blame!
 

The Wind Screams Mary and the Doves Cry at Themselves

50 odd years ago, a nice gentleman from Seattle, King County, Washington wrote a nice song for me. Had to think of it and him yesterday while sobering up from yesteryear's 2^nd most funny day and this year's holiday thereafter. Even had to cry a little bit remembering him. He's been dead for 47 years now.

A broom is drearily sweeping up the broken pieces of yesterday's life. Somewhere a queen is weeping, somewhere a king has no wife. And the wind, it cries Mary.

Will the wind ever remember the names it has blown in the past? And with its crutch, its old age and its wisdom it whispers "no, this will be the last". And the wind cries Mary.

Come thinking of lazy brooms another poem and song comes to mind written by the late great Itzik Manger, Chava Alberstein and the Klezmatics at very different points in time:

Shtiler ovnt, tunkl-gold, an alter groer yid davnt frum avek dem shtoyb fun dem yor-yarid. Zol khotsh a murml fun dem yid arayn tsu mir in lid...

Another guy lived a bit longer than Jimi did and had reached the ripe age of 56 when he was taken away. Did not write songs for me but only for himself and maybe 5 or 6 people around him. Many of them were real marvels though and got worldwide publication and airplay. Rightfully so. Videocraft had advanced quite a bit in the 20 years from the mid 60ties to the mid 80ies (though now in the mean time the fx look quite ridiculous), but when the guitar takes over from keyboard controlled electrosounds the guys'n'gals were still using the same old technology from the fifties.

Had a band called The Revolution that I digged especially because Wendy Melvoin played a mean rythm stick that f.e. inspired Macy Gray to become a guitarist. It also featured an always sunglass bespectacled doctor named Fink in it. That guy was cool. Altogether, in the early eighties a band with 2 niggers, 2 bitches and 2 jews in it was quite a feat.

How can you just leave me standing alone in a world that's so cold, so cold? Maybe I'm just too demanding, maybe I'm just like my father too bold. Maybe you're just like my mother, she's never satisfied, she's never satisfied. Why do we scream at each other? This is what it sounds like when the doves cry.

From Here To Venezuela

there's nothing more to see than a hundred thousand islands flung like jewels upon the sea for you and me.

Booked the last flight and hotel today. 't will be off to Tierra del Fuego today for Toni and in three weeks time for me. Across the sea and way down south. Wanderlust has got me again, after many years. Up and away to Cape Horn. Trust in the wind and aerodynamics.

Ein Wind weht von Süd und zieht mich hinaus auf See. Mein Kind, sei nicht traurig, tut auch der Abschied weh! ...

Wie blau ist das Meer, wie groß kann der Himmel sein? Ich schau, hoch vom Mastkorb, weit in die Welt hinein. Nach vorn geht mein Blick, zurück darf kein Seemann schaun. Kap Horn liegt auf Lee, jetzt heißt es auf Gott vertraun.

Seemann gib Acht, denn strahlt auch als Gruß des Friedens, hell durch die Nacht das leuchtende Kreuz des Südens, doch schroff ist das Riff, und schnell geht ein Schiff zugrunde, früh oder spät schlägt jedem von uns die Stunde.

La palome ohee, einmal muss es vorbei sein. Nur Erinn'rung an Stunden der Liebe bleibt noch an Land zurück. Seemann's Braut ist die See, und nur ihr kann ich treu sein, wenn der Sturmwind sein Lied singt, winkt mir der großen Freiheit Glück.

Now we know we should not post that last one because it is from a 1943 movie. Too bad. Still, the song is from the 1^st half of the 19^th century, written by Spaniard Sebastián Yradier. This song about a dove went to around the world and especially to middle America.

It is "forbidden" to sing on Austrian sailing boats because it was the favorite song of not by god's but by emperor Napoleon III's grace and by Benito Juarez' grace executed emperor Maximilian of Mexico, erstwhile commander of the kk. yachting club. It has been translated not only to German, French and English but also for example to Basque, Afghan and Swahili. It spawned recorded versions in numbers surpassed by maybe only Paul McCartney's Yesterday.

Even the Nazis did not forbid but tried to incorporate it. In 1943 they commanded to put it at the heart of a movie on the German commercial navy. Hans Albers was booked an unhappy singing former sailor. Director Helmut Käutner produces a film, that did not really fulfill the propaganda ministry and Göbbels' purpose.

Die Große Freiheit No. 7 so abunds with symbols of peace and freedom that the movie was allowed to premiere in Prague on December 15, 1944, but then was banned in the German Reich until the end of the war. The new lyrics that Käutner had written after 1945 became even more popular than the standard German text by one Heinrich Rupp from 1880 who was also the first to bring sailors and sailing into the song.

Albers, not a special friend of the Nazis as it turned out nevertheless had his work sweetened by 460,000 RM of dirty Nazi money. Disgusting.

A Great Cultural Debate of the Early Eighties

Even before the great Cynthia Ann Lauper vs. Madonna Louise Ciccone debate there were lots of heated discussions in our circles about who was the coolest girl in rock'n'roll.

Top candidates where these 3 ladies:

Deborah Ann Harry (born Angela Tremble), in 1981, singer for band Blondie, performed "Rapture", the first No. 1 song in the U.S. to feature rap vocals and the first rap music video on MTV ever. Does not speak for MTV and the so called audiences but for band Blondie and Debbie Harry, nevertheless.

Christine Ellen Hynde of The Pretenders sang "Back On the Chain Gang" in concert and on MTV and rightfully claimed the title of coolest music journalist playing it out herself after having had enough of judging other people. She has published a really good book on music life and biz quite recently.

And while LaDonna Adrian Gaines (Donna Summer), a Vienna Volksoper member for a short time, had already excited us to new levels with "Hot Stuff" in '79, when she did "State of Independence" in 1983 we really were what we call "hin und weg" in the little country we came from.

Already in the 60ies & 70ies lady rockers and queens of soul and disco had impressed but from the mid 80ies the number of cool and well known women in rock'n'roll went up steeply with the above mentioned Cyndi and Madonna but also Chaka Khan, the "reborn" Diana Ross, Vicki Peterson and Michael Steele of the Bangles, Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman of the Revolution, Sheila E. and Boni Boyer of the post Revolution Prince band, Queen Latifah, Sandra and Samantha Lawrence of the Wee Papa Girl Rappers and many more. Not to forget.

But for the late 70ies come early 80ies it was these 3 ladies mostly that impressed us and paved the way for more to come. Donna Summer sadly has already left us but Debbie and Chrissie have survived it all and are still performing, amazingly too, sometimes.

Chrissie Hynde has published a really "must read" book in her life in rock'n'roll titled "Reckless, My Life as a Pretender". If you are even a bit interested in rock music and the cultural changes of the last 50 years, go buy and make sure to read it.