Die Engel Des Herrn - Live! As Hippie-Punks (rec. 1993, rel. 1995)

Can't believe it's been a year already!  Firstly, many thanks to everyone who dropped by to download, leave comments, and follow-back on their blogrolls - you make it all worthwhile.

Here's to this year then.  First order of business - I believe I said I'd post this album eventually, a year ago today in fact when kicking things off with DEDH's studio album.   So what better time for some live Klaus Dinger in all his shambolic glory, with his most underrated band, in what may have actually been their only gig in Dusseldorf at the Malkasten arts centre, on 21 June 1993.

And a nice rough-and-ready recording it is too, with a decent, clear bootleg quality, of Dinger and DEDH revisiting material from their album - most notably transposing Bitte, Bitte into a minor key, which does it a world of good - and making a decent fist of two La Dusseldorf classics.  Viva is the opener, and a good 25 minutes are set aside for a fine, bluesy version of Cha Cha 2000.  Before Dinger's signature song, there's also 20 minutes of fresh DEDH material, proving that there could've been more mileage in this group - The Song in particular develops from a subtle start to a classic Dinger buildup towards the end of its 10 minute duration - but true to their frontman's mercurial form, Die Engel Des Herrn would fall apart shortly afterwards and the remnants would morph into early La! Neu?.

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Die Engel Des Herrn ‎– Die Engel Des Herrn (1992)

All of the late Klaus Dinger's catalogue holds a special place in my heart. By turns unique, visionary, groundbreaking, messy, scrappy, funny, angry, but all the product of a singular, idiosyncratic vision.

I'm kicking off this blog with this album for all of the above reasons, plus the fact that this tends to be the last Dinger album anyone gets to hear if at all, given its sheer scarcity - blog postings of it have come and gone over the years and links have been long-inactive by the time I've found them.  So I've been on the lookout for a CD of DEDH for ages (I already had Live As Hippie Punks, which is slightly more readily available and which I may post at some point), and got lucky last year.

This 1992 release was recorded in phases between '88 and '91.  The album's obligatory take on Dinger's magnum opus, Cha Cha 2000, crawls along in a raw, reverby incarnation with the guitars up front, and only has spare usage of the gorgeous choral Mellotron (I think) that envelops the title track and Tschüs, the latter being a fond farewell to Dinger's late father.  The shorter tracks are a mixed bunch - Sunlight is my personal favourite, SOS is a punkish rush, and Bitte Bitte is often slated as a schlagery comedy piece (it does work much better on the live album, where it's transposed into a minor key).  The CD version also adds a meandering 20-minute jam that is worth a listen.

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