Die With Dignity - Kraut? (1998)

This came free from Captain Trip when I was ordering the last couple of la! NEU? albums that I didn't have, packed in between the other items sans jewel case.  I knew the story behind Kraut! from Klaus Dinger-related websites describing it as a one-off by a young German band who through Dinger's patronage had their album released on Captain Trip, crediting him as "musical advisor " (which led to the la! NEU? logo confusingly appearing on the cover.)  I also knew the general critical consensus was that it wasn't very good, so popped it in a spare case and ignored it for a few months - hey, it was a freebie, I'll get around to hearing it maybe once.

When I did give Kraut! a listen, it was with pleasant surprise - it's not bad at all.  The five-piece band exist in a kind of semi-improvisational space between krautrock, post-punk and electronic avant-garde.  The album's 16 tracks average about 5 minutes, mostly built on a drum machine base with frequently noisy guitars and electronics over the top, and often distorted, mostly spoken vocals, all in German. 

Highlights include the stiff, robotic wah-wah guitar groove of Magischer Traum, with regular singing and post-2000-Neubaten like electronic squeals; the ill-sounding synths of Kochrezept that follows, and Kommunismusangst-Fantasie with its synth swirls and subtle acoustic guitar flourishes.  The longest track, the 10-minute Ein Wahn, is also worth a mention for its gradually distorting trumpet and mangled vocals.  All in all, a really worthwhile experimental album that with a bit of pruning could've been a minor cult classic.

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pw: sgtg

Klaus Dinger + Japandorf (2013) / Pre-Japandorf - 2000! (rel. 2017)

Happy New Year everyone!  Thanks again for all your comments and support, especially through the, well, slightly trying times of last November.  Got so many helpful suggestions after (repeatedly) losing tons of files that hopefully this blog is now better protected from any further meltdowns.  In terms of the future, I'm hoping that SGTG will last another full year of three posts per week - may have to scale back before that though, but will keep you lovely folk in the loop as to my plans.

For now, here's the final appearance of an SGTG tradition - starting the new year with a Klaus Dinger post.  This'll be its final appearance as I've now posted his entire post-Neu! catalogue - but who knows, we might get more from the archives someday.  Today though, here's the last two releases to date from the fascinating career of a unique artist.  Following Dinger's death in March 2008, his partner Miki Yui began finalising the recordings that she and Dinger, plus Japanese-German musicians Masaki Nakao, Satoshi Okamoto and Kazuyuki Onouchi had been recording in 2007-8.  The album, Klaus Dinger + Japandorf, was released in March 2013.

What emerged on the album was a strong set of material that tempered Dinger's improvisational instincts with succinct, upbeat Japanese pop.  Dinger still stretched out, on the two 'Sketch' tracks, with a garagey fuzztone that resulted in his most vital and exciting music in years, and the obligatory Cha Cha 2000 was more of a psychedelic remix than another straight play-through.  The shorter songs had the strongest Japanese influence, whether in a funky electric piano-led ode to cooking Udon broth or almost unbearably poignant in Spacemelo, which became Miki Yui's farewell to Dinger when she added her vocals after his death.  The album as a whole was a more than worthy tribute to Dinger, but it only told part of the Japandorf story...

...which began in 1998 immediately after the final la! NEU? concert.  After playing, Dinger was approached by Nakao, who then introduced him to Onouchi (who helped prepare the la! NEU? gig recording for release), and so on.  Having acquired a new group, as well as briefly retaining Andreas and Viktoria from la! NEU?, Dinger held recording sessions in 1999 and 2000, the latter of which were eventually featured on this 2017 release, credited to Pre-Japandorf.

This collection might be only 38 minutes long, but it still fills in an important link in Dinger history.  The sound of these tracks is a loose hybrid of the sound of la! NEU? (there's even a fresh interpretation of Mayday) and pointers towards that of Japandorf on their album.  Although slight on running time, the tracks here are a great insight into the spontaneity of the sessions with this short-lived lineup.  Viktoria Wehrmeister is particularly good fronting the tracks Pure Energy and Talk, and the improvisations in the album's second half are enjoyable too, especially the scalding fuzz guitar that Dinger unleashes at the end of Midsummer.  Thank You All is pretty much the perfect endnote to Dinger's career - gives me a bit of a lump in my throat sometimes.

Japandorf link
Pre-Japandorf link
pw: sgtg

la! NEU? - Year Of The Tiger (1998)

The final la! NEU? post!  Fittingly, Year Of The Tiger, named after the furry postcard sent to Dinger (pictured on the cover), was their final studio release.  It appeared in 1998 just after Goldregen, but in contrast to that album's fully acoustic aesthetic, it focused on the electronic, beat-driven side of la! NEU?.  Also in contrast to Goldregen's short pieces, Year Of The Tiger consists of just two tracks, one of which is 32 minutes long and the other 33.

Before these, there's a minute-long 'trailer' for Blue Point Underground, a group based around krautrock legend Eberhard Kranemann, who Dinger had just reconnected with.  They produced one album for Captain Trip, which I've still to hear.  Back with la! NEU? though, and in late 1997 then began work on fleshing out a long keyboard piece of Rembrandt Lensink's with Dinger's drumming, Viktoria Wehrmeister's vocals and a hell of a lot of phasing effects.  The result, Autoportrait Rembrandt, grooves along nicely with enough variety to not outstay its welcome, and was performed again at the final la! NEU? concert.

Also featuring at the Kunsthalle gig, effectively giving the listener a full live version of Year Of The Tiger to compare & contrast, was Notre Dame.  The original studio version here fills its epic running time with a drum loop, mellow guitars from Dinger and his 80s guitarist Spinello, and a gorgeous vocal performance from Viktoria.  Little bits of electronics, cheerful conversation and other ambient sounds drop in and out as the piece goes on, all adding up to possibly the most lovely extended track in the la! NEU? catalogue.

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la! NEU? complete catalogue at SGTG: Düsseldorf | Tokyo '96 Live | Zeeland | Goldregen | Year Of The Tiger (this post) | Live At Kunsthalle Düsseldorf

la! NEU? - Live At On Air West, Tokyo, 3 Dec 1996 (rel. 1998-9)

Continuing the la! NEU? posts from last week's feature of their debut release, today focuses on the three and a half hours of their second concert (the first, a day prior, remains unreleased; not sure if it was even recorded).  You'll notice the 'Vol. 2' in the artwork above; I'll be discussing these two albums in concert order, rather than release order.  Yep, 'Vol. 2' is the first half of the gig.

In a spectacular 'what could have been', this December 1996 trip to Japan was originally planned as a NEU! reunion, to which Michael Rother wouldn't commit.  Offering his new band instead, Dinger went to Osaka with Andreas Reihse, Viktoria Wehrmeister and the rest of the touring la! NEU? lineup he'd assembled, played the aforementioned first concert, then traveled to Tokyo the next day (the first 20 seconds of Disc 1 here) to set up at the On Air West venue (the following five minutes).

As with la! NEU?'s farewell performance in Düsseldorf, the introduction (here titled Tension) is a gentle ambient keyboard piece.  The calm is then blown away by the La Düsseldorf track Viva, in which lead guitarist Dirk Flader is particularly incendiary.  Dinger then asks if anyone knows Hero '96, presumably to check if anyone had bought the new album (that had only been out a couple days!), and a fine version of that track follows, with Wehrmeister finding a new confidence, even appearing to channel Patti Smith towards the end, swapping "piss on the industry"'s with Dinger.

On Disc 2, the concert progresses into an improvisational section for a total of 40 minutes, including Dinger playing a tape of music and talking that he'd received from a fan (a Brit-expat in the US), taking the democracy of his new group to an absurd conclusion.  la! NEU? return to their own music with the sweet, Dear Prudence-quoting Mayday, then the set looks backwards again - first to 1985 and America, and then...

Tokyo Disc 1 link
Tokyo Disc 2 link

...all the way back to 1978, where it began.  At this point, some further listening instructions are required to follow the concert order: play Disc 2 of 'Cha Cha 2000, Live in Tokyo Vol. 1' first, and Disc 1 afterwards.  Crap, just realised that sentence, and the artwork above, are huge spoilers for the last song in the set.  Yeah, the last song.  Which takes up two CDs.  Think this is a bit overkill, even for Dinger?  That it'll get a bit boring at, what, 104 minutes?  Well, it's not for nothing that this is la! NEU?'s bestselling release.

Cha Cha 2000 Tokyo '96 is nothing less than Klaus Dinger's most epic expression of his greatest composition, and for me is just endlessly inspirational.  Each section of the original 20-minute song gets fully turned inside and out, and rather than played to death, played into new life by a group who were all adept at long-form improvisation, and would remain so.  It builds up and falls back endlessly, features loads of odd little extras (i.e. dropped in tapes, and at one point inviting audience members on to the stage to sing along) and at the start of Disc 1 (remember, the final part of the song and concert) has a beautifully extended quiet improv before the final buildup starts at the halfway point of the disc.  Is this the greatest Cha Cha ever?  You decide.

Tokyo Cha Cha Disc 2 link
Tokyo Cha Cha Disc 1 link

la! NEU? - Düsseldorf (1996)

Will be completing my posts of the la! NEU? catalogue over the next few weeks, following a well-timed request (well-timed as in, I'm always up for a good Klaus Dinger binge).  So let's start from the beginning.  Following the breakup of Die Engel Des Herrn, Dinger jammed around a bit, including with new Düsseldorf group Kreidler, and for one session in December 1995 invited their drummer to join him and two members of the DEDH concert lineup.

The result was the 33 minutes of gloriously unhinged chaos that appears here as D. 22-12-95; what was just a fun jam session at the time wasn't intended for any serious release until the preparation of this album the following year.  Moments of motorik magic arise frequently from the free-for-all, and the freewheeling la! NEU? aesthetic was born.

Prior to this, in May 1995, Dinger had already recorded a solo track in which a deliberate Sister Ray homage became a cathartic diatribe against contemporary society and the music industry.  The acerbic fire of Néondian was very much still burning in Hero '96, titled for continuity with the original Hero of 1975.  Kreidler's keyboard player Andreas Reihse, who was to become a key member of la! NEU?, suggested a backing vocal overdub, and recommended his friend Viktoria Wehrmeister who was in another band, Superbilk.  Another piece of the la! NEU? puzzle clicked into place.

Now signed to the Japanese label Captain Trip, who were already reissuing Néondian and releasing DEDH material, Dinger completed the first la! NEU? album with two versions of his song Mayday, one with Reihse and one with Wehrmeister.  In the new band's short four-year lifespan, there were several more to come...

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Previously posted at SGTG:
Zeeland
Gold Regen
Live at Kunsthalle Düsseldorf

la! NEU? - Gold Regen (1998)

One of the final la! NEU? studio recordings, Gold Regen was also the mellowest, and featured no electronic instruments.  More recognisable from previous efforts by this band was the structure of the album, Klaus Dinger foregoing any conventional wisdom for simply dropping in rough-cut tracks from lengthy jam sessions in whatever order he pleased, like a box of unsorted photographs.  With mother Renate starring in the opening track, and the Dinger brothers reunited in four others for the first time in 15 years, Klaus did actually refer to Gold Regen as "a family album", which suits the homely loveliness of the music just fine.

For all of the above notes about la! NEU? albums being randomly structured, Gold Regen does actually fit into three distinct sections.  The first of these is the two-minute opener, Zeeland Wunderbar, a slightly corny but sweetly executed (you want more sleigh bells after the Eastman post the other week? We got 'em) song by Mutter Dinger that also featured in la! NEU?'s final concert.

The second section is half an hour of improvisational excerpts based around Rembrandt Lensink's piano, Viktoria Wehrmeister's gentle vocals, and occasional percussion (Klaus) and violin (Thomas).  The mood is mostly sedate and melancholy, perhaps best exemplified in the gorgeous Lansam Bewegt, aber nicht Traurig, with occasional diversions into mid-tempo jamming on Strahomaso and Dinger Brothers mit Remmi & Wicki.  

After one final 'Intermezzo' from Lensink on piano, the stage is set for the third part of the album: 25 minutes of blissful ambient drift from just Viktoria on vocals (with a little percussion on its middle track) and Klaus on harmonium.  Based on an increasingly slowed-down version of the intro to Die Engel Des Herrn's title track, these three tracks are almost indescribably beautiful; another reviewer once likened them as 'the sound of being in the womb', or words to that effect.  Highly recommended.

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La Düsseldorf albums (1976-1986) - in memoriam Klaus Dinger, ten years gone

A decade ago today, one of my favourite musicians of all time passed away after a heart attack.  Klaus Dinger's last recordings wouldn't start to see the light of day for another five years, but when they did, they were great - and will definitely feature here at some point, ideally when fully released.  For today, here's the complete discography of arguably his greatest post-NEU! band (although I have almost equal affection for la! NEU? and Die Engel Des Herrn).  So Tanz auf der Zukunft mit Mir to the "sound of the 80s" (Bowie, circa 1978).

La Düsseldorf - s/t (1976)

Keeping the double-drummer lineup he'd unveiled on NEU 75 - brother Thomas, and Hans Lampe - Dinger pulled back a bit on the proto-punk thrash of that album's second side.  He refined it into something more celebratory and glamourous, befitting the "mirror glass and stainless steel" of his home city, turning the first side of this debut album into a hymn to Düsseldorf.  On the second side, the first of his great instrumentals would become La Düsseldorf's first successful single in Germany, and the more reflective and searching Time was a taste of things to come.

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Viva (1978)

Is this the crowning jewel in Klaus Dinger's discography?  The man himself certainly seemed to think so, returning to its tracks for most of his live releases, and even reworking the full album in his final years, with the results still to emerge.  The multi-lingual title track was a celebration of not just Düsseldorf, but all of humanity, although the humourous side of La Düsseldorf swiftly brought things back down to earth, celebrating themselves in the punkish White Overalls.

Another beautiful instrumental single, Rheinita, gives an oasis of calm before Geld's rage against injustice and greed, setting the stage for the main event.  In the original 20-minute Cha Cha 2000, Dinger not just expresses utopian hope for the future, but creates the song of his career.  If Dinger was still alive today, he'd no doubt still be re-recording it every few years, holding on to the same heartfelt sentiments.  We need better leaders, who love us and don't tweet us.

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Individuellos (1980)

The NEU 2 of La Düsseldorf, aka the one that suffers by comparison to the others due to the needs-must recycling of its material.  In this case, it was in tragic circumstances, as the suicide of pianist Andreas Schnell interrupted the making of the album and Dinger filled out the running time by recasting main track Menschen a few more times.

For all that, I have a deep affection for Individuellos.  It follows the Viva pattern at its outset (track 1 - humanity is great; track 2 - and so are La Düsseldorf) and then lets the Menschen melody run on, taking in deeply personal memories of Dinger's recently-deceased grandmother (that's her voice on answerphone) and the 'Lieber Honig' of his life Anita (that's the same 1971 recordings of them in a rowing boat that NEU! used, near the end of this album).  The Dinger brothers humour might get a bit ridiculous in Dampfriemen and Tintarella Di (although musically pointing the way to Für Mich), but the album ends on a respectful note, dedicated to Schnell whose piano is upfront on Das Yvonnchen.

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Neondian / La Düsseldorf 4 / Mon Amour (1985)

Had its own post at the beginning of this year.  Post includes the 1983 single Ich Liebe Dich/Koksnodel.

Blue / La Düsseldorf 5 / Five Pearls And A Hammer (rec. 1984-86, rel. 1999)

In the aftermath of the Neondian release debacle, Dinger still owed one album, and after an abortive NEU! reunion submitted this album in early '87 to Virgin Records Germany, who'd taken over his Teldec contract.  They rejected it and dropped Dinger, and he started from scratch to form the band who'd become Die Engel Des Herrn.  The final La Düsseldorf album - although in reality, it was a solo album by Dinger other than the last track - was therefore shelved until the late 90s, when it was given an archival release by Captain Trip.

The album was now titled Blue, with its original name Five Pearls And A Hammer referring to the album's sequence.  First up is a gorgeous reverb guitar and rhythm track, over which Dinger contrasts his own idyllic life with the Geneva arms control summit between Reagan and Gorbachev.  On the cover picture of Blue are Mari Paas (mentioned in Arms Control Blues), Dinger's partner from the mid-70s through the 90s, with her daughter Yvi, and it's the latter who sings the cutely out-of-tune vocal on the track Blue.

After Lilienthal, a stunningly gorgeous instrumental which alone justifies getting hold of this album, are a couple of short tracks - the slight Touch You Tonight, and the poignant Für Omi, another tribute to his grandmother.  Five pearls, and a hammer - the hammer being the 18-minute rocked up version of Neondian's America, recorded during those sessions.  The track cuts in and ends in mid-flow, as if taken from an even longer recording, and fizzles with chaotic energy, thunder-and-lightning guitars and drums, and barely comprehensible vocals with whispered overdubs.  If the world wasn't ready for this in 1987 - or at least, so thought the record label - it certainly needs it now.

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Klaus Dinger + Rheinita Bella Düsseldorf ‎- Néondian (1985)

Happy New Year everyone!  Since I seem to have established a tradition of starting the year (and marking the anniversary of this blog) with a Klaus Dinger album, let's keep that going.  Néondian, which was intended as the fourth La Düsseldorf album, saw Dinger up against the adversities of falling out with his brother Thomas and La D. third member Hans Lampe - creatively, contractually and personally - to the point where he was blocked from using the band name.

The solution was 'Klaus Dinger + Rheinita Bella Düsseldorf ' - cheekily keeping the band name tucked away alongside the name of their biggest hit to help with public recognition, and a new set of musicians accompanying Dinger on the most electronic, and most polemical (at least until first album La! NEU?), music of his career.

Néondian first came my way via the 1995 Captain Trip reissue, onto which Dinger had daubed further ownership of the album on to its cover in his inimitable style of the time.  Mon Amour - which would've been the title track had the original concept worked out as planned - was one of those opening tracks I kept on repeat for months on end.  Jaki Liebezeit guests on drums, as Dinger unfolds one of his most majestic instrumental tracks.

As mentioned above, this album saw Dinger at his most acerbic and politicised, taking shots at German society and his contemporaries (Pipi AA) and at US foreign policy (America).  Your mileage may vary as to whether setting diatribes like these (and an update of Cha Cha 2000) to bouncy synthpop was the best idea - I still feel that the other tracks, either instrumental or mostly-instrumental, work much better.  The best thing about America might be the guest slide guitar from Bodo Staiger, who had briefly been a member of  70s Dinger protégés Lilac Angels - more from him later this week.

For a fuller review of Néondian, see this one that I wrote for Julian Cope's Head Heritage about 14 years ago.  It makes me cringe a bit now - the general tone of reviews on that site (not least Cope's) was infectious on me in a way that now feels like pretense, and it's waaay long (FFS, do some Uni work, stop sitting in the library writing album reviews!), but hey ho.  The urls I mention are unfortunately dead.

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In 2006, Warner Germany rounded off a much-needed reissue programme of the first three La Düsseldorf albums with this - a re-arranged version of Néondian finally given its original 'Mon Amour' title.  Still legally prevented by Lampe from using the band name (the contentiousness of this whole reissue in fact saw it deleted within a year, although an LP pressing did appear very recently), Dinger's workaround this time was to officially credit the album to 'la-duesseldorf.de'.  The remastering may be a slight improvement on the Captain Trip CD, according to taste.

The 're-arranged' running order saw America and Pipi AA trading places, Jag Älskar Dig promoted to the first half of the album, and the addition of three bonus tracks.  Two of these are from the last proper La Düsseldorf release, a 12" that appeared in 1983 - I say 'proper', they're not even band tracks - Ich Liebe Dich was a solo track by Klaus that became Jag Älskar Dig on Néondian with minimal tweaking (if any), and the dark and quirky Koksknödel was a solo track by Thomas Dinger - more from him next week.

Lastly, Geld 2006 (Internet Warm-Up Version) was a trailer for the release of 'Viva 2010', a reworking of La Düsseldorf's second album, with the Japanese-German musicians with whom Dinger spent his final years.  I can remember Dinger's old website first claiming that 'Viva 2000' was imminent for release, then it was to be 'Viva 2004' - it didn't appear in 2010 either, likely due to Dinger's recent death.  His heiress Miki Yui, responsible for the two Japandorf releases, is apparently still planning to release the 2000s Viva at some point.  Hopefully the finished Geld was a step up from the demo here, in which they (with guest Herbert Grönemeyer) largely seem to be singing over the original 1978 track with the addition of some Japandorf-era guitar.  Who knows when we'll find out.

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la! NEU? - Zeeland (Live '97) (1997)

Second album from Klaus Dinger's loose, improvisatory 90s ensemble.  Despite the title, this isn't a proper live album like the Kunsthalle concert, but a live-in-the-studio effort.  Zeeland was the first la! NEU? album I bought, and it remains a favourite, with more than enough sweetness and charm to forgive the rough edges.

The album kicks off with To Get You Real, centred on a couple of riffs from Dinger's heavily reverbed guitar, and Viktoria Wehrmeister alternatively singing an insistent single line over one riff, and overlaying the other one with subtle, cooing vocalese.  Following that are two lengthy jams that focus more on electronics, the first one mellow, bouncy and gently melodic, the second more rough and uptempo.

After this, there's another rather sweet, if characteristically underdeveloped Dinger song, Satellite, before a bit of a grab-bag of odd inclusions: a thirty-second trailer for the forthcoming solo album by keyboardist Rembrandt Lensink, a rough demo of an elegaic performance by Dinger's mother, Renate, and six minutes of Insekt, an electronics and voice improv.  The final track, another long guitar-based song, is worth sticking around for though.  Silly Face is a wistful, closing-time gaze into an empty glass, like the Velvet Underground's After Hours slowed down to a sleepy crawl.  Wehrmeister's vocal is suitably slurred-sounding, but the affecting lyrics are still comprehensible, and the end result, set to a gentle tambourine tap, is quite lovely.

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La! NEU? - Live At Kunsthalle Düsseldorf (rec. 1998, rel. 2001)

Final release from Klaus Dinger's mid-late 90s group, where the "inventor" (his preferred term) of Neu!, La Düsseldorf and Die Engel Des Herrn decided to work with younger musicians, plus his dear old mum, on his most free-form music ever.  Thanks to the deference/indulgence of Japanese label Captain Trip, more La! NEU? releases were made available than for any other Dinger band, with their resulting catalogue being more a series of fast-and-loose documents rather than polished albums - but this remains a key part of their charm.

La! NEU? were effectively defunct after this July 1998 farewell concert, and Dinger's last chapter before his death in 2008 was to team up with a group of Japanese musicians - including Kazuyuki Onouchi, who helped prepare the Kunsthalle recording for release in 2001.  One day I'll post Japandorf, which was a rather sweet posthumous collection, but for today here's a great summary of La! NEU?, concentrating in its first half on Year Of The Tiger, possibly their most satisfying studio album.

Both of Tiger's epic improvisations, Autoportrait Rembrandt and Notre Dame, are here in fine versions that display this group's freewheeling improv aesthetic at its best.  On Disc 2, there's a fair bit of faffing around that could perhaps have been cut, but La! NEU?'s final original piece The Hit, an endearingly odd, perky update of the Notre Dame rhythm track, and a valedictory run through La Düsseldorf's Time are worth waiting for.

Disc 1
Disc 2

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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