MANI NEUMEIER - To the seventy-fifth!

26. November 2015

Mani Neumeier Guru Guru

MANI NEUMEIER - To the seventy-fifth!

A concert for excavators and drums. In 1988 Mani Neumeier staged this unusual combination of two worlds. It goes without saying that it was not a toy excavator, but a real monster from road construction. Neumeier garnished this performance, which can be admired on YouTube, with slapstick interludes full of abstruse humour. Is that Dada or gaga? Neumeier won't care the answer. The spectacle appears like a mixture of Karlheinz Stockhausen and Helge Schneider. And when the drummer, who was born in Munich in 1940, actually plays on children's toys or brass plates in his solo shows, he only proves his childlike, spontaneous humour. It doesn't always have to be intellectually minded. And so, incidentally, he can also touch emotionally, for example when he gives a contemplative Japanese drum singing duet with his wife Etsuko.

Today Mani Neumeier is first and foremost known as the driving force, head and only remaining founding member of the still hyperactive Krautrock legend Guru Guru (he will not like to hear the term "Krautrock"). As such he has not only left his mark on the German music scene. Guru Guru has over 40 records (including more than 20 studio albums) and over 3000 concerts. Their music was never based on Anglo-American models. The band has changed over the years, but has always kept its anarchic, curious, cosmopolitan and warm character - of course Neumeier's merit.

Lesen Sie mehr im eclipsed Nr. 176 (Dez. 2015/Jan. 2016).