DEEP PURPLE
Swiss time was running out
When they recorded "Machine Head" forty years ago, it was an extraordinary feat of strength for the British hard rockers. Her management rushed her around the globe in the early seventies, from tour to tour. Also, internal trench warfare was a major problem for the band. In addition, there was an unprecedented chaos at the recording location in Montreux, Switzerland. But at the end it stood, the legendary sixth record of Deep Purple.
JETHRO TULL Highly
Creative Decay Process of a Band
43 years, and that's it? Obviously the main actors Ian Anderson and Martin Barre themselves do not know what will happen to Jethro Tull. But the speculations that the concert on 31 July 2011 in Munich might have been their last performance together do not stop. The fact is: The new album "Thick As A Brick 2" as well as the world tour starting in April will run under "Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson". Meanwhile, Barre has founded the Tull cover band New Day.
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
The rage rocker
Bruce Springsteen says what he thinks, even if some of his fellow Americans don't fit into the stuff. The most recent example: his seventeenth studio album "Wrecking Ball", on which the man really takes his breath away, takes a musical turn and washes the heads of the powerful from politics and business.
THE MARS VOLTA
All roads lead to Germany
Everything's new again. The Mars Volta draw a line under their boiling Latin prog escapades, which they have so far celebrated with all their devotion. On their sixth studio recording "Noctourniquet" they find an unexpectedly clarified synthesis of life experience and sound philosophy. And to the realization that modern rock music was born in Germany.
THE HISTORY OF PROGRESSIVE ROCK,
PART 9 FRANCE
Since the seventies there have also been many, many interesting bands in France who have dedicated themselves to progressive rock in all its forms. To get the French Prog under a hat, however, is a difficult undertaking. Especially the representatives of the Symphonic Prog are difficult to understand as a unit or scene. So we took the different paths and found not only the capital of the Zeuhl.
VAN HALEN
Whole lotta Shakespeare goin' on
The heroes of the eighties want to know it again: "A Different Kind Of Truth" is not only the first Van Halen album in fourteen years, but also the comeback of the original line-up. Say: with singer David Lee Roth, who left the band in 1985 to start a solo career. Now the US success troupe wants to deliver perfect rock entertainment again - after all, they see themselves as classics of the Shakespeare brand.
THROBBING GRISTLE
Working Shock Shrinker
One of the most controversial bands in rock history has now re-released five albums from its back catalogue in remastered form with plenty of bonus material. High time for a history lesson. And for a lesson in how far artists can - and may - move boundaries.
RPWL
I think, so I'm listening
"Beyond Man And Time" is the title of RPWL's new studio recording. It's her first concept album. With this the Freisinger Artrockband pursues a noble goal: not only to give the listeners an acoustic pleasure, but also to inspire them for a new thinking culture.
STEVE HOGARTH & RICHARD BARBIERI The
Fluffy Cloud of Darkness
Marillions extroverted frontman Steve Hogarth and Porcupine Trees shy keyboard virtuoso Richard Barbieri get lost in sinister sound worlds on the joint project "Not The Weapon But The Hand" - a cooperation that these so different characters had been aiming for years. Now together they indulge in rich minor tones.
Keep the text up! Cult songs and their meaning
LOU REED - WALK ON THE WILD SIDE
Lewis Allan Reed turned 70 on 2 March. Throughout his life, the gnarled, often unpleasant musician has been fascinated by half-world figures. Just like freaks, drop-outs and birds of paradise. With "Walk On The Wild Side" he has set a monument to them - and his time in Andy Warhol's notorious Factory
Shopping list AMON DÜÜL II
The freak principle
In 1967 the artist community Amon Düül came together in Munich - in the same year in which the community I started its march through the media institutions. Like the Berlin pile around Fritz Teufel and Rainer Langhans, parts of the Munich Communards also had the socio-political and cultural upheaval in mind. In addition to direct political actions, they wanted to carry them out in the field of music and happenings. One year later, the freak network had split: in Amon Düül, who bid farewell to Berlin and ultimately to meaninglessness, and Amon Düül II, who initially stayed in Munich and suppressed the revolutionary impulse in favor of music. The ADII core group consisted of guitarist/violinist Chris Karrer, guitarist John Weinzierl, keyboarder Falk U. Rogner, drummer Peter Leopold and singer Renate "Henriette Krötenschwanz" Knaup, to whom bassist Lothar Meid and drummer Daniel Fichelscher as well as producer/saxophonist Olaf Kübler later joined as important musicians. Already with their debut "Phallus Dei" the hippies had made themselves heard in psychedelic circles - also internationally. With albums like "Yeti" or "Wolf City" they showed that they belonged to the most important representatives of new music from Germany, Krautrock, along with Can, Popol Vuh and Faust. A nimbus, from which the still sporadically appearing group, still lives.
