Way to the Music

In 1981 a brilliant vocalist and bassist was born. Unfortunately it was not me.
I had seen the bright light of the day in the seventieth amidst picturesque Rostock.
My childhood was not really harmonious. I started listening to the music when I was about thirteen, fourteen years old. It offered me a hideout in especially dreadful moments. It created an island of freedom in the martial area of school and family. But the freedom did not last.
Life did its best to end my existence as a ‘Popper’ – as it was called in East and West at this time – abruptly.
A music tape caused this personal change. A school mate recorded it and maybe she already knew what she would determine. My old cassette recorder KR650 – a present to my ‘Jugendweihe’ (youth initiation ceremony) was not able to meet the sound of 'The Cure', Softcell' and 'Depeche Mode' but it could show the overwhelming attitude towards live, which should accompany the rest of my awkward youth and drove me shortly towards 'Einstürzenden Neubauten' and 'Foyer des Art '.
As a fifteen-year-old I hang around the streets with lots of other kids. We smoked our first cigarettes, drank beer and listened devoutly to the rhythms of ‘Manowar’, ‘Metallica’ and Halloween. That gave us the sense to be hard and independent. I tried everything to stand out from the crowd and not to be beaten up so often.
The reunification – the change that could not be ignored by all people - came suddenly and unexpected.
My plans for the future lapsed by the time going by as the apprenticeship I was interested in did not exist anymore.
And so I went to the German Federal Armed Forces in Saarland. In the discotheques in the area of Lebach, Saarlouis, Saarbrücken they played a kind of music I had never heard before. I got to know and love 'Faith no More', 'New Model Army', 'U2', 'Pearl Jam' and 'Nirvana'.
In these discotheques the alternative scene had beaten the pop and this affected my attitude to life ecstatically.
And unfortunately (?) also my job. I could not cope with my superiour in the army so they sent me home after 12 months.
Back in Rostock I immersed into the Gothic scene.
I made friends immediately. We roamed through the clubs, smoked cigarettes and pot and drank until we dropped - accompanied by the soundtracks of 'Sister’s of Mercy', 'Fields of the Nephelim' , 'Projekt Pitchfork', 'Lacrimosa' and others, like regional industrial bands.
As in Rostock it is also necessary to earn one’s living I tried to go back to the army. They sent me to Flensburg after several unpleasant conversations with the psychological expert.
Live in the barracks there differed only slightly from the one I knew. With one exception: Guitar lessons were offered. I registered. Unfortunately I had to break it up after half a year because my time in the army ended when my commander decided that I did not suit as a soldier. I laughed loud, stole the guitar and moved to a friend in Hamburg.
This friend was the singer of a Punk band but not a mentor, because he refused to be one. It is just Punk.
He removed, I moved elsewhere.
But Hamburg had more to offer. Among other things my wife, whom I met at a gothic event in the market hall.
We moved to Berlin where I was able to gain interesting experience in my working life. Since then I fight to get rid of it. Preferably in lyrics because it was again music that helped me then to forget everyday life on such a gentle way that I did not even recognize it.
A strange guy moved in the first floor where we had our first common apartment. He played the guitar. We met occasionally and he introduced me a new world. I had never heard ‘Tool’ before. Just as little as ‘Queens of Stoneage’, ‘Kyuss’ or ‘Systems of a Down’. System’s song ‘Toxity’ was a revelation to me. I think I listened to this album incessantly for two months.
I still had this guitar from the army. ‘Why shouldn’t I use it eventually?’ I thought. So I went to my neighbour and tried everything to learn from him. But I did not manage.
As all my efforts fizzled I seized this new chance.
I bought a G4 and started with ‘GarageBand’. I had no other chance than to be damned good. This was the only opportunity to convince my wife to interrupt her work at the computer and let me use it.
The friendship to my neighbour ended eventually because he did not share my desire to future trends. Or if he did, he was not determined enough.
Now I was on my own.
Initially the rhythms came all out of my computer.
Especially the instrumental creations remind of the time when I was not able to record my own stuff.
It did not last long until my guitar got a little sister.
Shortly this little family expanded and adopted a semi-acoustic, a silent-guitar and a bass.
And my family also grew. From the beginning my son accorded excellent with the keyboard and I assume that my old percussions are not innocent in his obsession for my new drums. Fortunately he keeps his hands from my violin – yet.
Thanks to the encouragement of my family, my friends and the courtesy of the gods of the modern technics I have nearly finished my first album ‘Tarot’.