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THE THIRSTY-MOON-STORY
Part 2
Several titles from the first Thirsty Moon album, such as “Big City”, were quite often played on the radio; we gave interviews, and even a promoter from the USA (Skylab) showed an interest in the band. Nevertheless there was disagreement among the group members, some of whom no longer wanted to identify themselves with the music we were playing; they preferred to improvise only and would rather have founded their own band.
Once we were offered to perform live during a radio broadcast in the studio of Radio Bremen, and we accepted, although Hucky Ranwig was no longer part of the band at that time. It was early 1973 and I can’t quite remember all of the various singers of the programme. During rehearsals young Marianne Rosenberg was being looked after by her mother,
while Udo Lindenberg, who had just started his career, handed around bottles of champagne. We played “Big City”, with me playing the Hohner Clavinet as well as the guitar, although I was quite out of practice being a keyboarder.
“You’ll never come back” (1973) was going to be our second, and, as some of the group members would have it, our last album. Siegfried “Pisi” Pisalla was now both singer and second guitarist. During the recordings in the studio Maschen everybody focussed on the music and so it turned out to be a good and committed performance. The LP was again produced by Jochen Petersen; working with him had always been plea-sant and relaxed.
In the studio we occasionally met with other musicians. I still remember Achim Reichel, who had headed in a completely
different direction after his involvement with “The Rattles” and “Wonderland”, and
was now doing instrumental music under the name “Achim Reichel & machines.”
Norbert Drogies:
“As was often the case we happened to play in Bremen’s scene pub “Lila Eule”. After our performance Noel Redding, former bass guitarist of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, came up to the stage and asked us if he could use our equipment and instruments. He was in Bremen to do recordings for the Beat-Club with his band “Fat Mattress”. They played for a while, until Noel Redding, who was quite obviously drunk, fell over with the bass in his hand.”
In June 1973 we had our only TV appearance in the ARD show “Diskus” with the group of the second LP. We played live, and after the gig Harald, our bassist, disappeared in a flash, since unfortunately he had not been recognized as a conscientious objector and ran the risk of being caught by the military police. Some years later, after a long odyssey over Berlin, France and other countries, he eventually escaped being drafted. During this time he played with “Parzival”, “Association PC”, “Sperrmüll” and “La Düsseldorf”, to mention a few.
The group eventually split up; my brother Norbert and I kept the weekend home in Klein Hollwedel as a rehearsal room and we composed new titles. At that time Norbert still went to school and worked as a driver for a pharmaceutics supplier during school holidays. With the money he bought himself a Fender Precision Bass and played it with as much energy and enthusiasm as he had played the drums. (Jürgen Drogies, August 2006)
The Sounds critic who had seemed slightly bewildered reviewing the first Thirsty Moon LP could not elude the fascination of „You’ll never come back” and wrote the following comment (Sounds 12/73): Thirsty Moon’s second album easily makes up for the shortcomings of the first LP. Now it swings! Guitar, electric piano and saxophone create a dense sound pattern charged with energy and rhythm by a large number of percussion instruments.
The text of “Trash Man” gave reason to criticism, but the reviewer had obviously failed to recognize the irony between title and text of the piece. In the end, however, he was reconciled by the music, since he went on to say: Fortunately the ”poet” is rarely employed, which makes for long stretches of undisturbed enjoyment of the group’s jazz-rock.
In 1974 the American promoter Skylab dedicated several pages to the band in a promotion booklet and described the music as follows:
Thirsty Moon uses the elements of jazz as a means of spontaneous expression and melts them together with the aggressiveness and rhythm of rock. They play only their own compositions, connecting voices with instrumental parts and utilizing all electronic possibilities. In spite of all their variety Thirsty Moon has a remarkable sound. Every member of the group knows his instrument perfectly. Everyone is a individualist who adds characteristic features to the group. The basis of the music is the precise playing together of the bass and drums and the Afro sounds of the four congas which connects the hard beat with the Latin American rhythms. The electric piano and the guitar combine to form another important element to the sound.
The saxophonist is an experienced jazz musician who gives the group the exquisite spontaneity of jazz.
Unlike many German groups, Thirsty Moon’s lyrics are an essential part of their sound. They reflect the impulses of their surroundings. Thirsty Moon is not a typical German group and they do not want to be one. The texts are English. The musical influences are from various cultures in the music world.
Thirsty Moon do not follow any particular trend and they do not wish to be commercial.
Thirsty Moon has a sort of ultimate versatility which does not rely on overused, accepted riffs and styles. Their versatility, on the contrary, comes from a whole array of lines which have not even been used yet! “Yellow Sunshine” has pieces that are so completely phased that the listener cannot tell what instruments are playing the phased lines. “Trash Man” has horn parts resembling The Grand Wazoo in perfection and complexity, but the horns overlay Santana-like rhythms instead of the “old-timey” jazz tones of Zappa’s recording.
This is not to say that Thirsty Moon has the traditional copied sounds of the successful groups. Nobody sounds like Thirsty Moon. No other band has so completely captured the elusive phenomena inherent in acid rock and placed it so effectively in a jazz-rock format. Other jazz-rock groups come close: the Mahavishnu Orchestra’s speed freak
pieces, Santana in the middle of an Arabian caravan, and Herbie Hancock pulling together every weird sound in the universe into one carefully constructed rhythm line. Thirsty Moon is all of these
combined. “Yellow Sunshine” sounds nothing like “Trash Man” which sounds nothing like “You’ll Never Come Back” – and all three are epic masterpieces.
Thirsty Moon’s sound is a mirror ball of images surrounding the listener. A gradually intensifying yellow –orange globe rises upward with the opening lines of “Morning Sun”. The chanting female vocalists in “Trash Man” are a transport to an exotic night club with Latin overtones. “Love Me” winds up tightly like a rubber band and soars downward into the “Rooms Behind Your Mind”. Dromedaries and sand. Palm trees and coconuts. Yellow sunshine.
Translation: Dr. Martina Häusler
For further information we recommend the following websites:
www.thirstymoon.de
www.backtothemoon.de
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