Hamburg underground music: “Are you a cultural pessimist?”

This month, two great Hamburg underground musicians, Frank Z. and Andy Giorbino, died. That was only a short time when people in the underground thought in the early 80s: You can do it, you do it and people listen. But then the Neue Deutsche Welle came almost immediately and swept the labels, bands and records into the unknown nowhere. After that, only German rock was popular everywhere.

In 1980, Abwärts were the punk band of the hour for two records. Frank Z. co-founded it and was its guitarist and singer. He came from the anarchist scene, had trained as a printer and the band name had a political agenda. In the beginning, Margita Haberland played the violin; Gudrun Ensslin’s former roommate had once decided against the RAF and in favor of street theater. Then FM Unit and Marc Chung were added, who were responsible for noise and bass and later switched to Einstreichen Neuhäusern.

First the EP “Computerstaat” was released, which, with “Sewing Machine Rhythm” (Gregor Kessler), summed up the madness and repression that was inherent in the “Model Germany” of the Helmut Schmidt federal government: “Saturday evening mental asylum, / the KGB in the German forest. / Sunday, everything is dead / World War is looming in the Gulf of Mallorca. / Stalingrad, Stalingrad, / Germany disaster state / We live in the computer state«. Then came the debut album “Amok / Koma,” which sold 20,000 copies out of nowhere. The record title was a very good description of the West German state of consciousness between professional bans and car washing.

“Computerstaat” was the second release ever on Alfred Hilsberg’s legendary underground label “ZickZack”. The first was “Klagemauer”, a single by the Ghost Drivers – another programmatic band name. Guitarist Andy Giorbino joined this group in 1986 after recording the single “Kredit” with “ZickZack” in 1980 and later the LPs “Lied an die Freude” and “Anmut und Wesen”. His music sounded, let’s say, as if the Mainzelmännchen were playing minimalist prog rock. Hard, angular and sometimes funny. Label boss Hilsberg called it electronic avant-garde. Ivanhoe were a little more conventional! – a project that Giorbino ran together with Jäki Eldorado, who had been one of the first ten punks in West Berlin with Blixa Cash and Gudrun Gut, but was too nervous to make music and then preferred to become Robbie Williams’ road manager. From a purely musical perspective, Ghost Drivers were the most interesting: dark, experimental rock.

When these short great times were already over, I published the fanzine “Rat Race” together with Conny Lösch in 1988, in which Z. and Giorbino were interviewed independently of each other. Z. was working in the pub at the time after he had suffered shipwreck in the record industry: with the combative, depressive album “The West is Lonely” he had recorded the best of all downward records, but was then thrown out of his contract due to lack of success. He had just released a new downward album on Normal Records as a one-man band, on which he sang a song about alcohol problems, similar to Grönemeyer. Unfortunately, it didn’t occur to me to ask him about it, but I asked him like a high school student: “Are you a cultural pessimist?” And he said: “Culture and pessimism are two words that belong together. I’m not interested in culture at all because it’s not a concept that I can grasp in any way. When you say the word culture, you always mean an exhibition at the art gallery or a trip to Japan or the devil knows what. This is cruel!”

Andy Giorbino, who was never as stuck in his music as Z. and who a year later would try out a kind of prehistoric Rammstein rock with Folke Jensen, then explained to me how things really work in the culture business: “People want concepts and stuff like that think for yourself as little as possible. You have to work with it, I can’t brainwash it. No matter whether you make music or paint, it’s about finding an expression for yourself. The concepts always come later, after the audience’s reaction. I think concepts suck.” So you’re always smarter beforehand.

Frank Z., whose real name was Frank Ziegert, died on January 17th at the age of 66; Andy Giorbino, whose name was Andreas Gerth, died on January 10th at the age of 69.

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