Toni Krahl – yes, that’s exactly how it was

He conjures up lived life. In the Berlin cultural brewery, to present his solo debut album. On the small stage in the Palais, Toni Krahl conjures up memories with a somewhat scratchy voice. On the canvas behind him, the old S-Bahn bridge Schönhauser Allee, corner of Kastanienallee can be seen in Sepia. Then photos flicker from the family album: childhood, disco, first love, togetherness on the Baltic Sea beach, civil wedding, daughter is born, many happy moments, professional successes, but also private disasters, divorce, “The Hellen and the Dark Hours” … the blue passport-an indication that Toni Krahl and his band City to the privileged GDR artists heard who were allowed to travel to the west. He didn’t think of staying over there.

And yes, these new songs also get under the skin of City like that. It was exactly the same. Or something like that. The life of your own life has passed past you. Irrar jam sessions, first kiss and learning, learning, learning again, at the weekend of the young talent, jazz with Ruth Hohmann and Uschi Brüning, or in the Pankow Bürgerpark, where the hottest bands appeared … and dancing, dancing, dancing, to total exhaustion. And yes, also the placking, not only the stroller four stairs, but also the briquettes for the old fireplace in the one and a half room apartment with an outer toilet and damp walls, the little one constantly cold. And yet the happiness lived in the back house in Prenzlauer Berg, a small paradise. At some point the world is upside down. Life is whirled up. And there is a permanent run.

“That’s exactly how it was … after all/ it was a few years ago,” says Toni Krahl in the title song of the solo debut album.

His life in the East German workers ‘and farmers’ state was an up and down. At the age of 19, he was sentenced to a three-year prison sentence for participating in a protest demonstration against the invasion of the Warsaw Contracting States into the ČSSR. “Anyone who wrapped themselves in silence has already revealed themselves.” And: “A heart needs to be confessed.” The judgment is converted into a two -year probation sentence, is nevertheless unjust and unjustified. Especially with side effects: Father Franz Krahl is stopped as a department head in the “New Germany” editorial team and banished to the archive; A preferred punishment for comrades who have made “misconduct” guilty or their relatives. Just like the commanding in production: Toni Krahl becomes the VEB machine tool factory »7. October «Suken, later works as a mechanic in the Charité and as a deliverer at Deutsche Post, while he also tried musically, in various formations. Until he found his band in 1975: City.

He is the front man, the singer, the face of this band. Although the boss was actually Fritz Puppel. “But he did what I said,” explains Toni Krahl. To then correct himself: “Nah, I absolutely need creative collegiality.” And City, regardless of some personnel changes, proved that; There was also a colleague in the West. The breakthrough was successful in 1977 with “Am Winden”. The following year, a LP of the same name comes out in the Federal Republic and (sic) in Greece. Amiga, the GDR record company for “entertainment art”, must not publish a sophisticated single with the legendary, ultimately ten million-subject (!) Solded song worldwide. And of course there are also internal tensions in this band. When Georgi Gogow goes away, it says defiantly: “Without bass and without hair with City through the 80s.” An allusion to what, in contrast to the eliminated Bulgarians, most band members. City fans also flock to the concerts of the Volume No 55 founded by Gogow without resentment. The famous “violin” returns after a few years. “Sometimes it goes mountain grass, let’s go uphill,” you learn from a new song by Toni Krahl.

When City dissolves after 50 years, the fan base is shocked. Last Tuesday, Toni Krahl justified the decision again, at the same time confessing, in the morning after the last appearance and the last wet-happy farewell party “how ash”: “What did we do?” But it was convinced today. Drummer Klaus Selmke, who had launched the band in 1972 with Puppel in 1972, died in the first year of Corona, who has been seriously ill for a long time. He had always tried to keep it through, until the anniversary, half of the Saeculum. “Unfortunately, he couldn’t do that anymore. And without him we didn’t want to continue, no new city chapter. ”Puppel died last year.

The farewell was many in the life of Toni Krahl. After the “last round” with City it goes to a new one. No time for melancholy. Get up, continue, sing. Don’t disappoint the fans. Toni Krahl reveals: “I actually have a very sunny mind, I’m already a happy person in the morning.”

It is important to him to emphasize that his solo debut album is “not a city-nine ramp”. It only offers two songs that had already been intended as an idea in the circle of friends but not implemented and only now with his new band, the Kinx from Prenzlauer Berg, and under the careful care of the producer André Kuntze. Quasi as a legacy, a tribute to the old band. There is still much of the new songs of this. How should it be otherwise. Not only whether the interpreter, but also the copywriter, who does not want to be called poet, introduces himself modestly as a user poet: Alfred Roesler-Klint. He wrote a number of songs for City, but in GDR times in many cases under a pseudonym. He was not well -suffered “at the authorities”, all the more popular with the musicians. “At the window”, however, is based on a text by the Leipzig writer Hildegard Maria Rauchfuß. Oh, how passionate we once sang the longing song for freedom without walls and limits: “I fly through the world … nanananei, nananania …”

On the question of “ND” to what extent the disappearance of the GDR in 1990 had an impact on City in 1990 and whether they suffered from the audience loss when the wall had fallen and the West German “competition” pushed to the East German market, Toni Krahl replies with a quote from Puppel. At that time, the friend opened up the friends: “Don’t worry, one day the Ostler will get out the old plates, who want to hear songs that they danced, loved and lived. Then we’re back in front. ”It was the same.

And that had less or nothing to do with Eastern Valley, but with the songs, the texts. City, like some other Ostrock bands, had a committed fan base, continuously. In any case, they never had to shrivel as if they had taken away from German pop singers to open furniture stores or at the stalls of user cars. Toni Krahl remembers that quite a few GDR artists were very panicked after the association, were in existential hardship and that they tried to do jobs in the insurance industry.

However, also and in particular capitalist society challenges artists if they challenge them. According to the new brand, the new songs of “Toni” speak plain text. There is told by a woman who is in the middle of life – “At the age of 50 she is not yet an old iron” – and yet ice cold is canceled when she falls ill with breast cancer. For Toni Krahl, the ugly grimace of capitalism is shown here. He wanted to testify to solidarity with the women who are underneath in this ruthless society.

And of course age and new anti -Semitism for him, the son of Jewish emigrants, is a terrible thing. I suffer from it. “He sees the current events in the context of the” very big drama in Middle East for decades “. Toni Krahl, member of the German-Israeli Society, how a badge testifies to the lapel of his jacket, explicitly emphasizes that he regrets the victims on both sides. He comes out as a pacifist and reports: “” Peace must be armed “, said in the GDR.” The musician leaves it to the press representatives present to think about the similarity to statements of today’s federal politicians. Frank and free, unmistakable his commitment on the debut album: “I only imagined it/ a Bess’re and Schön’re world/ where one stops the other/ I only imagined it/ the gentle end of violence/ where nobody pays with pain … the reality is terrible.”

That’s it. And it is certain that the new Toni remains the old and still reinvents alongside the Kinx, experienced, professional musicians. In any case, only in the GDR socialized and dialectically trained GDR citizens can interpret his remark on Tuesday in Berlin. In the modification of a classic of world literature, which was often cited in the GDR, Toni Krahl expresses with a wink: “A lot will change, but everything remains as it is.”

At the end of the small but fine live concert in the Berlin cultural brewery there was of course the classics, or as Toni Krahl says, “the crown jewels”. Nananani, nananania …

“That’s exactly how it was. Toni Krahl and the Kinx from Prenzlauer Berg «, CD from 19.9. in stores; Germany tour from 22.11, tickets at www.eventim.de

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