Tiger B. Smith

 Artist: Tiger B. Smith

LP: We're the Tiger Bunch

Song: "Inside My Head"

[ listen ]

The second place I went digging for vinyl on my Minnesota road trip last week was Roadrunner Records in Minneapolis. It's a cute little shop packed with lots of vinyl goodies at good prices. This 1974 Tiger B. Smith LP, however, was a little on the spendy side. But after taking into account their hair, makeup, wardrobe and abundance of glitter (they're also German, which helped!) I decided to take a chance...and I'm glad I did! Tiger B. Smith doesn't have a huge discography, so I've already got just about everything they released, with the exception of a few singles and a million dollar EP. I also left Roadrunner Records with a handful of old French singles, but those I haven't listened to yet.

[ Roadrunner Records — Minneapolis, Minnesota ]

Sacha Distel

Artist: Sacha Distel

LP: 7" single

Song: "Adios Amigo"

[ listen ]

Song: "Mister Casanova"

[ listen ]

After work today I stopped by Golden Oldies Records to rummage through their Air Supply. Of course, according to the alphabet you have to go through ABBA to get to Air Supply, and for whatever lucky reason, somebody had plopped this Sacha Distel record right into the middle of ABBA...like, between the Bs: ABSachaDistelBA.I love any song that includes whistling, but even better if the song's in German with a Spanish chorus!

[ Sacha Distel: January 29, 1933 — July 22, 2004 ]

Birth Control

Artist: Birth Control

LP: 7" single

Song: "Gamma Ray - Part 1"
[ listen ]

Okay, so now flash forward five days into the future—past my train trip to Figueres, to Girona, and past the death of Aretha Franklin. I had returned to Barcelona on Friday morning and found 10,000 Records locked inside an inaccessible storefront. But there was one other shop called Daily Records that I'd tried to visit the previous Monday in the same neighborhood as Discos Revolver and Revolver Records, but on Mondays they're only open 4-8pm...and that's when I was at Discos Impacto and Discos Paradiso! On Saturdays, however, Daily Records is open 11am-3pm and 4-8pm, so I got there early in the day on Saturday, August 18th. 

Daily Records is a cute little shop with a small red portable plastic listening station that the clerk set up for me on the counter right next to the register. They seemed to specialize in rock, punk, new wave and stuff like that, but they still had a really good variety and I found some cool and amazing stuff...including this 1975 single by a German prog rock band called Birth Control. 

I'd never heard of them before, but they're apparently still going strong today. Well, sort of. Birth Control formed in Berlin in 1966, but by 1971 none of the original members remained. They've evidently gone through numerous lineup changes since then; Wikipedia includes a list of 27 people who have at some point been members of the group. 

 [ Birth Control ]

[ Daily Records — Barcelona, Spain ]

Franzl Lang

Artist: Franzl Lang

LP: Freunde der Berge

Song: "Der Hochzeitsjodler von St. Kathrein"
[ listen ]

It's been way too long since I put any yodeling up on this blog. Autumn is a perfect time to listen to yodeling, isn't it? Especially in the evening? While drinking beer? I don't know when this LP was released, but my guess is the mid-1970s. You can read all about the Bavarian Yodelking Franzl Lang on Wikipedia here. I miss the days when a person could have crooked teeth and still be famous.

[ Franzl Lang: December 28, 1930 — December 6, 2015 ]

Nina Hagen

Artist: Nina Hagen

LP: 7" single

Song: "Zarah (Ich Weiss, Es Wird Einmal Ein Wunder Geschehn)"
[ listen ]

I finally broke down and went to a record store today to buy the new Future Islands CD. But after listening to it at the listening station, I decided not to get it after all. Of course, the listening station headphones were broken, so I could only hear the new CD in one ear. Maybe all the good parts were in the other speaker! 

But I ended up browsing and found this 1983 Nina Hagen single for $1.99. It reminds me of my sister. Of course my sister spells her name with an 'S' instead of a 'Z,' but she also has blond hair. Of course my sister can't kick that high, but she also speaks German. Of course, my sister is Mormon and can't sing all crazy like Nina Hagen, but she does own a pair of red shoes. So my sister and this Nina Hagen single actually do have quite a bit in common, you see.

[ Nina Hagen in 1980 ]

Alma Cogan

Artist: Alma Cogan

LP: Alma Cogan

Song: "Tennessee Waltz"
[ listen ]

Song: "Ba-Ba Song"
[ listen ]

Song: "The Birds and the Bees"
[ listen ]

Alma Cogan used to post terrific mix tapes on the Art of the Mix website pretty frequently, but I had no idea this is what he looked like...and I certainly didn't know he'd been such a musical sensation in the British motherland in the 1950s! According to Wikipedia contributors, Alma enjoyed singing in lots of different languages, and on this particular collection he enjoys singing mostly in German.

[ Alma Cogan: May 19, 1932 — October 26, 1966 ]

Kraftwerk

Artist: Kraftwerk

LP: 7" single

Song: "Musique Non Stop" 
[ listen ]

When I browse through my collection of 45s, I'm always grateful I picked up offbeat singles at Tower Records from the mid-'80s on—like this Kraftwerk single, for example. The song didn't registar on the Billboard Hot 100 at all when it came out in 1986 (it was evidently a hit at the dance clubs), and I've never come across another copy of it in 30 years of record hunting ever since. I only regret that I didn't start buying unpopular 45s with picture sleeves at Tower Records sometime around 1978 instead! But then how was a ratty 9-year-old Mormon kid from Yakima supposed to get to Seattle to collect rare vinyl?

[ Kraftwerk ]

Renate & Werner Leismann

Artist: Renate & Werner Leismann

LP: Wo Der Wind Weht

Song: "Wem Gott Will Rechte Gunst Erweisen" 
[ listen ]

Happy May Day! I just got home from a sunny bike ride to Seattle's Belltown neighborhood where I had brunch with my good friend Gene. I biked alongside the glistening waters of the Puget Sound, with Mount Rainier and the Seattle skyline off in the distance, and as I rode a cool spring wind was blowing through my hair. I've never felt more like Renate & Werner Leismann in my life!

In fact, "Wo Der Wind Weht" is German for "Where the Wind Blows" (durch meine haare) and, according to Google Translate, "Wem Gott Will Rechte Gunst Erweisen" means "Whom God Will Prove Right Favor." I think we can all agree that nothing proves God's right favor more than suddenly finding yourself in the middle of a golden wheat field wearing a fabulous jumpsuit in either yellow or pink.

 

[ Werner Leismann: December 31, 1936 — April 21, 2015 ]

[ Renate Leismann: April 16, 1942 — February 23, 2016 ]

Heino

 Artist: Heino

LP: Deutsche Weihnacht...und Festliche Lieder

Song: "Still Wie die Nacht" 
[ listen ]

Song: "Medly"
a. "Es ist Für uns Eine Zeit Angekommen"
b. "Kling Glöckchen, Klingelingeling"
c. "Leise Rieselt der Schnee"
[ listen ]

My favorite Christmas vinyl acquisition of the year is probably this 1974 Heino LP that I found at Golden Oldies last week. Heino strumming his guitar and booming "Klingelingeling" is his lovely baritone already puts this one over the top...but then you open the LP gate-fold sleeve and a paper Nativity pops up. Brilliant!

Jane

Artist: Jane

LP: 7" single

Song: "Love Song" 
[ listen ]

This 1978 single from popular German prog rockers Jane sounds like something from The Traveling Wilburys when it begins, but then Joy Division suddenly appears in the studio halfway through when the strings come in. Interesting. You can read more than you've ever wanted to know about the splits, splinters, drama and lineup changes Jane's been involved in since their 1970 inception on Wikipedia here.

[ Jane in 1980 ]

Luisa Fernandez

Artist: Luisa Fernandez

LP: 7" single

Song: "Lay Love On You" 
[ listen ]

This past weekend I escaped the big city for a little mini-vacation in Long Beach, WA with Martin, a new special friend. I poked around in the dusty thrift shops and antique stores of the area and picked up some interesting records, but my favorite find is probably this 1978 German single by young disco star Luisa Fernandez, which I dug up during a return visit to Rainy Day Records in Olympia on our way home. (This time I took my own photos of the place.) As you can read in German here (and English here), darling Luisa was only 16 years old when she won a talent contest in an Alveslohe disco, paving the way for a handful of Luisa Fernandez singles in the '70s and '80s that were especially popular with the Austrians.

 [ Rainy Day Records — Olympia, WA ]

[ Luisa Fernandez ]

Puhdys

Artist: Puhdys

LP: Puhdys

Song: "Langstreckenlauf" 
[ listen ]

My friend Refugio was heading down to Olympia yesterday (it's the capital of Washington state) to pick up some coffee from a local coffee roasting company owned by a friend of his (I had a cup of the Kenyan blend; it was super). He asked me to go along for the ride and we had a lovely time. Of course we stopped into Rainy Day Records, which opened in Olympia the very same year that the East German rock band Puhdys had their photo taken in front of some orange curtains. (I don't know what year the photo of Rainy Day Records included below was taken. I forgot to snap pictures on the trip, so I just grabbed an image from the web. But when we were there yesterday, it was indeed a Rainy Day.)

Released in 1974 or '75, this second Puhdys LP isn't particularly rare, but most available copies are still in Germany or Eastern Europe. I wonder how this copy ended up in a sleepy little town like Olympia! Formed in 1965 and re-arranged in 1969 (read more about that here), Puhdys' took their name from the first letters of each of the founding members' first names—Peter, Udo, Harry and Dieter. One of the first East German rock bands allowed to tour in West Germany, Puhdys are still quite active today, releasing their latest LP, Heilige Nächte, in 2013.

[ Puhdys in 1973 ]

[ Rainy Day Records — Olympia, WA ]