My other bands
I always wanted to be a Rock and Roll Star,
I never was one, but sometimes I tried. Although The Tranquil Club was
the only band with some impact, I did a lot of other things with other
people. Here's to the memory of them, wherever they might be now (I did
get email from two people who played with me since this page was made available,
though). The tapes I have done still sound through my house from time to
time.
Lemuria (1972-1974)
Lemuria was my first go at a real band. I
was given an acoustic guitar by my father in 1972 and kept practising for
ages. Two friends from school also had some interest in music as well,
so we met in the living rooms of our parents' homes to make music as loudly
and wildly as possible. I even bought an electric guitar in 1973. Lemuria
did their own songs, some complicated things which I still cannot play
today, even if I look at the sheets that still exist. About 100 minutes
of recorded mayhem are available even now, some songs not even bad, although
their actual value to me is beyond good and bad. It's just going back to
very early days.
Lemuria had one problem: an acoustic guitarist
who also wanted to sing everything. That made things very moody sometimes,
not too rocky. Although we sometimes had a phase of just drumming on the
shoecases and tin boxes (drums were expensive then), most of the material
is very mellow. Maybe we should copyright it now, 24 years after it has
been written and sell it to some record company looking for new stuff.
Lemuria was:
Juergen Gregarek: acoustic 6 and 12 strings
guitars, bass and vocals
Johannes Delmere: acoustic and electric
guitars, vocals
Martin Kornas shoe boxes, triangle and
everything else, that could be hit with a stick.
Only one picture exists:
Johannes, Juergen, Holger (a friend and
fan)
and Martin in 1973, at school of course.
Lemuria II (1974)
Juergen left for good in 1974 (actually he
left for Klaus Vatter's Band, who had real big amplifiers and a real drumset
and most of all a really large room to play in above an old cinema, as
Klaus' father had some kind of design studio there) and Martin and I looked
for other people to play with. Lemuria II turned out to record two or three
tunes in 2 afternoons and that was it. Still a real step forward, because
Joerg had a real hammond-organ and I got a wah-wah pedal and a fuzz box.
Posing was the favorite thing of the day, so we got some pics from one
afternoon.
Heinz-Peter, Joerg "Sloggi"
Schlottmann & Johannes.
More posing pics on here:
Lemuria II was:
Johannes Delmere: electric guitar
Martin Kornas: something resembling real
drums
Joerg Schlottmann: organ
Heinz-Peter Masuhr: vocals
and Frank Schaulies, hanging around, doing
nothing in particular or at all.
Geax Fantastic (1975-1977)
At least I did know Joerg then, who was one
or two years older than me. He had Uli Sawade in his form (same school
though), who was a drummer with a real drum kit. His band Geax Fantastic
just needed a second guitarist for the recording of a newly written rock
opera by Hardy Liszewsky, famous but very short guitarist. I got my name
dropped by Joerg, so I got invited to an audition. I had my second electric
guitar and a better fuzz by that time. We were rehearsing and recording
at a church room during those days, every second saturday afternoon. Hardy
left after a short while, being replaced by Joerg Paulus, who was from
my form. The low point was that Hardy owned the only amplifier we had,
so we had to hire it from him. You can imagine how two guitars, one voice
and one bass sounded through one amp, can't you? Everything spiced with
an all-drowning cowbell. There are some recordings still around, done via
microphone and dubbed via another microphone. This makes no good CD, I
believe, even if it would be cleaned and remixed on very posh equipment.
Geax Fantastic was:
Hardy Liszewski: electric guitar, vocals
Bernd-Juergen Grude: bass
Uli Sawade: drums, cowbell, vocals
Johannes Delmere: electric guitar
& Joerg Paulus: guitar, replacing Hardy
L.
Hardy and Bernd-Juergen preparing
for the stage show.
Even more pics
here.
Ghurka Boys (1977-1978)
This time it was my turn to quit Geax, although
I still kept seeing some of the guys afterwards (BJ is my brother-in-law
now). It just got boring and a real hassle to carry two guitars and a heavy
bag through half of the town on public transport. When Uli was in the army,
he met a guy called Juergen Lofsky, who had a connection to get real gear
together and set up in Duesseldorf in a garden shed. A couple of times
we went there and did some heavy playing, not disturbed from anyone in
the nearby area, as it was all large gardens around. The name came from
the drumkit, as it had "Ghurka Boys" painted on the front. The music was
very spacey, impromptu sessions with songs lasting 45 minutes. It was real
fun, just playing around, even some punk themes then. Punk was very big
in D'dorf at that time.
No pics, sorry, I was more into safety
pins then.
Ghurka Boys was:
Uli Sawade: drums & vocals
Juergen Lofsky: bass & vocals
Johannes Delmere: guitar
& sometimes: Frank Siminski: guitar
Intermission
From 1978 to 1984 I did not do a lot with
bands. I preferred sitting in my room with my tape recorders, doing multiple
overdubs and re-recordings of selfwritten or wellknown tunes. Quite some
nice little tunes come from that time. I keep going back to them once in
a while, although quality is lacking a bit of subtlety due to hiss. I still
remember one-off sessions with Thomas Koch on organ and with Joerg Paulus,
Thomas Koch and Uli Sawade on another occasion, though not very much has
been recorded for historic purposes.
Don Evaroll (1984-1986)
My hibernation groupwise ended in 1984, when
Joerg asked me to join his group of heavy metal buffs. Norbert was on drums,
who was also from my form at school and played with Juergen Greagarek in
Klaus Vatter's Band. The other guitarist had to leave due to religious
reasons, although we still had to use his fathers cellar in Essen for practising.
The music was very loud, everyone had their own amp and the drum set was
real big. I even did own a Fender Stratocaster, sunburst finish, by that
time. A real one, not a japanese one! The only shortcoming was, that the
room was small and very wet. You could not leave the equipment there for
longer than some hours, so you had to carry it 25 kilometers to get there.
Thank god we all had driving licenses and cars by that time.
The music was very heavy, relying on material
from Metallica and Scorpions, although I sneaked some self-penned tunes
into the rehearsals. Lovely time, lots of drinking afterwards, but one
day the father did not allow us to go on in the cellar. That was the end
of that. We recorded nearly every rehearsal, so there are endless hours
of material on my shelf. Some of it is even quite good now, although helplessly
too loud on the tape. I still like the Fender Rhodes piano on some of the
tunes, but here also the drummer always drowns it (Drummers always make
themselves to be heard on rehearsals).
Sorry, no pictures, just millions of tapes.
Don Evaroll was:
Joerg Paulus: guitar
Norbert Roether: drums
Schnorr: bass
Clemens Reifenrath: Fender Rhodes
Johannes Delmere: guitar
Geax II (1987 onwards occasionally)
It was time for a reunion. Uli had quit everyone,
but kept coming back to Bernd-Juergen, my brother-in-law for some years
by that time. BJ got the idea of teaming up for some sessions. I was reluctant
at first, as Uli and I were not on speaking terms for quite some time,
but that is another story (for another page maybe). We met in Uli's flat
in Essen then for a session that lasted a few hours. It felt good, everybody
had good equipment and even a 4 track portable recording device, so we
could do real overdubs without interferences, hiss or having to work with
mikes and cables. The tracks sounded that good, that we kept coming together
from time to time with even more equipment and even more instruments to
play with. It went on for about 2 years on a loose basis and came up with
some really well produced stuff. I am still very proud of a few of the
tunes we did in these sessions.
Geax II was:
Uli Sawade: drums, keyboards, guitar, vocals
Bernd-Juergen Grude: bass, treatments,
backing vocals
Johannes Delmere: guitars, effects, treatments,
vocals, backing vocals
Maybe you like the memories that mean nothing
at all to you and your life on bands that never had any impact in the musical
world whatsoever. Maybe you had your own bands as well and you have your
own memories about them. Maybe you go back to the attic and get out the
old tapes you recorded in the garage, the bedsit or wherever. As I said:
It was fun being part of it, it was fun doing it and it meant and still
means a lot to me.
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