Mark Spitz - Music

German Fusion Band Late 1970s.
A Collection Of Embryo Affiliates Venturing On To Pastures New With A More Accessible Music Than Most Schneeball Jazz-Based Bands Drawing On Latino Afro And Funk Styles. Marlon Klein And Toffi Mache Founded The Real Ax Band In The Unusually Long Unusually Hot Summer Of 1976 When Mercury Was Exploring Rarely Visited Barometric Heights. Between Then And Early 1977 People Came And Went While The Group Played Dozens Of Small Beatschuppen And Clubs In Germany Switzerland And Austria. Early In 1977 The Line-Up That Made This Album Coalesced When Maria Archer Heinz-Otto Gwiasda And Dieter Miekautsch Entered The Frame. Maria Archer And Dieter Miekautsch Were Newly Returned From Africa And Were Looking For A New Band With Whom They Could Perform. Both Had Already Worked With Embryo A Chimera Of A Collective First Founded In 1969 That Defied - And Defies - Any Stab At Tidy-Mindedness Or Attempt At Musical Compartmentalisation. By 2000 Some Fool Calculated That Embryo Had Had More Than 300 Collaborators Pass Through Its Ranks So Historically Speaking Maria Archer And Dieter Miekautsch Figure As Relatively Early Participants In Embryo's Experiment - The Kind Of Experiment That Georg Capellen Predicted As Early As 1906 And Dubbed Weltmusik Or 'world Music' In English. Of Course The Real Ax Band Was A Young Band Very Much Stamped In The Temper Of Its Time. It Mixed And Matched Rock Jazz Soul And Latino Elements In Ways That Showed Off Influences With Candour And Little Attempt At Concealing The Group's Influences. In Maria Archer The Group Had A Vocalist Who Sounded Real When Singing English Not Like KrautRock's Standard Painful Anglo-American Imitation From Over Somebody's Weirdest Rainbow. She Came From Ghana. That Helped. When This Line-Up Of The Real Ax Band Came Together It Was A Time In Germany As Anyone Who Lived Through The Period Will Remember When Many Were Still Living The Dream Of Community Hard. Many Bands Lived In Wohngemeinschaften Or Kommunen - The Choice Of Word Largely Determined By Social Or Political Adherences. Some Bands Living In Communes Emulated The Likes Of The Grateful Dead In Haight-Ashbury Or Traffic In The Berkshire Countryside. Most Were Just Flat-Sharing Under A More Grandiose Guise Sharing A Living Space With Like-Minded People Whether Connected By Music Art Politics Or A Mutual Search For Something Better But Until Then... One Day The Real Ax Band’s Drummer Marlon Klein Later Of Dissidenten Fame Went To Load Up The Band-Bus For The Next Gig. Mercifully Somebody Had Already Stowed The Gear And The Equipment Room Was Empty. One By One Late-Risers Stumbled Into The Wohngemeinschaft's Kitchen. They Sat Chatting Breakfasting Drinking Coffee. Until It Came Out That Nobody Had Loaded The Van. With The Theft Of Their Unpaid Equipment Went Their Idealism And Innocence. The Theft Saddled Them With A Bunch Of Debts That The Small Fees They Could Command Would Take Years To Clear. Sometimes All It Takes To Tip A Band Over The Edge Is One Disaster. It Signalled The End Of The Real Ax Band. The Band Crumbled. Nicht Stehenbleiben/Move Your Ass In Time Is All That Remains Of That Youthful Excitement. But The Real Ax Band Led To Still Better Things... read less