Five outsiders on the long march

Unfazed by the New Wave, the rebirth of rock’n’roll, and the bombast of German aural excess, a whole heap of musicians here are going their own way. The Real Ax Band, for example.

Nicht Stehen Bleiben /Move Your Ass In Time is the title of the Real Ax Band’s first, self-financed LP on Schneeball, recorded last summer in Switzerland’s Sunrise-Studio. Afterwards things took a while. In-between three musicians had to go to hospital, and somebody stole their uninsured PA from the band’s country seat, Hof Hirschberg. In December 1977 the record finally appeared, selling two thousand copies without any advertising at Schneeball ‘network’ concerts and via friends of friends.

For exactly a year the band has had its present line-up: Toffi Mache, bass; Marlon Klein, drums; Otto Gwiasda, guitar; Dieter Miekautsch, piano; and the dusky-skinned Maria Archer from London (Ghana), vocals. Well before that, its rhythm section of Toffi Mache and Marlon Klein toured German clubs and halls with the most diverse jazz, rock and soul combinations, managing to turn the heads of public and promoter alike at big festivals such as Vlotho’s ‘Umsonst und Draussen’ (Free and Outside) festival in ’76 and ’77. Things really got going when Dieter Miekautsch and Maria Archer, both of whom had earlier been with Embryo, joined the Real Ax Band after a year’s sojourn in Africa. Together the five musicians developed a style of music with tight arrangements over loose-limbed grooves. A music on a scale between airiness and heavy funk emerged; as did a samba/salsa feel that, not coincidentally, owed something to the two newcomers’ time in Africa Somewhat apart from the tides of fashion, the band’s trademark style has become a byword with friends of jazz-rock and concert-goers.

‘You must be mad!’ was the outcry from colleagues in the German rock business and numerous people in the know when they heard what the Real Ax Band had planned. They wanted to live off the music, working their way up without professional management, without some large company backing them financially, without a music publisher, without the promotional razzamatazz that breaks new acts. They got support and encouragement from friends such as Embyro, Missus Beastly, Ton Steine Scherben who in the meanwhile had more or less successfully done ‘their own thing’ and brought them into contact with the alternative label April, later Schmeeball.

The best advert in such a case is their concerts. Each month they play some ten to fifteen gigs. All told the band spends two months each year stuck im the Mercedes bus. Travelling 400 km to do a DM 500 gig sounds unbelievable. And where else do musicians personally slide records into the sleeves? Everything that is normally down to management/crew and support, gets done by the Real Ax Band itself, albeit with a little help from a thousand friends…

Apart from playing bass, Toffi looks after touring with organisers, staying in touch with all manner of people. Marlon handles record distribution for Northern Germany. Maria and Dieter compose as well as making the band bus purr. Guitarist Otto personally visits the pressing plant, listening to one album after the other in order to sift out bad pressings.

All in all a great deal of activity. But the band still isn’t out of the red. There is still 25.000 outstanding to extract from friends and patrons for Move Your Ass In Time and the P.A.For some considerable time, apart from at concerts and in newspaper gig guides hardly anyone will have heard or read of the Real Ax Band – truly a band from nowhere.

In the meanwhile the LP has gone to a second pressing: the nay-sayers have hushed. The LP is shifting without the benefit of costly advertising, selling just through word of mouth and through radio programmers who are delighted for once to have a German production that stands out from the bulk of German music. In-between consignments have gone to Austria, Switerland, France, the USA and Japan. And if appearances are anything to go by, things bode well for a summer of festivals as well as tours to Poland, France and probably East Germany.

One can buy the Real Ax Band’s Nicht Stehenbleiben/Move Your Ass In Time at their concerts, any other April/Schneeball act gigs and in some specialist record shops.

How does that lovely expression go? I’d travel miles…for good music !

Musikexpress 05/1978 by Thomas Mueller