Das Extrabreit-Forum

[breitmeister]

Ahoi!

Soeben erreicht mich die schriftliche Version eines Interviews, das Kai Havaii kürzlich in englischer Sprache mit Radio Goethe in Oakland, Kalifornien, geführt hat. Das Ganze wird auch im College Radio gesendet, ob Arnie es hört, kann ich aber nicht versprechen, Ich hoffe aber, daß ich bald den entsprechenden Audio-Link zur Verfügung stellen kann. Wer des Evangelischen mächtig ist, kann es hier schon mal nachlesen.

grüße vom breitmeister


Interview with Extrabreit

- Kai, Extrabreit are from Hagen, a small city in the state of
Northrhine Westphalia. That is nothing special, but you are not the only
band from there that became famous, I‘m thinking about Grobschnitt or Nena.
What was or maybe still is so special about this town?

If creativity is born out of boredom that would be an explanation. You really could get bored as a youth in Hagen, and maybe you got into music to escape from the place. But actually that didn’t make Hagen different from a lot of other places. There was a music scene, there was some talent, but it got it’s special push from a few persons who were very smart and ambitious, such as Hartwig Masuch, a singer in a Hagen rockband, who was also a producer and publisher, and always looking for talents in our region. He was our first producer, too, and is now one of the biggest music publishers in Germany. And, of course, there was my friend and our first manager Jörg Hoppe, who is now a well-known TV producer. These guys connected Hagen to the world, I mean record companys, media and so on.
By the way, if we talk about Hagen as a place for music, we shouldn’t forget Annette und Inga Humpe who went to school in Hagen and grew up in the area before they started their pop careers in Berlin – Annette with Ideal. Right now they are very successfull with their current projects. So, Grobschnitt, Nena, Extrabreit, Ideal – it seemed more than just a coincidence and BRAVO, which was the biggest teenie magazine in Europe, put on some real Hagen hype – they called it „the German Liverpool“.


- Extrabreit became popular when the so called Neue Deutsche Welle, a wave of German-language bands, spilled over the country. But Extrabreit came out of the punk music and never really fit in with this plastic-pop genre of NDW. Did you feel comfortable next to Markus or Frl. Menke?

Yes, we were a punkish garage rock band and when we started, nobody talked about a German wave. But at the time when we had our first hit single, „Polizisten“, there were a couple of other young, German language bands entering the charts – like Grauzone, Ideal and DAF, then came Joachim Witt and Trio. In their very own way all these bands were infuenced by punk and new wave in their clearness and their minimalism. It was a strange phenomenon and the public called it Neue Deutsche Welle. I think, in the beginning the whole thing was very colourful and interesting, innovative too, but soon it became more of an industrial hype. The record industry marketed he hell out of the Neue Deutsche Welle and there was more and more of what you call plastic pop. It ended in a huge hangover. Nobody could stand to even hear the word Neue Deutsche Welle.

- Your first album was called „Ihre größten Erfolge“ (Their biggest
successes) and in some ways it really became your classic album. Can you describe a bit the situation and time putting this record together and did you imagine that it would become so big?

The truth ist that he band split up after the recording session. I wasn’t sure at all about my qualities as a rock singer, and there were other difficulties. Fortunately, Stefan Kleinkrieg kept up he flag, and after a while I went back with he band. But we had still no idea that it would be a real big album. Obviously the studio didn’t suspect that either because, they erased the multitrack after the mastertape was copied – to save tape material.
The session itself was quite easy. We just recorded our live set and added a few oberdubs and choirs. The engineer gave it a rather smooth sound, not as aggressive as it could have been, and that made a lot of it’s pop appeal.

- The NDW was gone as fast as it hit Germany. If I recall it right,
your third album came almost with the end of the hype of German-language bands. As one of the major players in the NDW how to judge this whole time from today?

I think, the whole thing had a political, not to say global background. The cold war seemed to be short off turning into a real one and Germany was the potential battlefield – the loser in either way. Reagan seemed to be a hardliner, and there was a widely spreaded mood of Anti-Americanism – not only among liberals or socialists. There was a feeling of political powerlessness and the reaction was a sort of a new cultural patriotism. German movies, German music – that was in.
The huge movement in Germany against new US missiles and the Neue Deutsche Welle were two sides of one medal. Both came and faded in exact synchronicity. And sometimes there was an explicit relationship like in Nenas „99 red balloons“, in which she sings about paranoid war ministers and nuclear blasts. The funny thing about that is, that I only met few people in my life who were less interested in politics than Nena.

After all I think that the so called Neue Deutsche Welle was the first surfacing of a modern German pop music in all it’s varieties. There was no hip hop, of course, but there was punk stuff, electronic stuff, pop stuff, you could be ironic, angry or apolcalyptic – or just superficial. For a while it was quite a creative time.


- I remember your concert in Nuremberg, after the release of the
English-language album „Sex after 3 years in a submarine“. A much smaller venue and most fans were demanding your German songs. Why did you start to sing in English and why did you switch back to German on the following record?

It was an experiment, the years when we tried to invent ourselves again in a completely deffierent way. I think, if you look at the stuff for itself, maybe there are a few songs that are not so bad _ for example „In Arabia“ – but we realized that this was too far away from what Extrabreit should be and what our fans loved about it. They had a very dedicated way to express that: They didn’t buy the record.

- You had some very interesting singers on your releases, like
Marianne Rosenberg or Hildegard Knef or Harald Juhnke, all of them came from a totally different background. What were the inspirations for these songs and cooperations?

The duet with Marianne Rosenberg resulted from a joke that turned into a real pop single. I always found her voice very special and I thought that we both would make a nice contrast.
Hilde Knef was very impressing, a cool and very styleful lady impersonating a certain classic glamour that has faded long ago. She was very smart and very tough as well. I had listened to her chansons the first time when I was fifteen and was still under that spell. My Partner, Stefan Kleinkrieg, had the idea of recording her „Rote Rosen“-Song in a rock version, at first it was not planned as a duet. But after we sent it to her and asked for her permission she was very enthusiastic and wanted to take part. Of course we liked that idea.
Harald Juhnke was very okay, too. For some reason he managed to sound like some kind of forties punk – complete new species.

- At the end of the 90s you split, but reformed just after four years.
What was the reason for that?

It was getting boring without being on stage from time to time. When we split eveybody had been sort of burnt out, overdosed and a little bit frustrated too. But after a couple of years we felt that we were much too young to retire from stage and that the band should play again. It felt good, and we decided to record a new album, too.

- You recently released another great German language rock album
"Frieden". But somehow you are more seen in the public view as one of thelast survivors of the NDW. Where do you see Extrabreit today, can you live in the shadow of your "greatest hits" or are you tired of being compared to it all the time?

Well, the NDW times and the early eighties is when we became popular and the name of the band will always be connected to that, although we had pretty good times in the Nineties as well. Today we’re very much in demand as a live band but we don’t sell that many records. Besides the fact that the whole business changed a lot and that it’s much harder to sell records in these days this is indeed due to the fact that we didn’t have a big hit single for a while. The public will always compare you to your biggest successes. But we don’t get sleepless over that, we’ve already fought so many battles, and we enjoy playing live probably more than we ever did before.


- What I really would like to know is, what were and what are your
influences for your music?

Musically, in the early days it was the Sex Pistols, The Ramones, Dead Kennedys mixed with some elements of so called classic rock, later there was a dash of the Cure and of Killing Joke as well. But as beginners we recycled things we liked in our very own way and in the end it always turned out to something very Extrabreit. And of course the German lyrics gave it a different feeling. In lyrics there were very different influences, among them Udo Lindenberg, old German filmsongs and chansons, also a sixties songwriter called Franz Josef Degenhardt.

- Your songs have been covered by other bands, like Stendal Blast or
Oomph!. In my view this does not just symbolize that your songs are great but also that you had a huge impact on the German music scene. How do you value those cover songs?

It depends, but, as you say, it shows that there is something about the songs that still inspires a younger generation of musicians, and what is even more interesting, from very different genres. Ooomph! is very industrial and gothic, but three years ago there was a British teenie punkrockband named Busted who hit the Top Ten with their version of „Hurra, hurra, die Schule brennt“.


- What comes next for Extrabreit?

We‘re gonna play about ten club concerts around christmas and we’re really looking forward to that. Right now I‘m finishing a book, sort of a novel-like autobiography which is released next spring. The band just signed a new record and management deal, so we’re gonna be in the studio in a few months and, hopefully, make a good record.

- Bitte noch ein Station ID: ³Š.you¹re listening to Radio Goethe²

This is Kai Havaii from Extrabreit and you’re listening to Radio Goethe!

[Thorsten]

Very nice indeed - thanks for sharing it.
_________________
"Ich hab ein Zimmer - klein aber nett - mit einem alten Eichenbett."
Ich kaufe niemals mehr bei Jorissen!

[Ex-Hometowner]

Ahoi miteinander,

Radio Goethe hat eine Special Feature anläßlich des Interviews auf Sendung. Die komplette Sendung (über 2 Stunden) inklusive des oben aufgeführten Interviews kann man ab sofort auf www.radiogoethe.org online hören oder runterladen (über 80MB). (auf der rechten Seite unter News "Extrabreit Spotlight")

Also - heute Abend mal TV abschalten und das Feature anhören viel Spaß damit.

Breiten Gruß

Peter der "Ex-..."
_________________
..mein Kopf fliegt voran und mein Herz tut was es kann


www.fuchs-soest.de/breitlinge

[Thorsten]

Hi - habe ich mir gestern mal angehört. Kompliment Kai - your English is perfect.
War auch eine sehr interessante Musikauswahl, die die Band in einem guten Spektrum zeigte!

Jetzt werden vermutlich die US-Arenen auf The Brides warten...
_________________
"Ich hab ein Zimmer - klein aber nett - mit einem alten Eichenbett."
Ich kaufe niemals mehr bei Jorissen!

[radiogoethe]

na, das freut mich ja, dass die sendung ankam. kusf 90.3 fm in san francisco, der sender auf dem das spotlight lief, ist uebrigens ein kult sender. hat solche lokalen bands wie metallica hochgebracht.
werde auch noch ein halbstuendiges spezial fuer alle anderen sender 36 sender produzieren, auf denen radio goethe ausgestrahlt wird.
hat mich wirklich gefreut, dass es mit der sendung klappte.

gruesse aus oakland,
arndt