The Crystalairs The Early Years - Doo Wop Rarities

The Crystalairs

What happens in two prospective high-school graduates in 1988 who don't fit into the classrooms covered with Wham! and Kylie Minogue posters? Who feel like they're moving in the fifties and sixties while their classmates bathe in the drum computer waves of the eighties? Who are unconsciously addicted to doo-wop and are annoyed that suddenly the'Dirty Dancing'-cult is spreading and every second suddenly feels Stay and In The Still Of The Night is good? A real romper could not approve of this, for it was transient fashion, not a true vocation.

You can't imagine it when you see recent photos, but Ralf zur Linde and Claus-Peter Niem were such role models. "That's how authentic I've been walking around since I was 12, 13. Claus as well. We were something like the two'Elvisse' at school, and we didn't want to take it off. They literally bathed in this image and also enjoyed this outsider role. "Nobody else was walking around like that." The term'Retro' was not yet an official part of German vocabulary - it applied to Ralf zur Linde and Claus-Peter Niem.

At the age of 13 Ralf is infected by a Beach Boys record given to him by a boy next door, because he doesn't know what to do with it. "I heard the thing up and down. For some reason, I was totally fascinated by the music. I still remember that I could not classify the music because I lacked the basic knowledge, but today it is of course clear to me that it was the complex vocal harmonies. They touched me in the depths of my soul."

So the detour to Doo Wop is via surf music. The record collection is being expanded, as far as Bad Wildungen and the surrounding area are concerned. It's not much, though. The rocket launch takes place at the age of 16: four-week student exchange with the USA, Ralf comes to San Francisco, browses through the record shops there, buys of course even more Beach Boys, but also many records of vocal groups, mostly from a label called Crystal Ball. His love is hot, but only now he knows her name: Doo Wop!

His patron is not the music teacher, but the history teacher. He has a recording studio in one of the many war bunkers still standing around in Bad Wildungen. Here Ralf is already introduced to the high art of arrangement. "My greatest desire was to sing in several voices myself, but I only had Claus by my side and two people still can't achieve full harmony. I had never heard of dubbing before, but it gave me two very satisfying songs with polyphonic vocals". At home, he goes even further: with two cassette recorders, he refines the structure of the harmonies: No. 1 is sung about, the second voice is played on no. 2, and on this result the third voice comes back to no. 1: "I was so happy as if I had invented the wheel". The parents, on the other hand, will have been surprised...

Excerpt from BCD17239 - CRYSTALAIRS Westwärts
Read more at: https://www.bear-family.de/crystalairs-westwaerts.html
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