Who was/is Klaus Renft Combo ? - CDs, Vinyl LPs, DVD and more
Klaus Renft Combo
Klaus Jentzsch (born 1942 in Jena, died 2006) founded his first own band in 1958 under the name Klaus Renft Combo. Renft' has in Saxon the meaning of 'bread edges' and was the maiden name of Jentzsch's mother. In 1964/65 Jentzsch and the Butlers achieved supra-regional fame. The band was, however, banned in the course of a nationwide antibeat campaign in October 1965. Jentzsch/Renft joined the singing movement, gathered musicians around him again in the Singestudio of the Karl-Marx-University Leipzig and discovered the songwriters Kurt Demmler and Gerulf Pannach as authors of German rock lyrics for a new band.
1971 first radio recordings of the Klaus Renft Combo took place. In 1972 the title Zwischen Liebe und Zorn appeared on the sampler 'helllo Nr. 4', and the band performed in the event 'Rhythmus 72' in Berlin's Friedrichstadtpalast. In 1973 she was awarded a gold medal for her program 'Between Love and Anger' at the entertainment arts show, produced her first LP and entered the official program of the X. World Festival.
In the Renft Combo there were now big arguments about how the band should continue. Renft himself and other group members sought reasonable compromises with the state. However, Gerulf Pannach and others wanted the open confrontation. Pannach reported: "Around 1974 the Renft-Combo was well on their way to becoming a state band ... We were once the underground band in the GDR. We agreed that things would not go on like this ... Time was a single happening. We played what we wanted, whistled at state agreements ... and ran into the open knife of the state apparatus. Smart or stupid - whatever. It was a strong exit. The legend 'Renft' would never have existed otherwise." In October 1975 the band was banned.
While two musicians in the band continued to play the carousel, several others, including Renft himself, went to the West. Pannach and Christian 'Kuno' Kunert were arrested and deported to the West half a year later. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, there were several attempts to build on the 1970s and reactivate the Klaus Renft Combo. That was connected with a lot of arguments, at times there were two Renft bands at the same time. At the end of the 90's they got closer again and a part of the original line-up went on tour with some new musicians. In 2005 the musician Peter "Pjotr" Kschentz died, in 2006 the founder of the band Klaus Jentzsch. The rest of the band went on a commemorative tour. Another musician died in the accident, another was seriously injured.
www.renft.de
Extract from
Various - songwriter in Germany
Vol.3, For whom we sing (3-CD)
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