Who was/is Gerd Schinkel ? - CDs, Vinyl LPs, DVD and more
Gerd Schinkel
"A bourgeois Utopian." (Hanns Dieter Hüsch)
In September 1980, a cluster bomb exploded in the middle of the Wiesn hustle and bustle of Munich's Oktoberfest and killed 13 people, including geology student Gundolf Köhler. Initially, politics and the media were equally based on the guilt of left-wing terrorists, but history did not last long. Later, Köhler, a former member of the extreme right-wing sports group Hoffmann, was portrayed as a confused individual perpetrator with psychological problems. Ongoing investigations against the 'WSG boss' were stopped, witnesses who had observed Köhler a week before with a group of young men at the scene of the crime were ignored. The neo-Nazi Karl-Heinz Hoffmann, self-involved founder of the right heap crawling through the mud on the weekend, drew attention to himself in the 70s with martial performances in fantasy uniforms and soldered machine guns. The text by Gerd Schinkel's friends, be awake was written after repeated reporting on the activities of the WSG Hoffmann about one and a half years before the bombing of the Munich Oktoberfest. For Schinkel the song hasn't lost its topicality: "I remember Solingen, Mölln, and and and and ... That's why I still have it in my repertoire - slightly updated, not least since the right gang also starts stealing left songs."
Freunde, seid wach was recorded in autumn 1979 at Knut Kiesewetter's recording studio Fresenhof. Schinkel: "During the honeymoon with my wife Martina in Nordfriesland we recorded all recordings for my second LP 'Abrechnung' there. Knut let us do it, my wife sat down at the controls ... I got the music for this song after occasional visits to the Jazz-Galerie in Bonn, where I occasionally heard music from jazz and radio groups - a style of music that I hadn't been very fond of until then, but which fascinated me more and more at that time. The setting of the text was done in a way that is actually still quite unusual for my repertoire today".
Born in Schleswig-Holstein in 1950, Gerd Schinkel, who studied law, came to Cologne in 1985, where he has since held various positions as a political editor at WDR. His musical career began - depending on his point of view - in 1957, when he got his first guitar, in 1967, when he practiced his first fingerings on it, or in 1970, when he stood in front of a microphone for the first time. In 1972 he wrote his first own songs. While still a member of the folk group Saitenwind, Gerd Schinkel published his first solo LP 'Kein Grund zur Aufregung' in 1977. Although the Cologne-born composer still performs his own songs and translations of Phil-Ochs and Leon-Rosselson texts in public, he has not made music his main profession. In 1986 Gerd Schinkel wrote in a contribution for 'musikblatt' about the self-conception of singer-songwriters: "The development of some fellow singers was deterrent enough for me that a full-time, exclusive bawling was never a question for me. The 'realistic' main pillar in the 'bread profession' guaranteed me the (whole-)small artistic freedom to breathe even after work."
In 1982 Gerd Schinkel published a songbook entitled 'Überlebenslieder und Texte übers Leben'. In the foreword Hanns Dieter Hüsch praised the songs: "Even often without stopping, he does not stop, that is, he always brings himself to bring something out for us. Daily news and timeless analyses go alternately through his head and what very few do, he also does not let inconsistencies in the GDR go through without further ado. It's a miracle that some pub-leftists don't pat him on the back all the time."
www.gerdschinkel.de
Extract from
Various - songwriter in Germany
Vol.2, For whom we sing (3-CD)
/various-songwriter-in-Germany-vol.2-for-who-who-we-sing-3-cd.html
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