Who was/is Schmetterlinge ? - CDs, Vinyl LPs, DVD and more
Schmetterlinge
"We have actually established that we have no role models. As far as the German-language song is concerned, we naturally heard Wolf Biermann and Brecht-Lieder. But Bob Dylan was certainly the common denominator of how butterflies formed." (Willi Resetarits, March 2007)
The political rock group Schmetterlinge by Pippa Armstrong, Willi Resetarits (later Ostbahn-Kurti), Georg 'Schurli' Herrstadt, Erich Meixner, Beatrix Neundlinger and Herbert Tampier are known far beyond the borders of Austria. She was founded in 1969, and her song Tschotscholossa came to place 5 in the Austrian charts in 1971. Even today this piece is popular beyond Austria. Willi Resetarits in March 2007 in an interview: "An African band actually covered the first butterfly hit 'Tschotscholossa'. This is still a standard in South and East Africa. We learned the song again from Pete Seeger." The butterflies stood for political correctness, one sang of the fact that one must stand up and rise in order to want to change something. Resetarits: "Our approach was to directly address what we have to say politically." And, as far as striking formulations like "AKW Zwentendorf - not with us" are concerned, self-criticizing: "Some things are not well aged, so one cannot sing songs today. If it is, it's in lyrical form or with wit and irony. We have written many hundreds of songs and you can hear the year in many of them. For then wonderful, I would never distance myself from it. I was happy to do that and also found it good and important. The funny thing is that Ostbahn Kurti had the greater political effectiveness because he did not express himself politically at first, which gave him great credibility, and on the basis of this credibility he was able to send out clear messages against xenophobia and the like to a larger number of young people. Butterflies, on the other hand, could only convince someone on the sidelines in Austria. We were mainly on the road in Germany, were able to make music there for everyone and were therefore the band of the left scene in Germany". In Tyrol, the butterflies were even banned from performing in 1978 because of their anti-nuclear attitude, and in Vienna Willi Resetarits called for an arena occupation in 1976. The most famous work of the butterflies is the 'Proletenpassion' (1977), recorded in the in-house Schmetter Sound Studio, to "give us and other progressive musicians", as it says in the accompanying text to the triple album, "the possibility to produce records independently of the industry". Later it became the 'Extraplatte'.
Extract from
Various - songwriter in Germany
Vol.3, For whom we sing (3-CD)
/various-songwriter-in-Germany-vol.3-for-who-who-we-sing-3-cd.html
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