Who was/is Worried Men Skiffle Group ? - CDs, Vinyl LPs, DVD and more
Worried Men Skiffle Group
"I am suspicious of the state / in word and deed" (from: Anarchist Waltz)
Austria's longest serving band was formed as early as 1960, and as a result it thoroughly stirred up the Austrian music scene with its skifflesound and dialect lyrics. With songs like Glaubst i bin bled, Da Mensch ist a Sau, I bin a Wunda,
I wü oba i drau mi net and I bin a Weh the band celebrated enormous hit parade successes in Austria. Founding member Gerhard Richter: "These songs originated from the dialect poetry wave around Friedrich Achleitner, Konrad Bayer, Gerhard Rühm, Ernst Jandl. These people didn't make poems from the beginning, but wanted to make language experiments, which we set to music with our kind of stanzaic songs - relatively primitive, with three guitar chords we mostly came through. We were also definitely the first to bring the singable Viennese dialect into pop music. But later we never thought about whether we should sing in dialect or High German, we worked together with Andreas Okopenko for years." The LP 'Teppenförderung' with songs like the Anarchist Waltz are the best example of how texts by one of the most important authors of the Austrian post-war period can be musically formulated. Even though some song content might suggest the opposite, the Worried Men Skiffle Group never saw itself as a political band. Richter: "Of course there was this wave of protest songs, and we were all songwriters - we did all the songs. For example, we liked Pete Seeger very much, and others like the Milestones liked that as well - with whom we often played together, by the way - they saw it as a political concern, and we still didn't care much about it. When we played a protest song, the others called it that, never us. We have always been of the opinion that you can't change and influence people with music. Therefore, if you convey a hard political message like the milestones, it was pointless in our opinion. On the other hand when you sing 'Da Mensch is a Sau / wüüst von dera Erdn weg / findenst no am Himmel obn deran Dreck / daran siachst des genau / da Mensch is a Sau' you bring in a crazy criticism, but in such a way that anyone can swallow it, and we said that we are actually much more 'Protestant' than all the singer-songwriters."
www.worried-men.at
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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