Saturday, June 01, 2019

DIE LASSIE SINGERS - Helfen Dir 1991

June, summer, sun, beautiful music and since I had the pleasure to spend eight hours in the office today, I need cheerful music now and that's what the Lassie Singers do. Founded 1988 in Berlin-Kreuzberg and parted again ten years later. With their mixture of creative brilliance and technical dilettance, the band musically fit into the tension between late NDW aftermath and the burgeoning indie self-confidence of the early Hamburger Schule. On the one hand, the lyrics celebrated an offensive naivety and playfulness, but often played with a mischievous and charming hostility towards men. Thanks to legendary song titles such as freedom from a man's mouth (Puke), The couple's lie or How a narrow-minded taxi driver has just destroyed a burgeoning young love (Cologne), the Lassie Singers were at times as "female response to die Ärzte". Core of the group were Christiane Rösinger (aka Christiane Hügelsheim) and Almut Klotz (aka Almut Schummel), the rest of the cast varied. The founding member Funny Van Dannen left the Lassie Singers before the first album, but continued to contribute songs for the band. With Kathrin von Witzleben, Herman Herman and Heiner Weiß the band was completed and the first concerts were played at the legendary Kreuzberg SO36. Pretty soon amn got to the major sony, so that in 1991 the debut album "The Lassie Singers Help You" varied. Commercially, it was not very successful, as well as the Moodier successors "Sei A Go Go" 1992. Three years later, Klotz and Rösinger returned with a completely new line-up, including former Ideal guitarist Eff Jott Krüger. With "City Land Crime" and the accompanying single "Schade" the band reached the pinnacle of their success and also convinced the critics. Although the Lassie Singers sounded as pop and professional as never before, but by no means renounce the snappy-grotesque lyrics. However, the cooperation with Krüger was not consistently harmonious, so that the work was completed quickly. Instead, they tried one last time as a "real band". In 1995, the band recorded the album "Hotel, Hotel" with Britta Neander from Ton Steine ​​Scherben on drums and bassist Dodo Herting. Klotz and Rösinger recorded their first guitar themselves and was produced by Thomas Meinecke in Hamburg.

After four albums, hundreds of concerts and a lot of spilled pop star blood, 1998 the Lassies are over. "Tours make you old, fat, ugly and sad", they say at some point and enter the last round with the "Time-To-Say-Tschüss" tour. Not without promising to make young musicians into pop stars with their label Flittchen Records - they can never become as big as the original Lassie Singers. In the same year, the two compilations "Best of ..." & "Rest of the Lassie Singers" appeared on the specially for Klotz and Rösinger founded Flutchen Records. Christiane & Britta founded the band Britta with Julie Miess, while Almut Klotz found short-lived projects like Parole Trixi or Maxi played under people and was active in the Popchor Berlin founded by her together with Reverend Chr. Dabeler under the name Klotz + Dabeler. Almut Klotz died in August 2013 of cancer, Britta Neander died at the age of 48 years after a heart surgery in Berlin.


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