Today we're turning on the time machine and enjoying a short trip to a totalitarian state that held its people captive, screwed everyone over, and made it difficult to live a decent life there, at least if you didn't like the system. I bought this record for a bargain at a flea market, and it's the debut of Berlin's Feeling B. A bit info: The band was founded in early 1983 by Rompe as a solo singer-songwriter project Feeling Berlin, but after the addition of Kriening and Landers it was shortened to Feeling B because a band called Feeling Berlin already existed. They started out firmly grounded in the underground Punk scene. As early as the end of 1983, the band was in possession of a so-called "Einstufung," which, at least in principle, allowed concerts throughout the German Democratic Republic without reprisals. Over time, Feeling B's popularity grew greatly and frontman Aljoscha Rompe (1947–2000), a Swiss living in East Berlin, supplied the vocals to the band's songs. Rompe, Paul (guitars) and keyboardist Christian "Flake" Lorenz were the only consistent members throughout the band's history. At various times, the band included bassist Christoph Zimmermann and drummers Alexander Kriening & Christoph "Doom" Schneider. Landers, Lorenz, and Schneider later found fame with Rammstein. First Arsch drummer and future Rammstein singer Till Lindemann participated once with Feeling B for the song "Lied Von Der Unruhevollen Jugend", an interpretation of a Russian communist song, for which he is credited on the album Hea Hoa Hoa Hea Hea Hoa. Landers contributed guitar to First Arsch's 1992 album Saddle Up. Lindemann and Landers, as members of Rammstein, performed this song live in St. Petersburg & Moscow in 2001, during that band's 'Mutter' tour. On 9 November 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell, Feeling B was performing in West Berlin as part of a gig endorsed by the socialist government in order to promote the eastern side. Flake noticed some friends among the crowd that wouldn't normally be able to be there and was informed of the collapse of the wall. The band was unable to return home that night because all the holes through the wall were so crowded. Feeling B released two albums following the fall of the Wall, Wir Kriegen Euch Alle (1991) + Die Maske Des Roten Todes (1993), both more successful than their predecessor, according to Flake. The group disbanded in the mid-1990s. On special occasions, the band members got together for individual concerts at Punk festivals, until Rompe died in November 2000 of an asthma attack at 53 years old. Zimmermann died in a plane crash in 1999. Eventually, Lorenz re-discovered tapes of old and partial unreleased recordings. This unreleased material and remixes of some already known songs were released as Grün & Blau in 2007. Their mix of Punk, fun, and amateurism appeals to me rather cautiously, I prefer fast, dirty, and direct, but they lived this style extremely convincingly.
