ZERO MENTALITY "Nicht mehr" T-Shirt

Further info: https://www.facebook.com/zeromentalityrulesok

This is another Shirt-Design I did.

It should be common knowledge, that I spent quite a long time with the guys in ZERO MENTALITY selling their merch. It was kinda natural to come up with one idea or the other, although the creative forces in the band were always very strong - and, thank God, remain...

In the artist department, very much everything is taken care of by singer, Mr. Benjamin Fink. If you are familiar with his art and want to check out what he is up to, go check his tattoing blog:
http://finktattoo.wordpress.com/

ZERO MENTALITY have had a vast mixture of designs, and I share no secret that I am not a big fan of all of 'em.
But with my experiences from the counter/table, I could usually predict which one would be a seller - even if I did think it was a ridiculous joke. But nothing of that came into this work - it was just an idea of a moment and a little bit of fooling around with Bitmap-handling of Adobe Photoshop™.

The design shown above got abit altered by Fink. It became the accompanying Merchandise to one of the bands' biggest hits - and to this day I guess that'll be a floor-filler. "Nicht mehr" sprung from the bands early phase, which landed them alot of their fan-basis - and I am pretty sure that song has alot to do with that. I was quite honored to be lumped into that...


AND BY THE WAY: I have a spare one up on eBay, also another goodie of ZERO MENTALITY

BLACK FRIDAY'29 - »all you can P-eat! «

Kids, there used to be this thing called MySpace - it's shit, therefore we got this Blog-entry up again here.
Peeps, there used to be this band called BLACK FRIDAY' 29 - they were great!
Comrades, there is the Pete - he's awesome!
Friends, Romans, Countrymen - this one is originally from 2006.
To put in the words of the late J.N. Klopp: ENJOY!!!

"First and for all, if you came here to expect a full-on praise on the aforementioned band - you came to the wrong place. This is just about me and how I liked being there to burry a time.What the fuck, sounds like the cheesy editorial to a 1990s HC-fanzine ...hum, maybe that's why this is it: MY SHIT

I did dress up for that show in a way that would honour this special event, and even more would honour a friend and what he had achieved: Black suit, black shirt, black underwear. Okay, in this case, I might have rather worn that on a pizza-night-out. And to be honest, into being there, it appeared that Mr.Vegas and I where the only fools who believed in this dress-code.

But, hey, we honestly do belive it in many ways - and if you ever would wanna rent us: (555) S-U-I-T-S-Y-O-U!

The most interesting thing about the whole night is that there most notably was a kinda impression left on some female encounters. That was known to a Dressman - but sometimes you tend to forget those kinda things are also very common among those specific girls you catch in the all-T-shirts/jeans/sport-suits gathering of males. I used to know that, but hey, since I don't wanna be part of what I once used to sing for (and never intended with that to be at) I never tested that again. But okay, I got offers... and might not be ashamed to take advantage of that, haha. 

The downside of all was the unbelievable HELL that once used to be fresh & cool air - before people entered the club. This made me wanna hang out with the funny guys in the back, right next to the entrance. I even discovered, that opening and closing doors kinda is a fun thing to do. Why not make it a living? I guess, I am just not concentrated enough - I always looked out for this one girl (or the other). At some point, and some beer into the show, the music started out with PortuGeese RicarGO! (see past Blogs) and his mates in an somehow New York Hardway. Didn't they even do a CRO-MAGS dittie? At least they did awfully lot more to me then on CD, and provided a good start into the night. Next up was JUSTICE, and there was not justice, just us… You get the picture, I guess. Me myself and I already were caught up in a on-and-going conversation with a special one, that has offered me a ride (okay, i asked for) - and i kinda missed some things around me. 

But right with THE MAIN EVENT, i was back on track and found black dress-companion Jens again, and we made a matching pair-of sweats alongside the stage. It took many by surprise, that actually not BLACK FRIDAY started out the shit, but it was hell-in-a-cellar with self-proclaimed »best band of the world« (and this time not the one with Bela, Rod & Farin): the almighty DEATH OR GLORY. For sure, no one could drag Witti off his American Seats & Sofas, but with Fink Z.M. taking over the vocals, the whole thing wasn't for sure not a single ounce less exceptionally great! Pizzas got thrown all over the place - what would be more appropiate for a night with Pete than that?! After that, the BF delivered an amazing set with alot of energy, easily one of their best in that category - even though Mics were broken, sweat was running in floods and no obvious blood was given. It all made you miss Pete on stage for the big time even more. We just can hope, he will take over once in awhile and just do the other thing he can do best: impress people! BLACK FRIDAY'29 will never be the same without him - not getting worse, but just different. Or, as Jogges wrote on the prepared sign-on poster: »I love you!« (and wouldn't it be Jogges, the one guy that seems to know every single female in the room, I might have been suspicious here - although I myself rated Pete's tits superior to that of a cute girl (honestly just to provoke her, haha))

The rest of the fest, I was not that much into the music anymore. Although I had alot of sympathy for REJUVENATE before, but seeing Kid Lynch playing for them, I knew to expect something more comical than breath-taking. Okay, much respect to their past efforts, and especially Tommy Rats list of bands to sing for, but I was much surprised how much nervous a guy with that status can be on stage. So, it became obvious that the cover of the TRIP 6-tune from »The Way it is« was the highlight of their set. With MENTAL, I just started out to really take them serious by their latest record, but I kinda was not ready to take this small step for mankind, on Planet Mental - I had too much talks with Olli about the city we both hate to love - somehow. Eight or Nine beers into the night (hey, I am jobless again) it was time to wrap it all up and go with the aforementioned nice young lady.

Tamil food -
Dortmund style

The most interesting thing about the whole night is that she had the honour of driving the well-dressed guys of the evening back to Dortmund - and surprisingly fitting, we rolled out with a Limo. Due to her work schedule, we could not offer her as much free drinks at the place she left us on the streets of the city that ever sleeps as we would have liked to. But well, I am thankful for her passion nevertheless… haha - don't get the wrong picture, beloved reader!
Jens VEGAS and I had a sip or two with that actor-guy Jens settled with (you know, actor, like in bartender!), and made appointment for the best Tamil lunch in town. We had soooo much food there the next noon. Sooooo much, Pete would have been proud! As we have been of him, the other night…

PS: Names of protagonists left out here for one reason: to protect the innocent!!!"

An Evening with JAYLAN - »who's the devil inside?«

I will be finishing my MySpace-import in the very next time, since it's practically useless anyway to have that blog-entries buried there...

Here is one from 2006, about a band that's an Underground darling but unfortunately never got the success they should have. I still love the guys...and the music:

"First and for all, if you came here to expect a full on throttle show-review of an evening with lotsa going on and stuff - you came to the wrong place. This is just about me and how I felt about seeing those guys on stage in a particular place. What the fuck, sounds like a 1990s cheesy fanzine-editorial ...hum, maybe that's why this is it: MY SHIT

I did not intended to go to this show, because with like 80% of shows nowadays I simply did not know that is was happening this night. Or happening at all. With this particular show: was there something happening at all? What Eva (is concerned), I sat in this Tamil run internet-café just around the corner and was ready to cause some happy faces as my partner-in-crime and evil-twin Cobralalala ask me if I gonna come to this show in a place I saw so many good shows when I was a young kid ready to experience Hardcore. Damn, you know, that is right one week after the last world war or some wednesday after the middle-ages. But more specific on that later. It turned out I did turn out to be there right in time before the first band played. I grabbed the money from my latest pusher deals and paid my fee to keep things rolling.

The »Zwischenfall« in beloved Bochum has a bigger stage and a mid-sized concert hall upstairs which could usually fit... well, more than at least 10x more people that actually showed up. This show, it even became apparent that the Ruhrpott has lost some of its dignity and everything that keeps a scene moving apart from caring about your own bunch-a-holics. I.E. the dirty dozens left right after the first band got of the stage and on were JAYLAN, ghetto-metal from Berlin. Okay, maybe they lost some attraction somehow along the way, but the question is whatfor? It's just that I type this now that I try to make up my mind about it - at the show I was more than happy that David Speed (J.-drummer) recognized me after some seconds of bulldozer-facing. Is it my nose, my eyebrow... you'll never know, since we did not met in the shower. Anyway, also had some delightful career-talks with buddy Jens Vegas over our soon to become HC-frats-do-Rockabilly-Allstar-Band...and on goes the night.

This is stolen from MySpace
and shows Mike WAR sporting
an infamous brand.
I recommend, follow the link:
CORE TEX

 Surprise, Sürprise, Sürprize - it got me going off with »Mike War, please come on stage« - HOLY FUCKING SHIT. Mike "mentally insane but nice" War and David Speed playing at the »Zwischenfall« and me being among the dedicated crowd of four handful - has there been 15, fifteen, F-I-F-T-E-E-N, XV, years between that? Nod your had, tap your toe, sport your Revelation-Shirt - anything changed was: no fingerpointing, better music(ians) and the vocals now being split between members and lyrics acutally DO make sense in hopefully 15 more years from now. And yes, of coooooooooooourse, ever been to a Hardcore/Metal-show that had 3/5 of the audience being female and still there is enough being macho about it? There you go, all of this being about private parts - you know, that's my territory. And Mike actually refused to get his shaken. but what can you expect yourself from a guy who describes himself as a guy who just retired from retirement and stopped doing oil-paintings and cycling for being part of this... And, gosh, Speed ist still - SPEED
 
  The most interesting thing about the whole night is, that the new versions of the songs I liked so much and now became to dislike worked out real fine at this setting. Maybe they can continue with two vocalist, find another decent guitar player that gives ...(let's call him) Rocka more room to breath his way of soulfool tunes into the 50s Mic - and there you go: JAYLAN - Ghetto Metal, better than it ever was. Or, as David puts it: »I don't need to play anymore A.F. and other HC-shit-shows...been there before«. It's rough - but it's fair."

DRIFT and me doing ALONE IN A CROWD

In order to honor the latest installment over at DOUBLE CROSS, I decided to bring back the glory of this visual reminder of good times past.
The video used to be seen on my MySpace-account, or maybe still is - but who cares these days. So I uploaded it to YouTube.

DRIFT, which remain one of the best HC-bands to ever come out of Europe, were allegedly playing their very last show. This cover version of ALONE IN A CROWD's crucial "Is anybody there?" had its' premiere fois at the infamous DEATH OR GLORY/BLACK FRIDAY '29-Demo release show. And was also fine then.
At the Julius-Leber-Haus in Essen, it even was abit more special - I think you can guess by the crowd reactions. At one time in the second verse, I simply didn't care to sing the rest of the song - because I was already so hyped up and made my point here. It was simply amazing and watching it again makes me warm-heartly think of those great shows at this place at this time.
I already was into Hardcore for about 15years, and still felt energy, the movement, the passion, the joy & the sweat of it all...

And, even if I am not what might be called "around" that much, I still feel it...
No better way to show you one part of the ' why '



The full set can be found here:
Drift - Final Show, 27.09.2002, Julius Leber Haus

And here is IT:
Alone In A Crowd - Is Anybody There?

LINSAY T-Shirt

For those of you who don't know, LINSAY was a great HC band out of Hamburg, Germany. They existed during the prime of the so-called Northcore scene, and not only shared members with LEBENSREFORM, LOXIRAN and KINDLE, but also the same practice space.

This is a sticker of the other
best LINSAY-layout I did.
That'll be up here soon...

LINSAY's voice, Niels Abele, was the original bassist of LEBENSREFORM. Jan Elbeshausen sort of that bands always apparent stand-in, and later active in MARR or THE DANCE INC. Olli Koch is known for being in LOXIRAN, ENFOLD and TOMTE. Jochen Schütt was in MARKER-X-SYNDROME and KINDLE. As was Lars Lewerenz, also known as "das AUDIOLITH".

I lived, loved, and laughed with most of these guys for one of the finest times in my life. I also did quite some layout stuff for them, from demo to 7" to splits with ENFOLD and COLE QUINTETT.

Usually, it was a "how to get these ideas to reality"-job. That means: LINSAYs members came up with quite a good amount of ideas, and had a vision about their stuff and how it should be digested.
Especially the last thing worked kinda perfect, as far as I am concerned.

One of the best things from this creative arrangement is the T-Shirt, which I think was their only one. Even if that was not much of a work of mine, I really like the way it came about (creative, spontaneous and quick).

I still wear this shirt with pride, it just could be at least of one size smaller these days.

We are not living the 90s anymore (fun intended)...

SIRENS - some layout jobs...

There was a time, where the most social thing about the web have been messageboards and their communities. It's like web 1.5, compared to these days - but it was a somehow memorable time.

A collection of the layout accompanying
the first SIRENS record, "calling".

There is a PDF a click away, but that's
just Thumbnails. Though if you don't
own the stuff (yet), you might
get an idea.

Germany had its' share with the still running "poisonfree.com"-board. You guessed it, that's somehow based in the Straight Edge*, and one of the most prominent person affiliated was and is the SxE Cobra, Daniel Gerigk. 

We developed a friendship ever since, and worked together on quite a few things (a funny ebay-store included). 

When he came up with his new band SIRENS, it was a kinda natural way for me to try and help out with some designs. That ranged from the layout for the first record, to Buttons and Shirt designs. That thing was happening in my Merchandising-prime, so I also did that on a few of the first shows. 

Most of this was just a fun thing to do. And I loved it - because actually "working" with Daniel is something that would not really be about the main topic. 

The rest of the SIRENS-camp, I knew or got to know as all around nice guys - with a mind, and a life. We shared a love for 1990s Hardcore. And if you still do, and you liked SIRENS,
I recommend you hop on over to STATIC VOID...

This is Micha Steele sporting  a Tour-shirt of his band. A thumb of the Design to the right ->

* The Straight Edge was not at all the main topic - oh boyee, it wasn't. And the board was a good vehicle to get to know people from all over the place that you might just have passed the other day. It even was a kinda "fuzz" thing and could be held responsible for the start of a career like  BLACK FRIDAY '29s. 

QUEERFISH - Capri Bar 7" & Bonus-Song

In the 1990s, it was a pretty common habit to listen to some of those great emotional records and rockin' stuff that was also part of a community that grew to be not it anymore. Does it make sense? If not, screw you...

That kinda attitude depicted, could be also indicative of my friends in Bremen-based Rock/Hardcore-outfit QUEERFISH. They made a pretty big success in their heydays to a community that also would pretty much ditch them for being one of the first 1990s act who strived to become professional - guess what, somehow peeps were right, and it did not work out. But before that, the infamous QF were a guaranteed funhouse - on stage, and at the party that seemed to be the rest of their life. At least, that's how I like to remember them - staying at their houses, traveling with them, hanging out at bars with, getting wasted, talking, partying - having fun.

Most of them are still into music these days - there is HOME OF THE LAME, there is DER HUND MARIE, and some other stuff. Drummer Philipp Styra is also notoriously known for working at the booking agency "Creative Talent". And he also made a deal with me in 1997. We worked together on their "Capri Bar"-7". The final release.
Read how that came about: "We recorded these two songs with Dirk Kusche to have something new out before we went on tour with TEXAS IS THE REASON. We have played these songs for a long time and they were supposed to be on our 2nd album - which then was recorded but never came out because we split up... Since our label Semaphore wasn't really interested to release a 7" we have asked our friend Gonzo to release the record on his label Horizons... Gonzo has been an old friend of ours and we were happy that the songs were released... At that time no one knew that this was our final release....
We called the 7" Capri Bar, which was kinda our living room and THE hang out. Hanno (RIP) the owner was a great friend of ours..."


Here is the offer:
QUEERFISH - Capri Bar 7" w/Artwork (ZIP)

01 Better Off.mp3
02 What's wrong.mp3


Now, be prepared  for a special gift - 
an unreleased song:
This is what has to be told from the Styra-Hauptquartier:
"Neues 9 is the last song we ever wrote and is from the recording session with Swen Meyer. We actually recorded a whole new album..."
Neues 9.mp3

I hope, you have/had as much fun with QUEERFISH as I did...

One blood

         Yes... it's blood.


   Not mine but blood it is.