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Hab noch was zu den TVP´s gefunden.
Hans Martin Gross´ ( Pastell Rec. ) Erinnerung/Geschichte zu „Chocolate Art“.
In 1984 I founded a small record company called Pastell. In spring 1984 Pastell organised a tour with the TVP’s five piece (incl. Joe Foster and Dave Musker) and shortly after that Joe phoned us up telling us that Dan owes him lots of money and that he – Joe – has brilliant live tapes of two gigs of that tour (Husby and Berlin) and that we could release a live album if we pay him an advance. So we paid, designed a cover and had even a name for the album: „Adventures in ‚Das Auto des Schreckens'“, cause we travelled the tour with a nearly ruined van Dan called „Auto des Schreckens“ (car of fear).
And then came the tape! The sound quality was awful, on quieter parts you could even hear what was on the tape before, but we wanted to release our first long player of our favourite band. So I went to one of the best cutting rooms in Bremen, the engineer listened to it for 20 seconds and – telling me „I don’t do bootlegs“ – threw me out. Than I went 500 kilometres to the next cutting room in Frankfurt – the famous Mrs. Brueggemann, who did classic stuff for decades – and she listened to it and told me „I don’t do bootlegs“. When I told her that we had the rights to release that stuff and even paid for it she looked at me in a VERY strange way – and gave some good advice: „The sound is crap, the music is crap, the band is crap – so it must be a so-called cult band. Go out and try to get any other noise from these – eeh – musicians, cause anything will be better than this!“
For the Forum Enger gig a couple of months later I borrowed a Revox 2-track from a friend, bought a tape for 25 bucks, connected the mixing desk and the Revox, pushed the start button at the beginning and the stop button at the end of the show and that’s it.
The gig itself was not so peaceful: Jowe couldn’t hear himself on stage and asked for „more bass“ a couple of times during the show. Later he started to yell about the mixing engineer in a very obscene way till the engineer went on stage and switched Jowe’s amp on – the bass player just played the whole gig with his amp on stand-by. That’s the reason why the TVP’s didn’t play the Forum Enger for the next few years – cause Jowe was sooo ashamed.
Some facts for you collectors out there: The first edition of ‚Chocolat Art‘ has red labels (Jowe’s fishplate on side a and listings on side b) and an inner sleeve, all other editions have white labels and no inner sleeve. Cover and fishplate is by Jowe. James Last (remember the sub title „A Special Tribute to James Last“) is a famous German Easy Listening composer. And the CD release has the complete show including the 20 minute medley and the fight between Jowe and the sound man. And it’s still a GREAT album.
Hans-Martin Gross, February 2003
http://www.televisionpersonalities.co.uk/memory.htm
Hans-Martin currently runs Jellyfant Records: www.jellyfant.com
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