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Translation
The Whispering Kafka of Rock Music
by Ulrich Steinmetzger
"I didn't come the furthest distance," said Rick Chafen. "Somewhere here
there's also a guy from Australia." Rick Chafen happily drank cola and stood
with his wife and kids in Halle's Objekt 5. His long grey ponytail meanders
down his back. He came from Kansas City, Missouri, where he drives a Taxi
and writes screenplays based on Johannes Mario Simmel. He came to Halle to
see Peter Hammill, just like he did several years ago. (And so it will
remain)
Peter Hammill, the British rock poet and charismatic singer, is one of the
biggest eccentrics of popular music. He isn't popular - by principle - but
his
territory is true and after the first chord on the piano, you could see his
inner glow. (That, too will remain) The room was as quiet as a devotional -
whoever had to move did so on tiptoes and still moved their lips to the
text. Hammill is never to be fully understood, too cryptic, too different.
He whispers, "A Stranger, a Worldly man," He screams it, until it almost
hurts. That is both pathetic and urgent. There they are, the oaths of the
Kafka of Rockmusic and the devout, standing, and staring.
What's to be said about this reserved, greying, elegant loner? Nearly 35
years ago, he was finished with the hippie indulgences. Sober and anarchic,
he celebrated a confusing musical art in his band, Van der Graaf Generator.
And, as a few later bands like Genesis and Yes sprang on the "Progrock" band
wagon, he was already somewhere else, spurring Punk Rock. Since then his
mountains of words have been unleashed on other waves and industries.
After his heart attack at the end of last year, he is back on track, now
with 26 solo albums. And, wherever you immerse yourself in his text, you
fall into the deep.
Powerful music, shock full of dark impulses and bursts of ecstasy, presented
while sitting and playing rough chords on the piano or acoustic guitar,
accompanied now for over a decade by the endless colourings on violin by
Stuart Gordon. At the stand, you can buy the first part of an autobiography,
the Lemmings Chronicle.
Rick Chafen's eyes also light up after his third concert of the tour. Like
the others, this was different, And that, too will remain. And, if the new
year brings a new album, he'll be poring over his encyclopedia and
dictionaries to get closer to the meaning of the words he's hearing.
The reporter, an
obvious member of the Rick Chafen Appreciation Society!
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