The discoverer and femorist of the German Music Ground has died
With Alfred Hilsberg, author, label maker, driver, talent fisherman, chaos entrepreneur, one of the most dazzling figures of the independent music scene of the Federal Republic died. From Hamburg he spanned his nets. For almost five decades.
Recommendations of the editorial team
“I remember some surreal and unforgettable meetings, also wonderful spokesmen (with a cream tart and Little Red Riding Hood sparkling wine from the German-track dining car!) And many memorable phone calls …, writes the Munich publisher (ex Heyne Hardcore) and musician Markus Nägele in a personal obituary that will roam their common memory book project. Working together with Hilsberg required nerves made of steel or great prolongity. It was best to have both.
For me, Hilsberg was an adult man from the newspaper at the beginning. That was in March 1978 when he wrote a five -page story with the title “Rodenkirchen is Burning” in the Hamburg music magazine “Sounds”. He was 31 at the time, I was just 15.
“Lucy lifts the retinal shirt to intonate the world hit” Yes Sir, I Can Boogie “on toes and with a pointed mouth. Lucy sings at the punk band TV Eyes from Cologne. With her shrill Persiflage on Baccara, she is earned and an encore… ”: This is how one of the first suburban research begins over the West German punk-underground. The stations were Rhineland, Hamburg, Berlin. Basic research by a cultural activist and ex-Dok film lecturer at the Hamburg art college, which escaped in contaminated LSD trip from the VW-ease Was.
From Hilsberg’s field research, the regular, one -sided column “Latest Germany” with notes from the province became a window in a mysterious music scene in “Sounds”. A deeply socialized (hippie) bustle brother in the 1970s became a punk pope of the old Federal Republic. A title over which he mildly gone. His basic journalistic experience inevitably brought him together with a whole wave of mostly blood young bands and soloists who had no idea how the legendary music biz works.
The adult Hilsberg remedied the situation in which he founded the Zigzack Records label in 1980. First publications: Two 7-inch singles of the band ghost drivers (with the late music author and “Ruff Trade” operator Michael Ruff) and “computer state” of the interim success volume. His indoor festival “Noises for the eighties” brought a chaotic scene onto a stage as a pioneering act. At the same time the first album at zigzag.
The Hilsberg, which is equally enthusiastic and chaotic, has long been laid down in a book and numerous retro texts. The Graz-Düsseldorf musician Xao Seffcheque summarized it in an interview: “The best label in the world with the worst payment standards in the world”.
After the end of “Sounds” in early 1983, the Hamburg label operator Alfred Hilsberg was a regular customer of the Cologne magazine “Spex”, in which I took care of the advertising “business” for a while in the mid-1980s. The conversations with him were not a nasty bookings, but each basic seminar in the indie business. His sonorous tone on the phone initially sounded like large, wide show biz world. The fact that you could not make a solid mark with (today legendary) bands such as Palais Schaumburg, X-Mal Germany, Ede and the room men or the collapsing new buildings.
But Hilsberg survived all crises in his own way and in 1992 started again with the successor label What’s Funny About (WSFA). As a seasoned and stated mid -forties, he opened the gates into the music world to a new generation. He remained connected to the years, even when the Distelmeyer-Crew had sought other partners.
He stayed on the ball until the 2010s, and recently he met him less and less on the relevant industry meetings. Rock’n’roll life demanded its toll. Most recently, he was in health for years. Now the eternal engine of the German music scene stands still. Hilsberg died at the age of 77.