Dave Strickson, British blogger, did the indie world a great service when he set to work sifting through and sorting through the vast field of peel sessions. There were around 4,000 such sessions, some of which have since been officially released on Peel’s own label Strange Fruit. They’re actually all good, for two reasons: firstly, John Peel only invited acts who had what it takes, secondly, the BBC sound engineers took over the job of recording, and quality was guaranteed here. Dave Strickson’s Peel Sessions archive is plentiful, but who has been missing so far: Foyer Des Arts.
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Now the gap is closing, because wallpaper is releasing the session recorded in autumn 1986 for the first time. This is not only a wonderful, but also an unexpected gift: the protagonists believed the recordings no longer existed. Audio restoration specialist Tom Morgenstern found the tapes, polished them up and mastered them. Foyers of the Arts at John Peel? That seems bizarre, but obeys a logic. Germany has a crooked image of the duo Max Goldt (today a writer) and Gerd Pasemann.
A wonderful and unexpected gift
There’s this hit “Wissenswertes über Erlangen”, which appears on some NDW compilations between Hubert Kah and Fräulein Menke and to which the two had to mime in Dieter-Thomas Heck’s hit parade on the orders of the record company. A mistake, as Max Goldt admits in the “Reflector” podcast episode, for which Jan Müller was able to win him over. Not only was the performance embarrassing, it also determined the image of the group as a joke duo, somewhere between the brothers Blattschuss and trio. The fact that there was much more was shown by the CD retrospective of the musician Max Goldt, which was also published on wallpaper, and on which one recognized that melancholy and a sense of melody were at least as important as humor.
But how did Goldt and Pasemann come to John Peel? On the one hand, Max Goldt had a great affinity for London, he could very well have imagined living there, he told Jan Müller in the podcast. On the other hand, John Peel was a big fan of the Foyer-Des-Arts LP INFAILIBILITY TO BREAKFAST, from which he played song by song on his show for months in 1986 – he probably got the record from the FünfUndVierzig label, which also released a compilation of The Fall in 1986 released, Peel’s favorite band. When the DJ called, Goldt and Pasemann were only too happy to follow.
To perform as a band, they recruited the three members of the savvy indie band The Higsons, who played superb dance post-punk and performed in the same weird vein with tracks like “Where Have All The Club-A-Go-Go’s Went Went?” league were on the way. Formative member of the Higsons: saxophonist and keyboardist Terry Edwards, who later played for Gallon Drunk and the Tindersticks and recorded tribute records for The Jesus & Mary Chain and The Fall on trumpet.
Something is always
As is usual with Peel, under the direction of producer Dale Griffin (formerly of Mott The Hoople, who Bowie fan Max Goldt loved for her version of “All The Young Dudes”), it culminated in the recording of four songs, including “A House Out Cary Grant’s Bones” and “Mouldy Bread” from the album INABILITY TO BREAKFAST, as well as the songs “Women and Peace and Freedom” and “Could Bees Fly”, which later ended up as studio recordings on the ’88 LP KUSS IN DER IRRTUMSTAVERNE. All four recordings feature Foyer Des Arts in full band, and that’s great.
Max Goldt never came so close to his idea of leading a band that plays music in the footsteps of the magazines he loved. As a singer he offers a great Howard Devoto and Lloyd Cole crooning, with the hit “A house made of bones by Cary Grant” you think for a moment that you are hearing a sensational dark pop early work by Bela B. apart from Die Ärzte . Interestingly enough, “Könnten Biegen flew” is musically on the threshold between The Cure and The Smiths – it’s crazy that the Germans had to come first for that.
“Schimmliges Brot” is the only song that offers a bit of NDW shrillness, with harmony, structure and performance preventing any use of the charts. Luckily! The cover of the re-release shows Pasemann and Goldt in the DJ’s regular pub. Goldt recalls that Peel was very nice and told many anecdotes. What does Max Goldt regret today? “Not just staying there and continuing to work with this band.” Berlin’s social structures and jobs would have prevented that. Something is always.
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