News 3/94

About someone who took off ... Hubert von Goisern is number one again in the Austrian charts with Omunduntn.
Together with the Alpinkatzen he yodelled last week in America - from Texas to New York. NEWS Lokal observes an alpine expedition.

The young American flew for four hours to Texas to see his idol. Jonathan Hayney, 25, lives in Orlando/Florida and is America's biggest Alpinkatzen fan. This is a piece of cake: he is the only one among his compatriots who can sing Hiatamadl by heart. In German. Two years ago, a friend from Europe gave him Goisern's Aufgeigen statt niederschiassen CD. Since then he has been learning German ("a new word every day"), wants to go to "wonderful Austria" soon and is desperately searching for Omunduntn.

He has not found it yet, and that may among other things have something to do with the fact that he can only pronounce the title with difficulty. Now he stands, speechless with happiness, eye to eye with his idol. Because Hubert von Goisern is pushing - no longer a hazardous business since the Trapp family - in the direction of the USA with alpine folk. NEWS accompanied him on his tour.

A phenomenon spread across the border: Hubert von Goisern & die Original Alpinkatzen, over 500,000 sold records strong. The two year old CD Aufgeigen statt niederschiassen, stands just before a sensational four times platinum (200,000 sold records).

The new work Omunduntn balanced within fourteen days with platinum. In July at the latest, 100,000 should be sold. Goisern got rid of a bit of rock elemental force for this CD in order to musically proceed in more sensitive, almost avant garde ways. The ingredients for the musical mixture are chosen more craftily, more carefully.

One flew over the ocean. This success agrees with the notorious open-minded thinker and his style: an attractive fusion of traditional folk music and rock, supplemented with style elements from reggae to rap. The clever media work between provocation and denial achieved its ends. Nobody can claim today that Hiatamadl is a quick chance success. In order to test the durability of the phenomenon, he now proceeded over the ocean.

"Six years ago with our first record, I wanted to go to Japan. The ridiculous seriousness with which the Japanese take our culture made me think of this. But there was no chance without national success. Going beyond the German-speaking borders has always fascinated me!"

This time, strengthened with plenty of precious metal, it worked. After a live appearance on the Parisian Radio France Inter, the Alpinkatzen are sitting on a jet to Texas. In Austin they play as one of 450 bands at America's greatest music festival and fair, the South by Southwest festival, in front of 300 people in a (sold out) club. Impressed Yanks, calls for encores, comments like "terrific, funny, great show, unique".

"I don't say that the majority of Americans will be interested in us. But I think that we have something to say and explain there. Why otherwise would umpteen thousand of them come to Europe? Because they would not be interested in what happens with us? It is exciting to try it."

Crazy Austrians. The Goisern manager, Hage Hein, from Munich, uses the packed gathering of people of action from the music business to look for meaningful contacts for records and concerts. But the critical stop is next: New York. Goisern's record company BMG Ariola, who have not (yet) released the Austrian's CD in the USA, were visibly confused by the stubbornness with which the crazy Austrians were interested.

Hage Hein: "First of all, they just thought we should simply go if we thought they could not stop it anyway."

In the final minutes, the BMG team then tried their utmost to assist. The fruits: a radio interview on WBAI 95.5 FM and a gigantic press list from the New York Times to journalists from Brazil and Israel at the concert in The Cooler, a small club on 14th Street in Manhattan.

"I was in the Cooler the night before our appearance in order to breathe in the atmosphere. On the stage was a band with an unbelievable groove. Terrifically good musicians who otherwise played with Miles Davis. But: it was not anything special. One number like another. I thought to myself: we have a considerably broader spectrum. I don't think it will ever be so boring with me as with a 08/15 funk party, which sounds the same for hours."

The chance. With 140 minutes of new Austrian folk music, he wants to show the gathered representatives of the record companies and media what native cats are capable of: softest folk songs, loudest rock songs, a instrumentation from horn, guitar and trumpet to piccolo, amusing commentary in perfect English. How possessed Goisern fights for the new continent. Motto: you have one chance, so use it.

"You go out and notice: the people are good. After a time you believe that it is possibly the loud minority and that the silent majority cannot do anything with it. I then partly stood a metre behind myself, I looked at myself and thought. Look, somehow it works."

Fast fame. At half past one, after three encores, the present foreign Austrians line up to back slapping. At the same time the management works hard at making contacts. An American manager offers: "give me the group for a day, I'll make them famous." Hage Hein does not really trust the man, with good reason.

"The desire to work internationally has partly become very big during this trip. But you must see the thing so: that is euphoria which is to do with momentary feeling. You have to wait for what remains. I found it partly totally absurd to go into the gorges of New York and think of my house in Goisern. This extreme contrast was unbelievable. No idea how I will be when I have reflected on it."

The fashion line. Quite possible that the USA adventure, part 1, perhaps part two will follow still this year. Even though after the tour in April presented by NEWS there is still a load of work. A main role in a ZDF TV film, a personal film project, a live CD and a fashion line. But the US feeling was captivating enough to soon be extended. Although in the cities the Goiserer hungers for homeland quality of life.

"Charm and comfort are missing for me there. Everything is a façade. You can indeed order many more different tequilas, but all are lovelessly prepared. America is a country with a thousand facets and contrasts. But the love of detail is missing."

Peter Leopold

ME Sounds 1994

An international commuter's travel diary

Hubert von Goisern, the most successful representative of the new yodel rock craze, and his Alpinkatzen fulfilled the dream of all musicians. They played in the States - and earned enthusiastic applause.

Monday, 14th March 1994

Stress in Munich. Appearance at the Live aus dem Alabama, the first in a big city with the programme of the new record Omunduntn. Goes quite well. Afterwards the presentation of the fourth platinum record from Austria. A good day, a good start to a perhaps mad undertaking.

Tuesday, 15th March 1994

Flight to Paris. Everyone is in a good mood, but a bit nervous too. We are playing for the first time outside the German-speaking area at a festival on the outskirts of Paris. Telephone home. Casino Salzburg has won in the quarter finals of the European Cup.

Wednesday, 16th March 1994

Flight over the big pond. Then the collapse. We were travelling for 26 hours, arrived in San Antonio at 20 degrees in the shade. Were at the hotel at 4 o'clock in the morning, unpacked everything and then found that there were no rooms. Wrongly booked. We get packed again, somehow find 13 rooms. Am at the end of my tether.

Thursday, 17th March 1994

Sightseeing in San Antonio. Terrible - I seem like a summer holidaymaker in the Salzkammergut or at the Salzburg Domplatz. It is a type of tourism which I really don't like. Am rather depressed. The terrible food on the aeroplane is still lying in my stomach. But I have perhaps also drunk too much.

Friday, 18th March 1994

Flight to Austin. Here it is also no better. Everything is so functional. So rational. Everything is just a façade. Anyway: the cosiness is missing for me, the comfort. Unfortunately I do not visit the country. Texas countryside. I imagine it is beautiful.

Saturday, 19th March 1994

I am dreadfully nervous before the appearance. After all, at the "South by Southwest Festival" several hundred bands play 25 or 30 bars, it changes every hour. Our appearance is at midnight. The musical level is amazingly high. They all play like world masters and groove like hell. Naturally we are the exotic things. But it is great to feel that we groove just like them.The organisation is miserable. There is a wonderful atmosphere in the club, frighteningly close, not just because four hundred people are inside and another hundred are waiting outside. It suited us, it suited the audience, it was top-class.

Sunday, 20th March 1994

We fly to New York with a good feeling. We know: it works. Arrival at JFK. We are dog-tired. But you immediately feel the energy of this city, the impulse. This strength positively goes right into us. At one o'clock at night, after we check in at the hotel, we go out onto the street. Walk around and can't close our mouths at the fact that there is something like this. I had imagined New York to be so dangerous, but all the mixed feelings vanish when you see how nicely the people treat each other. I have a deep liking for these people because they still always manage to be in a good mood in such a city.

Monday, 21st March 1994

Afternoon visit to BMG Ariola in the Bertelsmann building, 42nd floor, with Heinz Henn. One of the three bosses. Sing a Gstanzl with a view over Manhattan. We are told how the business works in the big wide world. But do not learn anything new. One of the most important experiences in New York: I didn't meet anybody who would be crazier than we are. We then played a bit of street music with the cow bells, together with a saxophonist on Times Square.

Tuesday, 22nd March 1994

Up on the World Trade Center. Above on a roof, it is like a flight over the city. Like standing up on the peak to, seems to me that this peak is made of people. And in it we played in New York. In a club, "The Cooler". I was hyper nervous because I did not know: does it go in this city, in which the offer is so insanely large, in which everyone is occupied with themselves, in which everyone has to become egocentric just in order to survive. Yes. We played. In front of about 200 or 300 people. Highly motivated, highly concentrated. We wanted to show them. And we managed it too. The people were in a really good mood, they were in a euphoria like I could never have dreamed of.

Karl Forster

Blanko Musik

A new brand of yodelling

March 1994: Manhattan, Times Square - Hubert von Goisern and the Alpinkatzen have penetrated the heart of the music industry. The peak which Hubert has conquered this time is made of steel and concrete: on the 42nd floor of the Bertelsmann building, on the boss's floor the Austrian quintet play in front of the impressive scenery of the Empire State Building and the Manhattan skyline. Salzkammergut sounds in the middle of New York, Steirer and Schleuniger a good 200 metres above a megalopolis.

An American dream?

A small world tour with stops in Paris, Austin and New York proved that Hubert von Goisern's music indeed has regional roots but is unequivocal international in its translation.

Eurofolies is the name of the series of events from Radio France International, the French short wave service, on which groups from all over Europe are presented in Parisian suburbs and can be heard over the airwaves all over the country.

There was enough time for two songs. Hubert von Goisern and his Cats could pull the audience to their side with the Steirer Iawaramoi and the Wildschütz-Räp. Frenetic calls of "plus" ("encore"), pogo-dancing punks in the front row prove: the French could also definitely get on with more in ethno rock from Austria.

"Austria's only country band" plays great in Austin

The appearance in Texas will be a home game for Hubert von Goisern! Already in the afternoon, the first fan appears. An American who was sent the Aufgeigen statt niederschiassen CD from England has come specially from Florida in order to be able to experience his idol live. As the queer fish is asked for a statement by Bayerischen Rundfunk after the concert, he can only stutter that this has been the best day of his life.

South by Southwest is the name of the music fair, in the framework of which a good 400 bands provide concerts in a dozen music clubs within five days in Austin's city centre.

A favourable review of Hubert's latest release Omunduntn in the Austin Chronicle means that the Santa Fe Club is full at the announced start time. Outside stands a waiting line. Nobody else will be let in as Solide Alm is also heard on the street.

The presenter introduces the Alpinkatzen as "Austria's only country band". The organiser of the festival have put the band in a club where otherwise country rock is played. And so apart from the specialist audience of the fair and music journalists, every crowd of locals with Texan hats have also come to hear "new German Volksmusik mixed with rock, punk, R&B and yodelling" (as according to the advert in the festival programme).

But Hubert also quickly has this audience in his hand. "We are definitely not from Germany, we are Austrians," he makes clear right at the beginning. Slight uncertainty with the introduction of the band.

"On guitars, Reinhard Stranzinger from the wonderful city of Braunau" - a couple of hands actually stretch up in front of the stage...

But here in Texas - the state with the most German-speaking inhabitants and with many German place names - Steirer, Schleuniger and country dance fall on good soil. And the larynx acrobatics of Alpine Sabine, called "yodelling" here thrill the audience to a storm of enthusiasm.

And then as finally Hiatamadl also roared above their heads, there was no holding the Yanks back. "This could be a big hit," thought one. With the American dimensions, one doesn't dare to reply that it was already.

Already by midday, the Alpinkatzen have their first appearance in the New World behind them. At the fair they complete an unplugged gig. And there in the dreary hustle and bustle can already excite attention. A good many organisers of big European festivals show interest in the band.

"Goisern is like Manhattan"
Skyscrapers and mountains

New York in general, Manhattan especially instills respect. But everything is relative: the Dachstein with its 3000 metres is almost ten times as high as the two towers of the World Trade Center, Hubert tells the New Yorkers in the jazz club The Cooler.

A good 200 visitors have come to the renowned club in Greenwich Village. The audience is mostly made up of journalists (Village Voice and MTV are represented all the same), people from the record company and members of the Austrian colony.

Hubert von Goisern has problems neither musically nor with his announcements between the individual songs in captivating the listeners. Hubert, who speaks perfect English (after all he lived for some years in South Africa and Canada), compares Manhattan with ... Goisern!

There are the mountains there, in Manhattan the skyscrapers probably provide the blues. Hubert's song Ganz Alloa is proof. It was not written by chance by a New Yorker (Thelonius Monk).

And also the contrasts between metropolis and province, which Hubert goes into in his programme, are also there in the USA, exactly the same as populist politicians. That Hubert revised the German national anthem, the Americans know from Jimi Hendrix, who did something similar with theirs.

As far as the expressive yodels like Sarstoana, Alpera and Kuahmelcher are concerned, only one thing occurs to the Americans: Soul!

Hubert von Goisern thinks back to "an interesting adventure, a successful experiment" and assesses the USA trip: "I still have the feeling that America is a country where I would like to tour with a production and where I would like to travel. We would certainly have had a chance there!"

Hannes Heide

Süddeutsche Zeitung 25th March 1994

Travelling with Hubert von Goisern, who has ventured the jump over the Atlantic as the first representative of new alpine rock

New York, in March - to claim that the whole of New York has fallen victim to the yodel madness since Tuesday evening would be exaggerating. But after this evening certainly some people from Brooklyn, Queens or Manhattan have tried to see how the amusing vocals work and determined that yodelling simply sounds better when it comes from original Austrian throats. But these people rewarded with standing ovations the fact that a young man from the valleys north of the Dachstein set out to bring yodels, country dances and gstanzls before an audience who really only listen to the most aggressive gangsta rap or drumming dance.

They have learned to understand why Hubert von Goisern and the Alpinkatzen have taken up the cause of "not letting the Right, the traditionalists and folk music scientists have folk music." He told the people in the rock club The Cooler on New York's 14th Street in flawless English. "I come from Bad Goisern," Hubert said into the microphone and explained that he had now begun to play his beloved folk music in just his way, in order to take it away from the representatives of "alpine junk folk", the Moiks and Mariannes and Michaels.

It was a tough job that evening. Not only that Hubert and the Alpinkatzen had now completed an arduous week's tour with stops in Paris, Austin (Texas) and New York. Whoever enters the even more unknown music club in the western
Greenwich village, has to face the consequences, he's not getting an easy treatment. The Cooler - a narrow, low styled cellar with cold enamel in the middle of a slaughterhouse right next to a cold-storage depot.

The audience - the mixture typical for the city of spontaneous arrivals and trend seekers, very young girls and very handsome men, colourful intellectuals and white party promoters and - in accordance with the cause - the cause in accordance with - an Austrian crowd, who established themselves between Hudson and East River. One came in order to be able to be seen, not in order to listen. And so a cool lack of interest prevailed at the beginning of the first set. The applause was not even polite.

Hubert sweats. Wipes the towel over his face. Does not attach much importance to the monologues between the songs, but gets through the programme with the songs from his record Aufgeigen statt niederschiassen, so successful in the German-speaking countries. Tries to forget the words and laughter there below. Thinking in the meantime that it is a little crazy to be playing Hiatamadl, Wildschütz-Räp or the Ausseer country dance in the hottest music metropolis in the world; perhaps he thinks of Heinz Henn's words, who had said to him the day before that musicians like him should rather remain, where they are understood and liked. But it belongs to the programme of the tour to persuade even this Mr. Henn that at least New York and perhaps the whole of America have only been waiting for Hubert von Goisern and his Alpinkatzen.

Heinz Henn is one of three senior bosses of the record company BMG, to whom the German Bertelsmann group belong. After a 400 million dollar bankruptcy a few years ago, the media brokers from Gütersloh were able to acquire a pretty skyscraper directly on Times Square. One of the companies in the groups is the German Ariola, who brought Hubert von Goisern onto the market at home. So seen, the Alpinkatzen's visit to Heinz Henn absolutely made sense, because under his patronage for example, Whitney Houston has sold ten million copies of her latest record Bodyguard. Heinz Henn was indeed quite taken with the presentation Hubert and his Cats gave in his office over Broadway, but could not conceal his scepticism. "If you don't sell more than a million records here," he said, "you don't earn a single penny." At home, Hubert von Goisern reaches scarcely 400,000.

Gilbert comes from Brooklyn. But Henn could have certainly contradicted the 29 year old colourful film maker with a preference for Charly Parker and Miles Davis. Indeed, as Hubert entered the stage completely alone at the beginning and began to play on the Styrian accordion, he moaned to his friend about whether he would have to listen to this noise the whole evening. But already in the interval Gilbert said that it was surprisingly "a very interesting combination of music". And also the BMG market study crew, instructed by Heinz Henn to go the Cooler, had stopped talking and listened interested to the foreign sounds.

In Texas, at the South by Southwest Festival, it was relatively simple to bring the audience to similar rapture as one is used to at home. This is because the Texans, but especially the cowboys, have established yodelling in country music. Getting the audience going is successfully done in New York with the second set. Suddenly a strained peace prevails, the party din has given way to intimate concentration. Gilbert stands in the first row, swaying in time to the Goisern version of Blue Monk, hums quietly with the third encore, a quite original and totally yodelled Alperer. He would, he then says, buy this record with pleasure. A first step to the first million.

Karl Forster