Since 32 years, I’m a fan of Mr. Bill Levise from Detroit, Michigan, also known by the artist name Mitch Ryder. It’s been since the exact same night, that Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes stepped into my life. It’s been that night on 6./7.October 1979 when this video has been recorded… and… well… most of my readers already know… my life had not been the same after that Rockpalast Show in Essen, Germany.

I’m only posting this historic video again, because there can’t be enough promotion for this great and legendary artist, tales about that legendary night in 1979, and because I just stumbled over an excellent interview with Mitch on a Palm Beach (FL) website, conducted by Lee Zimmerman.

It’s always interesting to read and understand about Mitch’s schizophrenia of having two lifes as an artist – from the perspective of a fan in Germany – one on each side of the Atlantic Ocean. While being widely recognised as an “oldies” act in the U.S. he’s managed to keep himself praised and relevant as a recording artist on the European markets, putting out records (almost) year after year…

Your longtime fans would like to know what you’ve been up to lately. It seems you’ve been pretty busy on the oldie circuit, with those “Woodstock” and “Happy Together” tours.

Well, that’s only the American side of it. I’ve got a whole other career that occurs in the winter months and eats up a lot of my time too. It’s my European career, which I have a huge catalogue over there as opposed to over here. I have 12 or 13 albums that have never been released in America, so I end up doing two-and-a-half hour shows with no intermission because I have all these songs to choose from that the people over there are familiar with. America’s very much a different kind of trick. It’s more of an oldies thing where I have to be kind of inventive until I get to the point where I can get these products to the American audience and to my fans over here. And that’s quite a trick because I’m doing it at a time when the record business over here is in turmoil. So it’s going to be hard to do. I also have an autobiography coming out in December, and I’ll be on TV promoting it, and it’s being cross-promoted with a new album produced by the Grammy Award-winning Don Was. In addition, I’m writing songs for an album I’m going to record prior to my winter tour in Europe, and I’m working on a musical which I expect to be finished by next summer.

Read the full interview…

Although I will probably never convert myself into a musical fan, my baseline is:

I understand it as a privilege, specially to Germany, to be able to host Mr. Ryder year after year after year… and I’m goin to see him… every time!

You are recommended & heartfully invited to join!

Download – MP3 – Mitch Ryder – Ain’t Nobody White

It’s the Cardinal Session’s concept to put musicians into places where you’d not exactly expect them to appear and let them perform live and acoustic.

This time around, they’ve left that approach a bit and arranged the, not so unusual, but actually defunct, Heldenbar at my hometown theater in Essen for the guys from Blackbox… While I’d expect the Blackbox to play at a packed Heldenbar any other weekend – which just requires the city to find an adequate manager for the location – the band really managed to put out one special performance up into the empty space around them. And that’s where the Cardinal Session’s concept kicked in again.

The guys from Essen, Krefeld & Cologne do leave a lasting impression… they manage even more than than… putting a song into your head, which goes on and on for a while…

An unusual, broken but beautiful voice by Timm Demetry, embedded into a spare sound of guitars, in a lot of open space… be it the space in the actual room they’ve been playing, be it the room and space in your head, your mind, your soul…

While the title “Snow” of the featured song in the video might direct you into the season you just wanted to get behind you – for whatever resons – the actual EP of the Blackbox carries the only appropriate title for this summer…: “Sun”.

Here’s a full band version of PanCapYou by the Blackbox… and now you might understand why:

Blackbox are:

Timm Demetry
Tobias Flüs
Niklas Ostendorf
Nils Demetry
Felix Hawelka

Homepage: Blackboxband
Soundcloud: Blackbox

Alright, people, listen: This IS an affair of my heart… ’cause Martin is the guy from around the corner in Essen, who I probably know like for some 25 years now.

They’ve called him the “Springsteen of Essen-Rüttenscheid” at the time – which I didn’t like. He was calling himself “Scooter” as his band was “Scooter & the Streethearts”. I didn’t like the “Scooter” either, but I LOVED the Streethearts. And they really were one great band with not many to compete out of the suburbs of the Ruhrgebiet.

Scooter & the Streethearts have been playing their hearts out, out of Essen, all over Europe… from the smallest bars and clubs to the big stages. Highlights were plenty, most memorable probably their tour with Joe Grushecky & the Houserockers…

From the later nineties, Martin, minus the Streethearts, reinvented himself as a singer-songwriter and went on the road to play each and every Irish pub between Galway and Gdansk, Bergen and Barcelona.

A long journey – where I somehow lost track of Martin’s whereabouts over the years, until a very good friend remembered him and somehow managed to get him on the stage of the first Light Of Day Concert to happen in Germany two years ago – on the shortest possible notice…

So there he was, with only his voice & guitar. Playing and jamming with some of my biggest favorites like Willie Nile, Joe D’Urso & Jesse Malin. Man, how I was amazed!

Martin did not only mature as a man and musician, he’s also sharpened his skills as a songwriter to a degree, which let the title track of his new album-to-be run in my brain on auto-repeat for weeks to come after that show in December 2009.

Now it’s here, finally… after releasing the tracks on his homepage last December, and only 18 month after I’ve met him at that Ballsaal in Melle, the record arrived…:

My favorites, beside the title track:

Hometown Blues, because that hometown I share with Martin, and I still carry a lot of it around with me every day… that accordion breathes the spirit of the greatly missed Phantom Federici.

Sadness For A Grin, because it sound’s like a song Bruce could have had written on a ride on NJ Transit out of the city back to Asbury Park. An easy tune while it’s lyrics creep into the back of your mind… good stuff!

Reason To Believe, well, you’ve got to have the balls for a title of that name in the first place… a strong arrangement, wide sound, chorus and breathless singing by Martin… it might be the strongest piece for a live show with the band…

In fact, that band on the album, The Innocent Bastards, does sound a lot like the folks of the E-Street – intentionally or not, I LOVE ‘EM for that.

Martin Praetorius: vocals, guitars, mandolin, harmonica, low whistle

The Innocent Bastards:
Andy Schmidgen: hammond, piano, accordion
Marius Goldhammer: bass
Wolf Simon: drums

Recorded at Look at Me Studios, Oberhausen, which are now “Tresohr Studios”,
P&M Studio, Bonn,
Working Corners, Essen

mixed at Working Corners by Martin Praetorius
mastered by Fritz Fey at Double-D Mastering, Oberhausen

All in all… Martin wrote, played, lived through and recorded an album, which should receive far more recognition than it probably will generate. But that’s how it is today. And that’s why I’m running this blog.

For me, “Affairs Of The Heart” will be my soundtrack for the summer to be…

CONGRATULATIONS & THANK YOU MARTIN!

Visit: Martin Praetorius

Allright… I feel like having some noise in the house today, so what can be better as a track of the show after which I’ve got my first (official) tinnitus diagnosed. It shouldn’t have been the last… The fabulous Kinks on a bill with Rick James & Van Morrison… a night I will NEVER forget!

This is the first video of a series dedicated to the ROCKPALAST at the Grugahalle in my hometown of Essen, Germany. Without that show, my life would have went different ways.

Now, if that’s good or bad, I don’t know… but I like it!