Opossum - Bear's Banquet (1974/2003, Garden of Delights)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Artist: Opossum
Album: Bear's Banquet
Released: 1974/2003
Garden of Delights (CD 086)
Genre: Krautrock/Jazz-Rock
OPOSSUM were coming from the greater area of Warburg, a city situated in the east of Westphalia. As precursor of Morpheus they were playing jazz-rock with progressive elements, slightly comparable to the sound of Soft Machine or Colosseum. The band was founded in the spring of 1971 and three young students were its core: Peter Blömeke, Karl-Heinz Cornelius, and Heinrich Holtgreve. Peter Blömeke (*1952), alias Rabe ("the Raven"), was on drums, and later as well on flute and synthesizer. He owned the necessary competence to his six years learning on drums. Though not playing a more important role than his co-founders, his picture can be found on the now available CD - a circumstance only due to the fact that no real good photo of the whole band had been on hand. Karl-Heinz Cornelius (*1953) on bass came from The Moon of Warburg. He has had classes on guitar and violin for three years. Heinrich Holtgreve (*1952) on alto sax and clarinet had attended the academy of music in Warburg and performed with various jazz bands. During the next years the three of them tried to enlarge the band with various performers on organ, guitar, wind instruments, and even on violin. However the most of them didn't meet their high standards and turned out to be an impediment to their musical development. Thus it took them quite a while to encounter those musicians matching their demands. With Gerold Adler, Alfred Franke and Robert Binnewies, three students like themselves, they had found them. Gerold Adler (*1953) performed on electric guitar and as well on the twelve string acoustic guitar, already having a ten year experience with this instrument. Alfred Franke (*1954) became the new man on drums, while Peter Blömeke moved to Berlin for playing with the famous Mythos. Robert Binnewies performed on keyboards and harmonica. He has had a sound education on piano and came from Expression, a blues band from Hofgeismar. When Peter Blömeke came back to the band bringing with him a revolutionary micro-moog, he performed not only on drums but additionally on flute and as percussionist. In this line-up they grew close and for about two years stayed together, until the end of Opossum. The strange band name, by the way, is connected with Karl-Heinz's wearing an opossum skin tobacco pouch on his belt. For promoters the band gave out an information leaflet, describing among other things: "A great importance is attached to free improvisation, giving the individual musician the most scope possible. It is to stress though that the main emphasis is not aimed at the individual musician as soloist but to the band's sound as a whole. That means not only to enrich a solo with an intensive and accentuate work
in rhythm and percussion, but also to lead up to an unison performance or to arranged sound figures. The structure of our tracks is similar to many of those compositions of the newer jazz. The improvisations of a given theme are framed by fixed arranged parts. Though changes in rhythm or creative and spontaneous effects of surprise are still possible." Thanks to their abilities as musicians Opossum acquired very fast a good reputation in the greater area of Warburg and beyond. They performed with Xhol and Sameti at the Ruhr University of Bochum and with Tangerine Dream and Kraan at the summer festival at the University of Bonn. Their gigs were about two hours each. In 1974 they recorded some tracks, very clean and professional in their rehearsal room. By the way some of the photos in this CD's booklet were taken while doing those recordings. The framing of four out of five of these tracks was done by Gerold Adler. Only "The sun and moon have come together" was taken from the LP with the same name by The Fourth Way, a jazz-rock band from USA (their LP was released 1969 by Capitol). Unfortunately Opossum split, only a year after the recordings were done, in 1975. Karl-Heinz rather wanted to do pure jazz, but Gerold wanted more melodic rock elements, and Robert needed to take care of his studies. Gerold Adler, Heinrich Holtgreve, Alfred Franke, and Peter Blömeke, who had switched to bass in the meantime, became now Morpheus. Morpheus was revived in 2001 and performed in 2002 on the festival of Burg Herzberg. Their story in detail can be found in the booklets of their two CDs, released by Garden of Delights. Karl-Heinz Cornelius founded with other musicians Jazz Drive. Alfred Franke was on drums in his band, too. It was him who performed in both successors of Opossum at the same time.
Today Gerold Adler is teaching guitar in Kassel and playing in his own band, the Gerold Adler Fusion. With Peter Blömeke and others he is still doing experimental jazz-rock, marked by synthesized guitar. Alfred Franke is working as a non-medical practitioner in Rosenheim, Karl-Heinz Cornelius as architect in Warburg, and Peter Blömeke as social education worker. Who wants to get to know Heinrich Holtgreve can visit the well-stocked winery "Der Franzose" ("The Frenchman") at the Wiemelhauser Straße in Bochum and let himself invite to a good glass of wine.
The master tape of 1974 was stored safely over the years. For attaining the best results for the now available CD it was given a careful remastering by Gerold Adler. Many thanks to them all for their kind support.
Track List:
01. The Sun And The Moon Have Come Together [0:11:14.55]
02. Mittelstreifen [0:10:15.51]
03. Amina [0:06:33.72]
04. Opossum Novum [0:04:04.10]
05. Bear's Banquet [0:15:30.50]
Line-up/Musicians:
- Peter Blömeke / drums, flute, synthesizer
- Karl-Heinz Cornelius / bass
- Heinrich Holtgreve / alto sax, clarinet
- Robert Binnewies / keyboards, harmonica
- Gerold Adler / guitar
- Alfred Franke / drums
|
