Ougenweide - Ohrenschmaus/Eulenspiegel (1976/2006 Remastered Edition)
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Album: Ougenweide - Ohrenschmaus & Eulenspiegel (Remastered Edition)
Released: 1976 (2006)
Genre: Folk Krautrock
Gnosis Rating: 10.33/10.05
Bear Family Records - BCD 16779 AH
3rd and 4th album, and a continuing of their 2 first ones. Freaky folky music, and more weird than their 2 first album. Opens with the frantic "Bombarde ment", which gotta be heard !! Includes also their superb version of "Totus floreo" ! - Record Heaven
This reissue of the next two Ougenweide albums is one of last year’s best news for folk prog fans. While both albums had received re-releases (legit or not), this little baby is a rather indispensable for fans and newcomers alike. Both this release and the preceding one have superb booklets with an extensive group history (English/German), including loads of photos (including the booklet’s covers), both albums’ full artworks reproduced as well as the totality of the lyrics printed as well. The sepia-coloured booklet is not as ideal as the first collection, because the two albums it features were much more coloured. A gorgeous picture adorns an excellent logo name that you will find in the previous release as well.
While I wrote reviews of the original albums,.. what one must know is that this is about the best way for everyone to acquire their music, no matter if you are a newbie or a veteran of the group. While Ohrenschmaus is just an excellent, dynamic (and typical) album of theirs, the other one, Eulenspiegel is really the most charming and narrative of their discography.
An excellent (and cheap) manner to get comfy with this out-of-the ordinary band, but it is advisable to not listen to the full disc in a single shot for fear of overdose: rather divide your listening sessions to the original albums separately. This release being absolutely indispensable for the progheads, I can only wish that the label will put reissue the next four albums as well in the same format, especially the double-live album by itself and the next two coupled, Fryheit with its follow up Ousflug. - Hugues Chantraine
...Yet another great album that only confirmed Ougenweide’s reputation as a adventurous group, reaching into pre-classical and medieval music (much like Malicorne did in the same years) and if the album is also essential, once linked with the following Eulenspiegel album, it becomes a must-have. - Hugues Chantraine
...When compared with the previous three albums, Eulenspiegel is well in the musical continuity as its predecessors, but also marks a progression. The group’s pieces, telling a story through their Middle High German lyrics, become more narrative, giving more drama and some tracks become fascinating and even haunting. Tyllurius and Der Hofmaler are astoundingly beautiful, drawing small chills down the spine as the solemn ambiances and spellbinding melodies are riveting you to the depth of your sofa. Later on Vermachtuis is another pearl from the same nursery takes us to heaven, as is the (almost Pentangle-like) Wol Mich Der Stunde track. And if that was not enough the second last track is the album’s most flabbergasting moment with vocal cannons and outstanding musicianship.
Compared to their previous album, I’d say that the album is a tad more Tull-esque (maybe due to a slightly more present flute) and Gryphon-esque (the odd crumhorn and the ever stronger medieval ambiances) and a bit less Malicornesque. Again what strikes (as in all Ougenweide albums) is the power of the electric bass, often being the driving force of the sextet. Eulenspiegel is probably my fave Ougenweide album, but I would not say it is their most representative, due to a slightly more restricted musical spectrum. But where eclectism lost, the story gained. - Hugues Chantraine
Ougenweide was one the most significant German folk-rock bands of the seventies. Their music was quite different from the 'progressive folk' music created by the early Broselmaschine and Holderlin. Ougenweide's speciality was shorter tracks in off almost medieval folk tradition with German lyrics. The result was a German answer to British groups like Fairport Convention, Gryphon and Steeleye Span. Like these groups, Ougenweide (from Hamburg) succeeded in achieving a distinct style of their own. Their records confirm that they were obviously great instrumentalists. Through the years the nucleus of the Wulff brothers, von Henko and Isenbart remained intact. Minne Graw was their female vocalist from the third album onwards. A large part of their repertoire consisted of traditional German folk songs. The early albums are their most acoustic ones, the later works also utilised synthesisers. - "Cosmic Dreams At Play"
Ougenweide are a now forgotten German folk-rock with medieval influences. As someone very perceptively put it on the avant-progressive list, "...some lovely extended cuts which almost crossed over into jazz land. Kind of like a cross between Gryphon (for the medieval sound) and Pentangle (for the jazz sound). They released 7 albums in the 70's, but none of them are available on CD. This compilation, while it focuses on the shorter tunes (not surprising) is the only way to sample their best work other than trying to find the original albums on Ebay. The tracks here are all taken from 1974-1978. Seeing the instrumnentation will give you an idea of what this is about: Minne Graw-singing, keyboards, flute, Olaf Casalich-singing, percussion, Frank Wulf-guitar, flute, mandolin, bouzouki, Stefan Wulff-bass, keyboards, singing, Jurgen Isenbart-drums, marimba, vibes and Wolfgang von Henko-guitars, singing. - Wayside Music
Ougenweide are to Germany what Malicorne are to France, Horslips to Ireland, Labanda to Spain, Gryphon to England and The Charlie Daniels Band to America - i.e. groups that play electrified indigenous folkloric music. (Is this perhaps the first time in history that Labanda and The Charlie Daniels Band have been mentioned in the same sentence?). Definitely a different German breed than the cosmic folk Pilz groups like Broselmaschine and Emtidi or the more freaky/experimental Parzival. Ougenweide use a typical rock band base (electric guitar, electric bass, drums) and augment that with an array of melodic instruments including flute, mandolin, accordion, piano, etc… There are alternating female (soprano register) and male vocals, all in wonderful German, the former proving to be the more pleasing and enchanting... - Tom Hayes, Gnosis
Probably the most commercially successful of German folk-rock bands, Ougenweide originated in Hamburg circa 1970 (going through various incarnations and styles) and becoming Ougenweide proper in 1971. Their name came from the pet name of medieval lyricist Walther von der Vogelweide, whose texts were sometimes used in their music.
From the start through to the 1985 split, Ougenweide had a stable nucleus of four: Olaf Casalich, Jurgen Isenbart, Frank Wulff and Stefan Wulff. Also there in the early days were one Michael Steinbeck and female singer Brigitte Blunck. Ougenweide were fortunate to have a big helping hand from Achim Reichel, who produced them, and also signed them up to his Zebra label. Not that Ougenweide didn't deserve success, their blend of German folk musics, the medieval and the modern, was always innovative and cutting edge. Despite an obvious nod to Pentangle (ignore comparisons to Fairport Convention, the similarity is non-existent), the concoction that Ougenweide came up with was really most original.
After their debut Minne Graw joined as vocalist, her richly intoned German lyric added even more spice to their sound. Ougenweide lasted for several years, issuing numerous albums and built a large repertoire of original and traditional pieces, which are best experienced on their live double UNGEZWUNGEN, with its extended versions and improvisations. Every Ougenweide album we've encountered (all up to FRYHEIT) is generically representative of this creative band, in that they are always pushing on with new ideas, and invention in arrangement, both in song and instrumental.
Ougenweide are also key figures in German progressive music, with members featuring elsewhere. Most interesting to us are Olaf Casalich: Tomorrow's Gift, Frankie Dymon Jr., Achim Reichel, Dennis, etc., and the Hamburger Jazzband "Tuten und Blasen" and work with the Fundus Theater Hamburg; and Frank Wulff: A.R. & Machines, Es, he also worked with Pentangle in 1991, and has many theatre and drama scores to his credit.
In 1996 a new version of Ougenweide got together recording SOL presenting a much more trendy new-pop meets ancient folk and world music, kind of Enigma meets Clannad with an air of Alan Stivell, thus nothing like their former incarnation. - THE CRACK IN THE COSMIC EGG
From humble origins in 1969 as Hamburg-based 'hobby musicians,' Ougenweide established themselves within less than a decade as an important creative force on the West German music scene. As a band, they were renowned for championing the impossible. Just like Britain's era-defining rock group Traffic had sung in 'Who Knows What Tomorrow May Bring,' it was plain that Ougenweide "were not like all the rest. " Ougenweide's calling-card was setting old poetry to music, as befitted a group that took its name from a text by the Middle High German poet Neidhart von Reuenthal. Some lyrics they sang needed accompanying translations to render them comprehensible even for contemporary mother-tongue German audiences. (If rock venues in the 1970s had had the technology to simulcast subtitles while Ougenweide sang, then sizeable sections of the audience would have been happier still.) Performing Old German texts was a leap of faith. (As was the occasional Latin.) In the process, they became West Germany's quintessential 'Mittelalter-Rock' or 'medieval rock' ensemble. With only a pinch of exaggeration, their name remains shorthand for - if not the dictionary definition of-'Mittelalter-Rock'.
Between the releases of Ougenweide's self-titled debut LP in 1973 and their second LP, 'All die Weil ich mag' in 1974, Ougenweide had consolidated and refined their musical vision. According to one story, at the time of their debut album's sessions, their producer Achim Reichel - who went on to produce 'Ohrenschmaus' and 'Eulenspiegel' - had prevailed on them to ditch their Fairport Convention and Pentangle repertoire in favour of German-language material. It was a decisive step. In rejecting the identikit Anglo-Irishisms and Anglo-Americanisms that plagued the West German folk scene, they were breaking new ground.
The recruitment of Minne Graw as the band's female voice and keyboardist in September 1973 - following the departure of Brigitte Blunck and Renee Kollmorgen (both of whom had sung on 'Ougenweide') - stabilized the band's personnel. Her arrival was a milestone in the band's development. She directly contributed to Ougenweide's growing popularity. Between 'All die Weil ich mag' appearing in late 1974 and the release of'Ohrenschmaus' the next year, Ougenweide's profile in the West German music business rose considerably. In Minne Graw, Ougenweide found a transformative vocalist for the times, the closest West Germany ever came to Fairport Convention's Sandy Denny.
Pre-'Ohrenschmaus,' several things had held them back. For one, they had yet to break out of Hamburg. In October 1974 with their second LP imminent, the Hamburg-based 'Sounds' - frontrunner for the day's most authoritative rock music monthly (with a sprinkling of Liedermacher, counter-culture cinema and cult literature) - pointed out the one big hurdle in front of Ougenweide was the type of venues they were playing. As relative unknowns and semi-pro musicians, they were pounding the Beatschuppen (beat club) and Bierkneipe (bar) beat. This circuit hardly suited Ougenweide's music. Its subtleties were getting lost amid the hubbub of beer-swilling, chat-up lines and the clatter of singing, ringing Mark-and-Pfennig tills. Communicating the intricacies of Walther von der Vogelweide, Neidhart von Reuenthal (an intriguing name that suggests the translation Old Nick from the Valley of Sorrows) or Merseburger magic spells (Zauberspruche decades before Kate Bush sang her spell of Hem of anorak, stem of wallflower, hair of doormat) were doubly difficult back then.
The Hamburg music scene wasn't very large. Hence, its bush telegraph functioned pretty efficiently, even though the city was a land of print - Ougenweide's Frank Wulff trained as a typesetter, for example. By the mid 1970s, 'Sounds' had become pretty much required reading, having somewhat filled the vacuum left after 'twen's' Hamburg publishers scuttled it in 1971, scandalised by that May's issue with its just-a-little-too-far coverage including the artist Ernst Jandl (onomatopoeia raised to eroticism), Hamburg-St. Pauli's Loddel (pimp) and Nutte (whore) underbelly and, appropriate bedfellow, the Rolling Stones. In the shocked aftermath of 'twen's' demise, picture 'Sounds' as a radical alternative to the Munich edition of 'Rolling Stone' nowadays. 'Sounds' would run several items on Ougenweide during its early heyday. The main point was that it was almost impossible not to have heard their name. In Hamburg, at very least. Word was spreading.
With their second album in the record shops, the band was approached by the concert-promoter Karsten Jahnke, offering them the opportunity to open for Fairport Convention at the Congress Centrum Hamburg (CCH). They accepted with mixed feelings, part-exhilaration, part-trepidation, having never played a gig of that size. Yet it was the break they had longed for. In 1975 Fairport Convention had Sandy Denny fronting them - she had returned to the fold once again in 1974 - and the line-up was enjoying another purple patch. It was a very different one to the band that had crafted 'Liege and Lief,' the project in 1969 that had ushered in a new approach to electrified folk and jig-and-reel instrumental. Just as The Band's 'Music From Big Pink' had massively influenced Fairport Convention, the embryonic Ougenweide Sound had been cross-fertilized by music coming out of Great Britain, as both these albums show with their occasional Jethro Tullisms and flurries of Pentangle-style percussion.
At the CCH concert, there were some technical constraints. At the soundcheck they learned that they would be rationed when it came to microphones. Certainly not enough to mike the drum kit. It was hardly a good omen, but it put them on their mettle. Rising to the challenge, they pulled a rabbit worthy of Alice out of the hat. (Three tracks from this triumph over adversity finally appeared for the first time on the Ougenweide's flashback compilation 'Wol mich der Stunde' in 2004.) It was sweet and fitting that the CCH would provide the setting for such a turn in the band's fortunes. After all, they were on home turf and their brand of Germanic counterblast to the dominance of Anglo-American and homegrown Schlager pop fare had many streaks of multilingual Hamburg to it. Jahnke was impressed. He became their concert booker. One by one, the various members of the band fell into step and gave up their day-jobs. As their star rose, they would share stages with acts of the standing of Amazing Blondel, Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Planxty, Alan Stivell and Konstantin Wecker.
All they needed was a record that would blast them and their ancestors of choice, to use Patti Smith's piquant image, into the present. That album was 'Ohrenschmaus.' As titles go, it is perfect. It means 'ear feast' but carries a cultural echo of bygone days and traditional customs. 'Schmaus' (feast or feast-day) has associations with the tradition handed down from woodcuts, dance manuals and dance-of-death images. It also flirts semantically with Ougenweide or, in modern German, Augenweide - a fairly obscure word - that can be translated as a 'feast for the eyes.'
With 'Ohrenschmaus' outgrowing their cult Hamburg band status, word got around. Nevertheless, their reputation remained primarily a West German one. Very few folkies in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), my straw poll in 2005 revealed, actually ever handled an Ougenweide LP (though, granted, tapes were circulating). This is strange because it was a badge of honour in GDR folkie circles to know West German acts at least by repute. (Pity, it rarely operated the other way round.) That said, Ougenweide never had an impact on the East German folk scene like Liederjan or Zupfgeigenhansel. Likewise, Ougenweide never managed to break through in Western Europe or North America where their albums were only ever available on import. Nevertheless, they notched up one success, as 'Sounds' fanfared, by playing at the 14th Cambridge Folk Festival in England in 1978. Over the years, Ougenweide LPs became highly collectable particularly amongst international fans of 'prog-folk', few of whom could have had any idea what they were singing about.
Though they never really broke through in Britain, the final track on 'Ohrenschmaus' throws up a musical paradox for Britain. Its song Der Schlemihl about a man called Schlemihl bent on selling his shadow who, in so doing, loses his soul into the bargain, has a melodically and tonally distinctive electric guitar hook (though Ougenweide's arrangement over the years experimented with tempi and instrumentation). The guitar figure resurfaced in Chaconne, co-written by Bill Caddick and Graeme Taylor, on the Home Service's debut LP in 1984. Taylor had played guitar in the nearest to Ougenweide that the British 'medieval-folk' scene ever produced, a band called Gryphon. Cross-fertilization in another direction maybe?
Ougenweide's fourth LP 'Eulenspiegel' took them into new territory. As Eric Oluf Jauch wrote in his 'Sounds' review of the album in February 1977, "After literary, theatrical and cinematic attempts, now [we have] a Rock-Till too. " It was a sort of post-Who 'Tommy' scenario. The project that Ougenweide got involved in was an adaptation or reanimation of one of the defining tales of German ridicule literature about Till Eulenspiegel, a piece of folk-satire comparable to 'Das Narrenschiff' (Ship of Fools). Their images continue to cruise people's and poets' imaginations. In the case of Till Eulenspiegel they had just been revisited by a GDR-era film with Winfried Glatzeder in the starring role while San Francisco's Grateful Dead would also run with its allegorical image of fools aboard a ship of whatever kind in 1974. When the Landestheater Tubingen approached Ougenweide, that theatrical company could have had no idea of what to expect of Ougenweide. Jauch came up with an insightful line whilst reviewing 4Eulenspiegel.' He remarked that whoever had reproached them in the past for being esoteric would find no reason to revise their opinion with 'Eulenspiegel.' His words still ring in my head. Even without the benefit of a classical education, one senses that Totus Floreo has strayed far from any Germanic language. When I first encountered *Wol mich der Stunde' (Blessed The Hour), untranslated, on the printed page it came trailing metrical analysis and versification terminology that rang with expressions like Kehrreim (refrain) and Korner (a poetic device that still makes my head reel). Ougenweide exploded all that dignified rhetoric and put old verities back onto human lips. That is why I admire Ougenweide so much. Yes, let's confess it, Ougenweide came perilously close to quaintsy at times and developed nasty shlock-rock tendencies on occasion. But not here.
The material on these two albums provided material that stood up to years of 'road-testing' to become mainstays of Ougenweide's live repertoire. Imagining Ougenweide without Kommt ihr Jungfern helft mir klagen (Come, you virgins, help me lament), Im Badehaus (In The Bathhouse) and Wol mich der Stunde is like imagining Fairport without Meet On The Ledge, A Sailor s Life, Matty Groves and Sloth. Imagining post-Reunification bands such as Estampie and Schandmaul, to shanghai Britta Sweers's words from her 'Electric Folk' (2005), without the trail that Ougenweide blazed is just as inconceivable.
As that important West German author and broadcaster Florian Steinbiss wrote of Ougenweide in his Zeitgeist-bottling book 'Deutsch-Folk: Auf der Suche nach der verlorenen Tradition' (Deutsch-Folk: On the search for the lost tradition), "Their development proceeded without any great contact to the Tolk-Szene " 'Ohrenschmaus' and 'Eulenspiegel' are albums that perfectly illustrate what shaped Steinbiss's judgement in 1984. They are neither folk, nor 'das alte Werk' as they said in Early Music circles, nor straightforward rock: they are Ougenweide. - Ken Hunt
Ohrenschmaus:
1 Bombarde-Ment (01:12)
2 Kommt, ihr Jungfern, helft mir klagen (05:05)
3 Eines Freitags im Wald (03:13)
4 Pferdesegen (Contra Uermes) (01:59)
5 Bald anders (06:31)
6 Im Badehaus (03:08)
7 Owê wie j?merlÎche (04:18)
8 Engelboltes Tochter Aven (03:03)
9 Rumet uz die schaemel und die stuele (01:57)
10 Al fol (01:04)
11 Der Schlemihl (03:55)
12 Merseburger Spieluhr (00:37)
Minne Graw: Gesang, Harmonium, Klavier
Olaf Casalich: Gesang, Schlagzeug, Percussion, Röhrenglocken
Stefan Wulff: E-Baß, Klavier, Zither, Akkordeon
Wolfgang von Henko: Konzert-, Western- und E-Gitarre, Mandoline, Gesang
Jürgen Isenbart:Marimbaphon, Vibraphon, Röhrenglocken, Glockenspiel, Schlagzeug, Gesang
Frank Wulff: Querflöte, Blockflöten, Bombarde, Bouzouki, Mandoline, akustische Gitarre, indisches Harmonium, Gesang
Eulenspiegel:
13 Till (00:24)
14 Tyllurius Spiegelius (03:20)
15 Der Hofmaler (05:15)
16 Till und die Gelehrten (04:28)
17 Tills Ende und Vermachtnis (05:30)
18 Welscher Tanz und Hupfauf (02:58)
19 Totus floreo (02:43)
20 Wol mich der Stunde (05:39)
21 Durch den ermel gat daz loch (05:10)
22 Enzio (02:11)
Minne Graw: Flügel, E-Piano, Blockflöte, Harmonium, Gesang
Olaf Casalich: Schlagzeug, Percussion, Gesang
Wolfgang von Henko: Gitarren, Mandoline, Gesang
Jürgen Isenbart: Percussion
Stefan Wulff: Baß, Gitarre, Akkordeon
Frank Wulff: Flöten, Krummhorn, Mandoline, Banjo, Bouzouki, Gitarre, Gesang
Florian Wulff-Haack: Eulenspiegel
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