Originally posted in February, 2014:Gert Krawinkel (21 April 1947 – 16 February 2014) was a German musician and guitarist. He was better known as "Kralle". He died last sunday at the age of 66 in Cuxhaven.
Krawinkel's father was a sailor in his hometown of Wilhelmshaven. Krawinkel's music career started in the mid-1960s in nearby Bremerhaven, where he played the guitar in a band called "The Vampyr". He then teamed up with vocalist Stephan Remmler in a Rolling Stones-influenced band called MacBeats (later renamed Just Us). The band was successful in Northern Germany, during its existence, Just Us played a two-week engagement at Star-Club in Hamburg. In 1969, Just Us disbanded, and Krawinkel started a new band called Cravinkel with some of its former members, including Remmler. Cravinkel's folk and progressive rock influences did not break them into the mainstream, despite the release of two studio albums. In 1972, after only three years, Cravinkel disbanded.
Krawinkel subsequently got a teaching job, but still played guitar in several bands, including the Emsland Hillbillies and George Meyer & Company. In 1979, he teamed with his former bandmate Stephan Remmler in an attempt to get back into the commercial music business. After an intensive training phase, they formed the band Trio with drummer Peter Behrens.
Trio was a German band, formed in the small German town of Großenkneten in 1980. The band is most noted for the song "Da da da, ich lieb dich nicht, du liebst mich nicht, aha aha aha" (usually simply "Da Da Da") which was a hit in 30 countries worldwide. Trio was part of the Neue Deutsche Welle (or NDW); however, the band preferred the name "Neue Deutsche Fröhlichkeit", which means "New German Cheerfulness", to describe their music. At that time, as now, popular songs were based on extremely simple structures that were ornately produced. Trio's main principle was to remove almost all the ornamentation and polish from their songs, and to use the simplest practical structures (most of their songs were three-chord songs). For this reason, many of their songs are restricted to drums, guitar, vocals, and just one or maybe two other instruments, if any at all. Bass was used very infrequently until their later songs, and live shows often saw Remmler playing some simple pre-programmed rhythms and melodies on his small Casio VL-1 keyboard while Behrens played his drums single-handedly while eating an apple.
When Trio was on a creative break in 1984, he collaborated with Marius Müller-Westernhagen, playing lead guitar in his band. He was featured on his album "Die Sonne so rot" (The Sun is so Red) and went on his "Westernhagen" album tour in Germany. In 1985, Trio broke up.
In 1989 Krawinkel moved from Großenkneten to Berlin. In 1993, he worked with a friend Wilfried Szyslo who was a musician, on a solo album called "Kralle". Krawinkel had written the lyrics for the album entirely in English, but allowed another friend, Rio Reiser to translate them into German. He sang a duet with Nena on the single "’N Zentimeter Liebe".
From an article in a german newspaper about Trio: "Unter den Avantgardisten des westdeutschen Postpunk gehörten sie zu den wagemutigsten, formstrengsten und schönsten. Niemand sonst reduzierte das Format des romantischen Liebeslieds so erbarmungs- und scheinbar emotionslos auf sein Gerüst wie die niedersächsiche Band Trio. Niemand sonst – außer eventuell D.A.F. – machte so früh so radikalen Gebrauch von minimalistischen elektronischen Beats. (...) Die Haltung dieser Band, ihre schwer zu entwirrende Verbindung von Ernsthaftigkeit und Witz, ihr genialer Dilettantismus – all das ist aber bis heute ein Maßstab geblieben."
Thank you, Kralle. Thanks for the unique music. New, oblique, anarchic, funny - your music was something very special. You brought - together with the Trio - a lot of fun to the days of my youth!
Here´s their wonderful single "Halt mich fest ich werd verrückt" ("Stop Me Before I Go Crazy") (Germany only) with the flip-side "Lady-O-Lady".
Trio - Halt mich fest, ich werd verrückt (Single)
(320 kbps, cover art included)
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