Vulture Dive - In the Great Tradition of Small Housewares (CD)
The NDW was and is a cult. At the beginning of the 1980s, music became colorful and new. Extraordinary hymns, songs that you just can't (and don't want to) banish from your brain even decades later. The Bochum band Geier Sturzflug played in exactly this league. Their hits are now part of the DNA of the NDW. They are as relevant now as they were then. The gross national product is called today
Gross domestic product is still being diligently increased and Venice is always on the brink of collapse.
In 2021 Friedel Geratsch vacationed in southern climes. The sea at his feet and the sun above his head gave him the idea to make another "Geier" ska and reggae album after all these years. At that time the hallmark of the band…. tackle not always pleasant topics with ease and cheerfulness.
With the idea of returning to their old love, Friedel and his comrades-in-arms Carlo von Steinfurt and Reiner Hundsdoerfer quickly found the support of the congenial new vulture Karsten Riedel. Karsten, who is also a successful theater musician and composer, fell in love with reggae and ska at an early age. With his band Natty U he managed to play several concerts in the home of reggae in the early 1990s. Even in Jamaica's capital, Kingston, he and his audience moved happily together.
Friedel & Karsten got started: "Ska & Reggae - In the great tradition of small household goods" was created within just 2 months. Songwriting, compositions, mixing and mastering included. 13 songs, two of which are unreleased and updated from the early days of Geier Sturzflug. All songs follow the "old" tradition: serious with humor in swinging melodies. Topics such as the legalization of cannabis (“Smoking weed boosts the economy”), climate change (“Five to twelve”) or graduates from the YouTube academy (“Doofmann’s assistants”) bear witness to the fact that vultures to dive are still uncomfortable today and are allowed to do so that too. For a line like "mankind doesn't get smarter because there's television"
("Totally Crazy"), other artists would sell all their belongings. At Geier Sturzflug they run completely casually from the pen. You have to love the combo for that alone. But there are more elements that make the album something very special. Just like Friedel's homemade cigar box guitars. They are usually used on his blues albums, but they can also be different. Reggae and ska with a cigar box guitar has certainly never been heard in the world before. Both are woven into something very unique on the album and, in addition to the relaxed attitude, give the songs a touch of southern blues, the sweaty swamps deep in the south of the USA. Even if "Ska & Reggae - In the great tradition of small household goods" should be the last album by Geier Sturzflug, the band is as we know it. But it also sets new accents that you can hardly resist. Who wants to say no to that?
01 Bob Job
02 lockdown
03 Five to twelve
04 Born to roll
05 The last train
06 The old brush
07 Totally insane
08 Hey Captain
09 Weed boosts the economy
10 Lastafahra
11 corners of the mouth high
12 goofy assistants
13 Modern is when you win