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Actually, it is possible to let honesty and humanity flow into pop music without being labelled as a fake product in conformity with the business. No, the Fluids are much too decadent for this –that band which was formed in Koblenz, a town, then, calling itself the most boring in the country. This in turn would make it the most boring in the world: Germany, the country where they had and have to endure.
There, beneath a sad grey sky, two lost and lonely songwriters met, whose hunger for experience did never stop defining itself anew.
This very special story of a band that really may call itself never-surrendering will show you the evidence of being yourself and the importance of not doing what the majority expects you to do.
For many amongst you this may be the most disappointing experience in your lives, an experience which seems to be never fading and keeps you down: no-one listens, no-one cares of what you have got to say, and no-one has got a feeling of respect for your hearts.
So read this biography and be aware that you are not alone…
Be aware that being lonely could be a lovely looseness…
Be aware that life is rarely what it seems…
Be aware that love is more important than pure will, consciousness and even music…
Be aware that respect to every creature on this planet is the basic feeling without which everyone may as well be dead…
1. „Music was my first sex“ Where The Fluids raise from. / The Doors Experience. / “Voiceless Dreams in Valencia.” / Who are these people singing to you… First of all, there was a house. Or to be more precise, it was a rather old large building. This building housed a school, a, what the Germans call “gymnasium”, as which is a High School. Schools like this usually make pupils learn several things like History or Maths or Physical Education and so on which seem to be connected with ancient values like authority, duty, pressure, and competition.
For a small group of persons, these are not the values, which they want to build their lives on. This is not only an act of protest when some humans cannot assimilate with the vast discipline and stale repetition of a scholar system but it is coming from within their hearts. This is the place where the deep true feelings are born, which often get lost during “maturation”.
Some of these people are called “rebels” just because they do not fit in the values of authority, others become “outsiders” obviously because they are always in the minority in everything they do and say. None the less the well of romantic and anarchic feelings is the birthplace of every art and every innovation we admire.
And, even though this well, and particularly, the artworks emerging from it, are often praised in words by your teachers or parents, isn’t it interesting that the same well is disgusted by the things they do day by day..?
Describing Andreas Winkler, you could say, that he was a convinced outsider, a bit inexperienced and entangled, mostly feeling loose and confused.
Clearly, he was not at all a rebel and did never want to be one. Day by day, he trudged to this “gymnasium” as all the others did, without sensing that another lost soul wandered to the same odd place every day…
Often enough surprised by the rebel-like behaviour of his classmates, which appeared to be almost nice, he began to wonder about his own way and all the difficulties that would lie before him. He was astonished about how others managed life and lies and problems involved, and early felt a considerable distance between himself and the so-called “the rest of the world”: the beginning of that lovely looseness of being lonely.
Since his childhood he had been hurled in the music, perhaps because of this looseness and confusion, perhaps because of feeling thirsty after the beauty of life, a beauty that he, most often did not find in the people he met.
A piano in the corner of his parents’ home was his first object of desire, and he started to touch these keys avidly at the age of seven. It was not unimportant that he was merely alone in those years, avoiding people making him sick and tired, a shy kid who fell in love with the tunes of his dreams.
Soon, sensing somehow unbalanced about only playing piano, he felt a greed for composition which he enjoyed for many years, until he detected that music can even be so much more than this, so he threw himself into Jazz and Blues.
Finally he began to write songs although he did not know anything about vocals, playing guitar or even Rock ‘n’ Roll.
But there was a person close to him, full of energy, eager to sing and play guitar who had the intuition to form an important Rock’n’Roll band: This was Ruben. From the age of four, he had grown up learning another classical instrument, the violin, self-evident, when your parents are violinists in the Rheinische Philharmonie, the orchestra of Koblenz.
Ruben, a Catalan, son of a Valencian father and a mother from Barcelona.
This may not seem important, but it turned to be fate because his later band generated a preference for Spain… He’s a person of strong will and clear intentions, an artistic soul through and through. Whilst Andreas tended to a dreaming and somewhat vapid life-style, Ruben felt utterly inspired by night itself, staying awake in the darkness reading and writing, which brought forth his affection for night-life and an aversion to neglect one’s life by sleeping.
He, as well, turned away from his former instrument, but without giving it up all in all, dove through Jazz and Blues, finally to hold a guitar in his hands, singing a song into the air.
It was a really beautiful coincidence that he spent these days (“the most unimportant time in my life” as he later recalled) exactly in the same official building as Andreas did. But he experienced this whole time in a different way than his later band mate.
Most people could not resist the impression of him being another rebel –which may be correct if you suppose that everyone questioning so-called authorities is a rebel –but the two of them got in touch especially due to a mutual romantic tendency that later led to one of the most beautiful and interesting bands ever made in Germany.
But first of all, they had to come together! Although they were living in the same suburban village, and although they went to the same “gymnasium” they didn’t know each other, which was perhaps due to their shyness combined with the simple fact that Andreas was two years older than Ruben.
The two of them met for the first time in the early Nineties through a mutual friend who was in the same year as Andreas. This friend, Christoph Senz, who brought together the future Fluids-stars, also played an important part in the band’s development, as you’ll see later.
The fusion of these two musicians generated a deep friendship, and their love for music became their divine fate.
But you could not be more wrong if you presumed that the two guys were similar in character, on the contrary, their natures were entirely different in that time.
Andreas was a melancholic and thoughtful person, self-reflecting and watching his surroundings and his company; he was a clear-minded but fairly insecure character who was only slowly stripping off his confused and absurd search for any meanings. Ruben was enormously sensitive and showing an outstanding empathy for poetry (Kafka, Rimbaud, Nietzsche) and also for eroticism and drugs of all kind.
Both ways of life were unconventional but thoroughly different, so it seemed that an initiation was necessary to create a Supernova out of them.
“Let’s have a Doors Revival band”, Ruben said some day, and it really opened all of Andreas’ doors because he, as well, was fascinated of the hypnotic sounds of Ruben’s then favourite band. Maybe this was the initiation to be determined, and the Doors Experience were founded.
It is certainly no coincidence that of all bands The Doors stood godfather for their first mutual musical project.
This band has left an enduring and remarkable influence to the Fluids, not only because of their predilection for mind-opening drugs, Freudian dreams, shaman-like nightmares and Nietzsche's poetry, but because of this incredibly warm and direct sound, which you might re-detect in some organ-dominated Fluids songs... well, at that time they were merely inspired by the fantastic atmosphere Jim Morrison’s band had created; and it didn’t have anything to do, in fact, with Oliver Stone’s well-known piece of formal Doors history.
It may seem strange that young men of so much talent and creativity would not decide to form their own band. Indeed, they did not. Perhaps it was too early, and they were about to wait for their own band with their own songs as if for a ripe fruit falling off a tree. Anyway, they reserved their plans for the later Fluids and founded this kind of Doors Revival band which was in fact more reviving than any other cover band ever.
The band consisted of four people: Ruben singing –it was his first real experience on the mic–, Andreas on the keyboard (it was a really cheap one), Henning Vogt on the guitar, he’s a very close friend of Ruben’s (and Andreas’), and last but not least Fabian Siegismund on drums –in fact the only one of these fabulous four who had yet experienced playing on stage with a Rock band. Quivering of excitement, they started to rehearse in a grey cellar room of a local motor-car dealer, and they were getting better astonishingly fast.
Their first gig in December 1994 was a merely impossible one; they played in the back-room of an old man’s pub which was well-known for delicious food, cheap or even free beer and owners disregarding closing time distinctly. The gig was a success thanks to everyone involved –on stage and in front of it– being drunken and having fun with these popular tunes that weren’t played staggeringly well, to be honest.
The band’s first steps on stage were enthusiastic but inexperienced, of course, and especially Ruben had not yet found what he was looking for, it seemed.
But putting it differently, their first steps were inexperienced but enthusiastic, and everyone felt this enthusiasm from the very beginning. There was a keyboard player versed but not too self-confident and a technically weak but utterly likable guitarist backed by a strong and reliable drummer, and fronting them Ruben with a slightly decadent touch: –The Doors Experience, the first moves of a band.
After further gigs at school parties the band decided to walk on more courageous ways of playing live.
As mentioned before, Ruben is Catalan, and his extended family still lives in Spain, like his cousin Daniel Monsonis, who was also obsessed with Jim Morrison’s band. He was a music journalist and an insider to the Valencia Underground culture during this time, seeking his fortune as a band manager.
So, in summer ’95, he invited the band to Spain.
His activity and organisational skills gave them the opportunity to have five gigs in Valencia, Alicante, Castellón, and the surrounding area. One of those gigs in Castellon’s then most popular Indie club, Fraguel Rock. They also managed to gain attention of the local press, radio interviews and airplay. But best of all this was the Spanish audience.
German audience partly usually tended to stand around stiffly in front of the band, frowning with crossed arms, f. e. observing the technical skills of the guitarist. Parts of the audience would sit around somewhere else, shrugging, hardly caring about what the guys are doing on stage. Indeed, there were also enthusiastic responses, but usually people didn’t react to the music spontaneously.
In Spain, it was different. People danced and screamed and sang along loudly the well-known melody lines, throwing joints onto the stage. At some of the gigs people were rather reluctant at the beginning but, obviously, were convinced in the end. Well, they seemed to enjoy The Doors Experience!
The young musicians described their first appearance in Spain as a “fantastic and orgiastic experience of fun”, also because of the parties following the gigs.
They drove back home still feeling like Rock stars.
In February ’96, they went down to Spain for a second time, they played three gigs within three days, and it became evident to everybody that this was not only a regular combo playing somebody else’s songs. There seemed to be more about these guys, there had to be something honest and outstanding, something of their own. And so did Ruben and Andreas feel: they needed their own band. Their different personalities had joined and complemented each other, an ocean-deep creative friendship was born.
They knew that, a pocketful of beautiful songs were still sleeping in their hearts- they had already included some of their own songs in their live set: for example Andreas’ “Dead harmony”, an early blossom which would be part of the later fluid-set for a long time, beautiful and beloved. Besides, they had written two Doors-like songs together: “Death I” and “Death II”, savage and darkish funeral marches that Ruben decorated with altered lyrics of the German expressionist Johannes R. Becher.
The band had also played a version of Nirvana’s “Come as you are” –as they were really interested in contemporary Independent music as well.
Two Spain tours in July 95 and February 96 were enough for Andreas and Ruben to realise they had to resolve the Doors Experience; the rest of the band were quite stunned, still enjoying their unpretentious fame.
Impressed by Andreas’ “Dead harmony” and motivated by Radiohead’s “Anyone can play guitar”, Ruben picked up a guitar, for the first time in his life and wrote his first songs, among them “Horizon” and “Rose head lady”. Andreas was astonished of the natural beauty that slumbered in “Horizon” (a shady and mainly acoustic poem): now, he thought, future could start off.
Ruben and he recorded eight songs in their rehearsal room– in one night– where Andreas also play the drums. As if that wasn’t enough to do in a couple of hours, they also mixed the whole stuff on the following morning, of course, without having slept a minute...
The result of this crazy session was a private demo tape of the worst recording quality but with fresh and worthy songs, besides the ones mentioned before, there was Andreas’ ”Slide song” an outstanding, merry number with nonsense lyrics and a sunny Brit-Pop rhythm.
Of course now, they really needed a band, but forming a band, should be –and stay– one of the most difficult and frustrating problems the two songwriters had to face, until the recent times. First of all, they were looking for a new rehearsal room, a drummer, a bass player, and, of course, a name. 2. “Un-American Dream of life“ “What are you going to do with your life?” / A name, a band: fluid are born. / Enthusiasm and disappointment. / The first attemptFor Ruben and Andreas, as for everyone else at this age, there was the important question: “what are you going to do with your life?” and during this time they didn’t exactly know how to answer. Andreas had been rendering community service the fifteen months, that was approximately in the same period of time as the Doors Experience. After the service was over, he was not yet firm enough to only concentrate on music without compromise. Ruben had made his final examination at secondary school (“gymnasium”) and was stuck in a similar situation.Besides, it is a well-known fact, that parents usually expect from their children to start –and finish– studying or apprenticing themselves. So, Andreas started studying with interest (a mental attitude that vanished not very much later); he went to Heidelberg, a famous university town in South-West Germany to study philosophy and other stuff. Half a year later Ruben followed him, and picked up his studies on similar subjects.
But, apart for the first term, they weren’t too happy with their decision; their new lives seemed to move away from what they really wanted: both were reminded of past school days, and they could not cope with most of the students, who didn’t have the faintest idea of what life could possibly mean.
Of course, they still hoped to form a band, so they started to look for bass player and drummer in Heidelberg: but soon they realised that this turned out to be a nearly impossible task. Maybe it was only bad luck, but they did not get in touch with any musician of any instrument possibly suitable for any possible formation.
They decided to give up their search in Heidelberg and to found the band in Koblenz.
Christoph Senz, their mutual friend, who had brought them together, was a drummer- practising in his parents’ cellar, lonely and shy. Andreas and Ruben knew that Christoph´s drumming was based on more traditional Rock-stuff, but their impatient urge for a band swept away their first doubts: these three friends were highly motivated, and only a bass player was yet missing.
A female bass player –it seemed to be Ruben’s passionate dream, and that should come true in the end. In his words: “watching a band in concert with a woman on the bass, makes me experience perfect aesthetic. No other instrument gives such an erotic musicality to a woman. Handmade pop music needs women!” Thanks to that! The Fluids in fact seem to need a woman on the bass.
It is to say, that the band were completed by a wonderful slim female bass player; One of Ruben’s mysterious intimate girlfriends introduced them to Nadja Bruchof. She had started her musical life at the age of sixteen, playing the bass in several Underground bands. After a first meeting it turned out that they had the same taste in music (suede, Bowie, Morrissey); the band was now complete.
In the summer of ‘97, more than a year after recording the crazy demo tape the four band members were living in different towns, Nadja lived in the suburb of Koblenz, Christoph was studying in Aachen, and, as mentioned before, Ruben and Andreas spent their days studying or doing several more or less similar things in Heidelberg whilst their hearts remained in the small musical room that was animated by the band, every weekend, again and again.
Studying became more useless, more loathsome and more frustrating day by day, their time was invested much better writing songs and getting wasted at night.
Whilst it was just another amusing show for Andreas, Ruben began to hate, even to despise studies –and students, who were much too conservative, square, narrow-minded, cramped and ugly in his eyes.
In contrary, he felt his music and emotions were exactly the opposite to this students’ world, and recognised these two ways of life as different in principle, in the strongest way possible. So he was looking for a word which could express this music and emotions, and finally he found: fluid. It described –and still describes– the flowing individual, feelings, music, art, warmth, love, life... He asked the rest of the band what they thought about this as a name, and everyone knew instantly that this had to be the right word describing not only Ruben’s but everyone else’s feelings.
This word represented a number of true positive and romantic emotions that were clearly different from whatever they were expected to do or to think in any social context.
Fluid ‘s first small gig was held in a small music café somewhere near Koblenz.
The concert was supposed to be sort of a full rehearsal for the oncoming Spain tour which was organised by Daniel Monsonis again. Daniel was anxious about what happened to the ex-Doors Experience and how their new band would sound like.
The first two gigs in October ‘97 were a great success, in contrary to the full rehearsal –they made some friends supporting the “Automatics”, a popular Spanish Underground band.
But they did not have a proper and representative demo, for which they were asked very often. (That old tape could of course not stand their pretensions to sound and song any longer.) That’s why they decided to record the required demo CD after arriving back in grey Germany…
Well, it had been a hard and strenuous tour, they had been away for just four days, including there and back- travelling, and two concerts.
No surprise, they felt very, very tired arriving home, tired because of almost no sleep for a few days, tired but somehow happy because of the positive response they had received.
They instantly went into a nearby studio and recorded the four most important and beautiful songs of those early band-days: “Slide song”, “Horizon”, “Dead harmony” and “Rose head lady”.
It was an incredibly unpretentious, wilful and spontaneous single with an extraordinary front label designed by Ruben that showed a sperm-soiled condom on which somebody had stubbed out a fag.
“Slide song”, in this newer version, was turned into a Brit-pop-like guitar song still with its slightly absurd and merry tune.
“Horizon” was the same calm and acoustic poem it had been before, but the peaceful mood was destroyed twice by cracking walls of distortion after the choruses.
“Dead harmony”, their classic, still reminding of the Doors, but with a delicate elegance, whilst “Rose head lady” is a very British-like pop song, completed with ironical lyrics that were inspired by Salvador Dalí and his picture of the same name.
This record still offers an incredibly warm style, and although the band has, meanwhile, recorded loads of songs, this early pearl stays in mind remarkably and nearly timeless.
Suddenly, the first blow hit the band with an apparently perfect constellation: surprised by the group’s enormous resonance and the enthusiasm shown by Ruben, Andreas and Christoph, and maybe intimidated too by the immense potential, Nadja decided to leave fluid, to study social pedagogic in Cologne. This perplexed the others completely because she didn’t see (and we presume she didn’t want) that maybe she could have done both music and studies (in fact, it became difficult for the others, in the long run, too)... …especially Ruben felt a trauma having lost someone important.
This grief flew into a song he dedicated to Nadja later: “She’s playing in a band”, one of the Fluids’ first so-called pop ballads ending with the optimistic line “she will always be here” which indicates that the band recuperated meanwhile: but, in fact, it should take more than a year until they were complete again..!
They used the following time (winter ‘97 / ‘98) to send the self-produced demo CD to about fifty record companies in Germany and of course to Spain again. Besides they were looking forward to the next bigger Spain tour which was organised by Daniel Monsonis (again) for March 1998 –although they had not yet found a substitute for Nadja. One more time, the Fluids made a decision devoid of practical intelligence, because the search for a bass player turned out to be very complicated. Their mutual inclination for Spain and the lovely audience made them neglect Germany and playing live regularly in their own country. Maybe it is understandable that fluid could not play live in the usual way because of their complicated internal situation, but this proved to be a real –and bigger– problem than they were aware of, a problem whose urgency they defectively ignored.
An incomplete band realising an imminent Spain tour: instead of searching for a real band member they decided to take the first musician aboard they could get: a fatal mistake as they detected later.
The bass player they hired (we won’t name him here, you’ll see why) was a person whose musical identity –based on “Prog” or Symphonic Rock– did not fit to the band: but he liked their songs, and he was a good musician. It is to say, he played the songs well, and the guys thought that the differences between them would vanish gradually during this fairly long Spain trip.
Before travelling down to Spain, they had a sort of full rehearsal again, a gig in Aachen which Christoph had organised with lots of energy and power of persuasion. They were musical openers to a students’ party playing in front of nearly four hundred people just six or seven of whom listened to their music. Again, for some reason they had difficulties with the German audience, or maybe the audience had difficulties with them. Well, down in Spain, there was a different problem lurking in the dark...
Four gigs were announced, three of them in Castellón, Alicante, and in Barraca Bar (Valencia) where even the Stone Roses had played in the 80s, a band that especially Ruben likes a lot.
Between the first and the second gig the band enjoyed a whole week of spare time because one gig in Barcelona was renounced mysteriously one day before their arrival.
In this time, it became obvious that the Fluids and the man on the bass did not fit together. Although he had accommodated himself well with the music, he was shocked and disgusted by the band’s excessive way of life. Apparently, this maybe explicable feeling about his company turned into a personal aversion against some band members. After a few evenings of growing problems and fierce tension the situation escalated, and drunkenly he began to outrage vandalising in Daniel’s living room, insulting the band, especially Ruben (the one he hated most), until he tried to beat him up... however, his violence yielded instantly to the next bizarre scene when Ruben took the bass man’s things and threw them right through door and window out of Daniel’s flat.
There, lying on street and staircase, they didn’t stay for long, and the whole procedure may now be read as an alcoholic as well as emotional whirl. But yet, in his understandable anger, Ruben then decided to cancel the tour kicking the guy out of doors.
After getting clear-headed again indeed –which was really necessary– Daniel could calm down the Fluids, and he persuaded them to continue the tour because of the fans and the next gigs’ importance. So, on the one hand, next day the bass player excused himself and went off to visit a friend who was living somewhere in Spain, whilst the band had exciting parties without him, for the following days. On the other hand, they continued playing live but staying rather emotionless on stage: which is never a great experience for musicians who make emotional music and therefore need to have good emotional vibrations between each other. (And it’s neither a great experience to the audience.)
When they arrived back home a few days later, they severed the bass player immediately. In future days, they would be utterly zealous for having better relationship to band members, which is obviously more important than mutual taste in music.
Disappointed by the way the record companies were handling their first demo, the band spent a few weeks with song-writing which seemed to be the only key to their future. This happened in a special way different from how many other bands do so.
Then and now, it is Andreas and Ruben who write nearly all songs –and in that time, they wrote them all: but separately, never together. This may seem strange at first sight but it is a typical way, for sure, when a band makes enclosed songs of distinct character and feelings, and doesn’t spend much time jamming or playing solo stuff. So, a certain song mostly represents one strong emotion of Ruben’s or Andreas’, or at less the mood in which it has been written. But it’s interesting that fluid are able to present these different feelings as a whole, and, like every other good band, they combine these moods to one, and the songs to a style, which can be experienced in one of their live concerts, now even more than at those times.
After writing the songs, they used to arrange them in the rehearsal room later: but not having a bass man eventually turned out to be an enduring handicap, clearly because of a gap in sound as well as in style.
So, for a certain time, they had to ignore this gap, rehearsing as a trio, but finding some (keyboard) bass lines for a couple of new songs which they wanted to record again.
–You see that they were very impatient, yawing for change and improvement instead of only waiting around, rehearsing and seeking for the band’s completion which maybe could have been the better method. But, anyway, they were eager to present more recent material and to define themselves anew in a risky and bewildering way.
For this new demo they tried to record two new CDs –six songs altogether– in one session, and were quite successful.
In midsummer ’98, they went to the same studio as last time, and fairly acquainted with the studio equipment, they developed a richer and more modern sound. Indeed, unfortunately, the keyboard filled the place of the bass guitar, which is audible. On the first CD the boys seized three songs.
“Porno star” was the first one of them, an astonishing Indie Pop hit with future, staggering, zippy and refreshingly primitive with lyrics provoking either abomination or approving laughter. Then “Dark smiles” which is a mid tempo ballad with alcoholic decadent lyrics, including a really amazing pop chorus, and after that “Beautiful girl”, a gentle noisy ballad: songs with the power to be not only independent but also commercial. The front label expressed Ruben’s passion for decadent and provocative metaphors again: he designed it with a photograph of a machine-gun, below it the word “porno star” scribbled in a scrawling children’s writing.
We have to keep in mind that the Fluids recorded another demo which they did not design, but just wanted to use if “Porno star” was not successful.
It also contained three songs: “Revolver” –“one of our strangest and best songs”, in Ruben’s words, “She’s playing in a band”, you remember, the song dedicated to Nadja, wistfully nostalgic and beautiful like ecstasy, and last but not least “Mango” which you could describe as a darkish number full of ironical introspection in which Argentinean sounds meet decadent Fluid Punk.
Great songs, but listening to this recording you may wonder if they were on the right road experimenting with the studio, digressing from live sound and stuffing the recording with too many embellishments -additional keyboards, guitars, and effects, thus blurring the sound remarkably.
Nevertheless, they dispatched “Porno star” to bigger and smaller labels, organised a third Spain tour, anew without having a permanent bass player. While searching, they resolved to plan for a few gigs in Koblenz and the surrounding area.
…By the way, it was no problem to find a bass player, rather the Fluids were depressed that it seemed impossible to find the right musician and personality. They gave some club gigs in Koblenz with substitutes on the bass guitar who were fired immediately afterwards.
The lucrative third Spain tour was approaching when there was a man introducing himself on the phone as Dieter Schwan –a bass player who wanted to join them on the next Spain tour.
They fixed a date in the rehearsal room and a big surprise followed: this guy could nearly be their father, with greyish hair and more than forty years. At first sight, Dieter was not the right cast in a newcomer band. Ruben, distrustful and reluctant, raised many objections against this musician, fearing he couldn’t represent the band’s youthful and vigorous attitude. But the others persuaded him in the end, and well done. Dieter was the personification of a Bohemian artist, incredibly versatile and vivid, worth of having a biography of its own here. His love for cooking, human relations and his big sense of humour became legendary for The Fluids’ following years, and all of this he pursues until right now.
He had been a musician in many bands of different styles before, among them “Ed Geed” stood out, a Deutsch-Rock formation regionally well-known in the late 70s and early 80s.
His proficiency simplified rehearsing their live set- now altogether about two hours. In October 1998, they left Germany which was getting colder and colder, heading South.
As we can see, the Fluids were Spain-addicted from the start, not only because of Ruben or Daniel, but also because they felt this Mediterranean way of life was so much closer to their own than the German mentality; and actually, Germany was only their statistical home.
–What followed was an unforgettable trip musically as well as personally. In the first days, all of them felt a certain shyness and also the distance resulting from the age- difference, but these feelings did not linger. Musically, they harmonised, also because they had given a full rehearsal concert in Koblenz, as usual.
It became more and more obvious that you don’t need to be twenty-one to be able to play young music with marvellous passion.
The gigs in Spain became musical fireworks. Because of the empathic vibrations, they didn’t even need to adjust to each other, neither on stage, nor in their leisure time between gigs, which was very excessive; everything flew.
In Burriana they gave a spontaneous unplugged gig in a small sold-out club that pushed their fans into enthusiastic ecstasy. The “Porno star” single became an Underground smash hit in this area, and it is still played in many clubs and discotheques.
But there was a lot of disillusionment when they arrived back in Germany where no record company was interested in the new production. So they sent off some copies of their second CD (“Revolver”): but in fact, it didn’t change anything which was really inexplicable. They had the idea to gather all written refusals they had ‘earned’ during their musical lives –and there were still many to come– just to publish a book composed of them, which would fail to become a bestseller, but would relieve their own severity –and, it is to say, there were a few rare birds amongst them!
Anyway, the legendary Spain tour produced a real new friend to the band: Dieter Schwan who only had joined them for this tour but can be counted as a secret fifth fluid member from then on for years. His private and professional situation, and the age difference, too, made him leave the band, which was alright for the other three boys. But he took the part of a fully motivated energy spring as we will see in the following. 3. “All you need is satisfaction”A touch of success, and a glimpse of the future. / Fluid become a real band. Some changes are afoot. / Big and bad luck… While still searching for a bass player, they became aware that they had to change their concept. Firstly, their rehearsal room did not comply the professional standard of an ambitious newcomer band any longer.
It is understandable that they were allowed to make music only until 10 p.m. in Christoph’s cellar, harassing his parents’ nerves seriously. They came to the conclusion this situation needed to change, so the band had to leave this small musical chamber.
They were looking for a new rehearsal room and finally found one hell of a room – in a factory building of a bust company, 30 km outside Koblenz. There, rightly in the middle of nowhere, the Fluids established for themselves 80 square metres with their first studio equipment and even a little kitchen.
Of course, there had been a second reason for walking on these new paths. Obviously, it wouldn’t make sense anymore to record more demos by renting the well-known nearby studio simply because of the costs, but also because this short and expensive period of lease wasn’t enough to work in an effective and productive way.
This decision was overdue, but now they were about to leave behind this odd situation of not being able to make music whenever they wanted, and they too planned to develop their yet little studio. The time had come fluid could inundate their days with music irrespective of daytime or volume. And the time had come for Olaf Weitz.
Olaf had been reading the band’s announcement with interest, and they met in a cheapish suburban pub playing darts and drinking whine and beer. In the beginning, both sides were not totally sure if this combination would fit, but personally they liked each other from the first time they met.
Born in Altenburg (Thüringen), 28-year old Olaf had played bass guitar in numerous bands whose provincial mentalities and missing resoluteness nearly made him suffocate - a sensitive, complicated but imaginative and gentle character dreaming to join a non-provincial group. Olaf was looking for an ambitious and open-hearted band claiming music as perfection of an emotional vision. Apparently, he thought, these guys are not only talking addle stuff but they want to be –and, actually are– more than just a nice hobby combo.
Olaf felt the same about music: “and so they leapt off society’s stale and square-headed traditions together, out of anxious and narrow-minded bourgeoisie, right into individuality, into diaphoretic ecstasy”. Yep!
At their first together rehearsals (in January ’99), he played the songs as if he had known them for years. It was astonishing that he did not only find the perfect bass lines to their music immediately, but beyond this he started writing fluid songs, surprising and stunning the band (Andreas: “the natural beauty of his new and fresh songs did increase our spectre, and extended our emotional expressions!”).
Quickly, they were ready and able to give some gigs again.
But this time, there was no plan to go to Spain again, for some reason. It must be said, they didn’t think of it at all. Instead they got a call - it was Dieter again: “I think I got something running for you...”
Something had happened.
Dieter, like the band, had been disappointed by the ignorant way the companies rejected “Porno star” (which he really liked), so he gave this demo to a former friend and musical colleague who was a producer in Cologne now. It was nothing but an honest favour for the band whose music he loved and whose potential he saw since he had made friends with the boys during the past Spain tour. Well, it was a deed with special consequences...
A person from the music biz knocking at your door: many bands experience a sort of paranoia in a situation like this, so did the Fluids, who were shocked as well as enthusiastic. After all, they seemed to have found someone “from outside” who believed in their music like they did, and who was going to help them to realise their dreams...
Dieter Müller – the name of the music producer we’re talking about– was enthusiastic about two songs, “Porno star”, and “Revolver”, both also seemed to be smash hits to his ears.
Of course, he wanted to see the band playing live, to check their talents and, their visual capacities, a thing obviously becoming more and more important for anybody involved in the whole business.
They organised a concert at a carnival party of their former High School, taking place in the Koblenz castle where they were meant to be top-act, supported by a local teacher-and-pupil-band and a pupils’ metal gang.
It was their first gig with Olaf on the bass, maybe a bit too early to present fluid with this new cast to a producer and his company (an EMI A&R manager) –or maybe not.
Well, the gig turned out to be rather abstruse, this is to say, mainly because of the feedback disaster which was supposed to be their sound. Moreover, although there was a complete PA at hand, the mixer (and his son!) weren’t able to give a monitoring to the band(s) who couldn’t hear themselves efficiently.
Fluid, nevertheless, played their live set, apparently no-one noticed that they were nervous and bemused. They left the stage, annoyed and disappointed, but the producer was elated, for some reason which is lost in the mists of time now. He invited the band to record the two songs already mentioned professionally as soon as possible, and they were stunned and startled. ... We know that the boys were totally drunken that night…
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