THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
2,131) Ihre Kinder/Their Children — “Straße Ohne Ziel”/”Highway with No End”
From Ihre Kinder (see #553, 1,523), the first German rock band to sing exclusively in German, here is a “beautiful song” from their second album, with a dreamy, “deeper and more proggy feeling”. (DRÖMMARENADRIAN, https://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=1925#reviews) Kind of reminds me of Genesis’ Wind & Wundering.
“Road without a destination. . . . And everyone goes along like this, and no one knows where” (https://genius.com/Ihre-kinder-strae-ohne-ziel-lyrics) Hey, Exis, you should have tried Route 66!
Prog Archives states that “[t]heir music combined influences from the American protest song (Bob Dylan), white blues music from England and – in a cautious way – the typical German electronic rock music of the early 70s to a progressive and unique mixture.” (http://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=1925)
Silly Puppy explains:
Ihre Kinder . . . introduced the then radical notion of crafting rock songs in its own German language. The band was a continuation from the earlier pop band Jonah & The Whales . . . . After releasing an all but ignored [cover of] “It Ain’t Me Babe,” the band called it quits[. After] assembling a new team of noise makers vocalist/keyboardist Sonny Hennig and financier Jonas Porst . . . created a new band from scratch. . . . [Ihre Kinder] was one of the pioneers of German language rock and was met with great skepticism for having done so. . . . [Record labels] were [not] interested in this strange style of rock sung in German and [the album had to be] release[d] independently. Despite all efforts this debut album was met with little interest and the newly gestated Deutschrock had to wait a few more years for cultural acceptance.
Edgar Klüsener gives us more history (courtesy of Google Translate):
They played acoustic folk and rich blues, oriental-tinged psycho-pop and rock-hard rock . . . [m]usically, the[y] . . . hardly differed from other German rock bands of the late sixties. And yet they were the beginning of a revolution. Because [they] sang exclusively in German . . . . In the early 1970s, the German language was still a sacrilege in rock music. Anglo-American idiom was cool, German, on the other hand, was discredited as the tongue-lashing of the escapist Musikantenstadl yodels and shallow-pink pop romanticism. Anyone who was self-respecting as a German rocker sang in English . . . . [They] . . . relied on poetic lyrics, a kind of psychedelic German beat lyrics, but could also be very clear and precise when they took up political topics. In 1970, the readers of the magazine “Musikexpress” voted the group the best German blues band. By then, at the latest, the band was well known even to high school students from the laboring suburbs . . . .
Nuremberg was . . . the city of Photo-Porst. In the 1960s, Hannsheinz Porst was at the head of the family business. He was a dazzling figure, a communist dressed as a capitalist . . . [who] turned the market-leading photo discounter into an employee company. . . . [and] had undisguised sympathies for the [Soviet Union]. [T]he German press liked to describe [him] as a madman, a spy, an ideological arsonist, a crackpot or a traitor to the homeland who was dangerous to the public. [H]is son Jonas. . . . played the impresario and put his father’s dough into a recording studio that was to become the important nucleus of German rock culture – and he put it into the band Your Children. The group’s first album, financed and produced by Jonas . . . was initially rejected by German record companies as far too uncommercial. The prevailing opinion in the recording industry was that the English and Americans were much better at rock music. Who wanted to hear German lyrics? . . . . In the end, a record company showed courage. Philips released the album, but so half-heartedly that it almost went under without a trace. At least, Hermann Zentgraf, the man in charge at Philips, subsequently signed the band to the Munich independent label Kuckuck, thus paving the way for their continued success . . . . Empty Hands was the title of their second album, released in 1970. Their goal was to speak to people in their own language and thus encourage them to listen. [They] sang about things not everyone wanted to hear about. The song “South Africa Apartheid Express,” for example, was a haunting examination of the racist apartheid regime . . . .
Live in ’82:
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