Various Artists: Made in Leverkusen

I was born in Cologne/Germany. Although Cologne is widely in peace with the cities surrounding it, there is however a strong rivalry with the neighbouring city of Leverkusen. Naturally, as a loyal citizen of my hometown I share this sentiment. This is fairly easy since Leverkusen is indeed a pretty boring city mainly consisting of the infrastructure of the Bayer drug company.

I had to pay my dues to the city though after finding the private pressed record  “Made in Leverkusen”  that reflects the musical scene of Leverkusen in the mid seventies. This scene might have been limited but was great nevertheless. Be it the most famous artist on the record Wolfram Brunke with his Gary Pacific Orchestra Outfit and some solid funk music, the equally funky inFormation Media Band, or the psych guitars of Quasimodo. Well, in the end Cologne won again. We had Can during this time, but “Made in Leverkusen” saves Leverkusen a well deserved second rank.

Edit: I actually wrote the review before I recorded the songs and I hadn’t heard the record for a while. I remembered side a to be nothing but great while I recalled the b-side to be relatively lame. After listening to it again today while recording I found another great song though: Playing a cover version of Georgia On My Mind surely ain’t too creative but the version is lovely especially if you make it to the first one or two minutes.