The German Band (or Solo Artist) You Ought to Know, Vol. 5: Tomte

As I featured Kettcar in last weekend's installment, why not continue with their labelmates Tomte?

I may be a bit biased here, after all, I used to know the band's singer. I even shared a flat with him for two months. It was a true men's household. Complete chaos, you never could find anything. And although I've tried very hard, I can't for the life of me remember ever having done any cleaning there. We had the complete 1977 volume of the American Playboy lying besides the loo; he had rescued those magazines from the paper recycling container. The only thing that got on my nerves about living there was his girlfriend who sometimes came round and would say things like, "Don't you want to do some tidying up?" To which we would invariably reply, "Ummmm... nope".

Earlier, they had self-produced their first E.P. They had had the choice between having 500 copies made for the price of 500 marks or 1000 copies for 650 marks. They went for 1000 copies. "Are you mad?", I said to him, "You're never going to sell a thousand records!"

Two years ago, a copy of that record was sold on eBay for 125 euros.

And you know what? I own a copy. If times get really bad, I can always sell it.

Anyway, the music. If there was a prize for the most stretched-out vowels in musical history, "Ich sang die ganze Zeit von Dir" should certainly be on the shortlist. Seems someone's been listening to Oasis a lot:



If I drew up a list of my 20 favourite rock songs of all time, I'm pretty sure "Schreit den Namen meiner Mutter" would make it. After all, The Who never pulled anything like this off:



As a bonus for German speakers, here's an interview with the singer which is genuinely funny. He doesn't appear to be entirely sober: