Home » News » 50 years before Danger Dan: Political rockers Floh de Cologne provoked from the left in the 70s | Ignition radio | Bavaria 2 | radio

50 years before Danger Dan: Political rockers Floh de Cologne provoked from the left in the 70s | Ignition radio | Bavaria 2 | radio

A guy with whiskers and a round cut, a guy with a leather jacket and glasses bigger than Herbert Wehner’s – but then such texts: “Why don’t the factories belong to those who work in them. Why then doesn’t the state belong to those who build them. Why. Why Doesn’t the world belong to those who live in it? ” A slightly coarse-grained video on Youtube, recorded for WDR 1971, clicked about 280,000 times.

The band is called Floh De Cologne, it was once famous and above all notorious. A colleague came across them. Like me, the boys come from the Rhineland, from Cologne. And they were lost, somehow, not really stored in the collective music memory, even though they wrote fabulous 50 years before Danger Dan texts like: “Assembly line, baby. Why should, who doesn’t work, also not eat? Why shouldn’t they eat of the tomatoes that are plowed in thousands of tons with excavators every year? Why shouldn’t he wear the clothes that others throw away if fashion wants? Why shouldn’t he move into the apartment that is empty because they are are too expensive? ” Three weeks later, and as the devil wants it, the internet tells me: Two of the musicians have not lived in Cologne for a long time, but now, like me, in Munich. We have to meet. Right away.

Rock as an absolutely substantive political protest

Fridolin Enxing and Dick Städtler – now they are finally sitting in front of me. Two of a total of five remaining members of Floh de Cologne. Fridolin has shoulder-length hair, wears leather pants and a sweatshirt. Thick green cord pants and a Beatles shirt. Dick’s hair is colored, he looks like a good-humored punk. Fridolin more like an old hippie. They haven’t changed much in the last 50 years, says Dick, the message is still the most important thing: “We started as a cabaret group, as a student cabaret. And that absolutely came from the content. You have to see 1966 as the Flea was founded, there was a GroKo and the Federal Chancellor was an old Nazi, Kiesinger. So that was all absolutely substantive political protest, which is why this group came into being. That was always the most important thing, the message. “

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Floh de Cologne were founded in 1966, four years before Ton Steine ​​Scherben. Die Flöhe were the first political rock band in Germany. Sang texts critical of the system and capitalism, in German too, long before Udo Lindenberg, Marius Müller-Westernhagen or Herbert Grönemeyer. It’s crazy to hear how up-to-date these texts are today, how little has changed – from climate activists to the Antifa: You could all find yourself in the texts of Floh De Cologne, such as the lyrics of ” The beekeeper “shows:” The beekeeper provides the bees with a beehive. The capitalist provides the workers with a factory. The bees collect honey all day. The workers make products all day. The beekeeper takes honey from the bees The capitalist takes the products away from the workers. The beekeeper gives the bees sugar in exchange. The capitalist gives the workers wages for it. “

No mainstream, no sales figures and no exploitation chains

In the seventeen years of their career, Floh De Cologne have given thousands of concerts all over Germany. And doing everything myself. From dragging amplifiers to merchandising. The band had no roadies, the class struggle forbids that, as Dick says: “That was a conscious decision of us. We did the rock opera ‘Profitgeier’ against the exploitation of apprentices and then didn’t want to exploit our own roadies. We If they couldn’t have paid straight away, the five of us could only live on. We played in Fehmarn, that was the Love & Peace Festival, the German Woodstock, together with Jimi Hendrix. There was a PA for the very first time on German soil (Public address, large sound system). It came over from England to the Isle of Men, where the festival was a week before. And everyone was amazed at what a PA actually is. We have never seen that before. Back then we only had small amplifiers and vocal systems. “

Floh de Cologne were on the same stage as Jimi Hendrix, but they never wanted to be rock stars in the traditional sense. No backstage groupies, no expensive cocaine, and above all: No compromises, says Fridolin. Mainstream, sales figures and exploitation chains – Floh De Cologne tended to despise all of this, says Fridolin: “We would have never, let’s say, switched to a more pleasant business. The ‘Lokomotive Kreuzberg’, for example, became Spliff. They had great success together, also with Nina Hagen. But we would not have made songs like ‘Carbonara’. That would be too pleasing to us, too apolitical. It was then about sales figures. And for us it wasn’t about sales figures, but about recruiting members for a left-wing movement. One should help change society and with Carbonara you are not changing society. “

“They thought we were the RAF or something”

So: get rid of the carbonara – but what there was, that was sometimes a real riot, says Dick: “We were banned from performing in the 60s, and also in the early 70s. There were punctured tires, we were attacked by Had NPD people and we sometimes had to be protected if they wanted to storm the hall. But that calmed down over the course of the 1970s, thank God. ” When the RAF went into the armed underground and the German autumn shook the republic, Fridolin and his colleague from Floh de Cologne really had to be careful: “When you are at gas stations, long-haired as we looked, with a truck and a car drove up and then also changed the driver’s seats, then the gas station attendant quickly called the police. Then you were surrounded on the highway and suddenly police cars came from the front and back, with submachine guns, because they thought we were the RAF or something. “

Today no more bands are arrested for having long hair. If you overdo it, you can end up on the index with your texts like doctors. But for a while, they might even have seen it as an award. Neo-Nazis are still around, so we just have to ask Danger Dan or Feine Sahne Fischfilet. But the fleas were spared one thing – the digital mob, the maddened shitstorm that circles you online like the police officers on the autobahn in the past. From today’s perspective, many of the texts by Floh de Cologne have enormous shitstorm potential, for example: “The children serve to maintain the state as a supply of workers, soldiers and new birthing machines. So girls spread their legs, Strauss needs CSU voters “. Fridolin says: “There would be a lot going on in terms of language, outrage among neo-lefts or ‘lifestyle lefts’ for sure. The people would be amused. So such lines would not be written today.” Dick adds: “We weren’t politically correct back then. We still are today.”

Still politically incorrect and communists to the core

Danger Dan from the Antilopen Gang, had to put up with massive criticism because of his song “This is all covered by artistic freedom”, but he has also been celebrated for it. Fridolin and Dick have long outgrown it. They still make music, the old fleas, but without rioting and bans on performances. You have remained true to yourself, have not changed. But the world around them. They are still politically incorrect, communists to the core and proud of what they have achieved musically. Only that with the abolition of capitalism, well, that didn’t really work: “These profit vultures are now turbo profit vultures and indeed they have become even more extreme and rabid, even more internationalist and even more globalized. Our term ‘professional animals’ from rock opera from 1970 has passed into German language usage. Of course we are proud of it, but we are not proud of the fact that there are still profit vultures. “

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