Sylvia's mother

Johann, bist du wach? That was the voice of
Sylvia's mother echoing through the house.
Now everyone was pretty much awake, Harry
thought. But when he looked beside him, he
saw that Sylvia still was in a deep sleep.
Did only the level of the noise wake him up?
Or was there something else? He knew that
sentence. That fucking had been the first
sentence from the German textbook. First
year in high school. Harry heard Johann
shouting back something unintelligible
from the master bedroom and stumble
down the stairs. He tried to wake Sylvia,
but she just mumbled a bit. Then he had
probably fallen asleep again. Whatever, he
wouldn't have gone downstairs on his one.

Hitchhiking

Late last night they had arrived at Silvia's
parents after a tiring hitchhiking vacation.
Harry hitched on his own to Italy with a
vague plan, and had met the sisters Sylvia
and Annette during a music festival in Siena.
But when a battle broke out with neo-fascist
youth, they fled to the station, and the three
of them spent the night there.



The sisters were on the way to Civitavecchia
for the crossing to Sardinia. Wether he fancied
to come along? Guess what? You betcha ... eh ...
sicher . For hitching usually three was a crowd,
but with those two women present, they never
had to wait very long for a ride. Especially
when blonde busty (Atombusen in German)
Annette thumbed. Sylvia looked like her sister,
but had black hair in a kind of bob style.

Sardinia

No ferry. One of those Italian strikes
again. So they camped for three nights
in the hall of the terminal. Harry in
his sleeping bag in between Sylvia
and Annette. On the boat, after they
had smoked some pot, gotten from
bikers they met aboard, Sylvia began
to make the first advances. That was
bound to go wrong. And indeed, on
a terrace in Olbia ...



the sisters were not just arguing, but
burst out squabbling, so loud that Harry
would have preferred traveling on alone,
but that wasn't an option ... one of the
two had to clear the field. Sylvia, the
oldest, got Annette so far to take the
next ferry back to Italy. After all it
turned out to be a fine vacation. Wild
camping on the beach, without a tent,
because they only had sleeping bags.



Harry, an army sleeping bag, you know,
with sleeves and a hood. Then there was,
the simple tasty cuisine of the island and
occasionally even a hotel room with a bath.

Blöde Kuh (stupid cow)

On the return trip the first difficulties began. They
had been standing there for hours without getting
a ride, suddenly Sylvia disappeared with an Italian
guy on a Vespa scooter. Harry walked to the next
gas station where she was waiting for him. He
sharply rebuked her ... blöde Kuh (stupid cow).



Somewhere in between Como and Chiasso he
left her standing there. They had to walk a great
distance, and had no more cigarettes. There is
a shop, go and buy some. You do it, you speak
better Italian. Alright then. But she was not
satisfied with filter cigarettes. Well, there were
no other. From now on you can do it yourself.
But ... you know what? Go to hell. Here's all your
stuff ... I go on by my self. Tschüss ... (bye)
Having arrived in Chiasso it started to rain when
she finally showed up. Passed the night under a
some kind of overhang. A hitch with a bunch of
hippies in a Renault 4 van, decorated with old
old carpets ...



brought them to a hotel the hippies had squatted
in Wädenswil, that had to make way for a Möwenpick
restaurant built over the Autobahn (freeway). The
next morning a truck took them to a Rastplatz
(picnic area) in the Hundsruck area and from
there it was a half-hour walk to her parents house.

Nice breakfast

They had slept in the bed in which
Omi (grandma) deceased a couple
of months ago, but that didn't bother
Harry. More than once he had slept
in a bed in which someone had died.
When they came down at around eleven
o'clock, mother Ilse, Johann and daughter
Kim were already busy preparing dinner.
And they gave Harry a pint of beer.



A moment later they had soup with marrow
dumplings, roast rabbit, potatoes (which
were called Kromberen over here), braised
chard and lamb's lettuce with hard boiled egg.
And for dessert: strawberries, red currants and
raspberries, accompanied by a bottle of white
Moselle wine. Nice breakfast.

Wash up

Gehst Dau mit mir spielen? (are you gonna
play with me) Kim wanted to know. Eh ...
well no ... nein. Everyone began to laugh
because in their dialect it had the meaning:
Would you do the washing up with me.
Spielen  was obviously spülen (wash up)
in their dialect. That was a narrow escape.
Now Sylvia had to do the dishes with Kim.
Harry had to go along with Johann to the
garden. To see the chickens (Hinkel ) and
rabbits (Hasen ) and he was asked to pick
some plums, so they could bake a Kuchen (pie).



You know how you get a rabbit so nice and tender?
Feed them dandelion leaves and clover, and the last
weeks much celery. After slaughter, marinate them
overnight in a bucket of water and vinegar. Make
them dry and then slowly fry in lard.



At four o'clock Kaffee und Kuchen (coffee and pie).
Again Spielen . Now Harry couldn't escape the
washing up. Then Abendbrot (supper with just
bread), watch Tatort (crime scene) on TV with
beer and wine and chips. Interrupted by the
visit of uncle Dingsbums (so and so), a brother
of mother Ilse, who started one hell of a quarrel,
so Sylvia whispered to Harry: tomorrow we're off.

Köln (Cologne)

They lived in a apartment building somewhere
between the Barbarossa Platz and the Voksgarten.
In Köln (Cologne). Together with her sister
Annette and her boyfriend Robert. She studied
art history. Had a studio where she painted
in the former chocolate factory Stollwerck.



And formed together with Annette and another
girl the background singers of some cover band.
Harry was interested enough to stay. He actually
studied electrical engineering in Eindhoven, but
hadn't been too successful at that. Most of the
time, he slept the day away, because he worked
as a roadie and driver for the space rock group
Entropy. He had called the boys in the band
that he would stay for a while in Köln. But then
we'll ask someone else. What ever. Houdoe (bye).
The Technical University in Eindhoven had a huge
lack of girls. And Harry was really up to getting
involved with girls.

Blue Shell

When Harry had run out of money, he lived
a while at Sylvia's expense. But to find a job?
The only temp agency was affiliated with the
University. He had asked Robert, who worked
at the WDR (regional TV station), whether he
knew something, but alas. Eventually he had
even found two jobs. Some evenings washing
dishes at the Italian restaurant where they
ate sometimes and Thursdays bartender in
the Filmdose, (film can). A bar where they
went, when they weren't going to Blue Shell.



Living together in a small room didn't
last very long. Especially since Sylvia
wasn't very good at getting up early in
the morning as well and then Harry got
the blame that she had missed another
important lecture. So Harry was very
relieved when he could rent a room with
the downstairs neighbors. A couple, he
was motorcycle courier and she a truck
driver, and therefore usually not at home.

Eindhoven

So he went to Eindhoven and borrowed
the Entropy bus to move all of his stuff to
Cologne. Sylvia had come along, because
in Eindhoven wasn't there the Van Abbe
museum? Yes ... had he ever been there?
No ... they had a work of a one her favorite
painters. Lucio Fontana. A monochrome
canvas with a vertical curved slash.


Concetto Spaziale: Attesa (1960)

Turned out they also had piece of one
Harry's high school friends, Piet Dirkx.
Painted cigar boxes stacked on a beam
mounted to the wall with a couple of
anchor bolts. His father had been a
cigar maker. But practical Harry was
more interested in Christian Boltanski.
Who had bought a student interior and
rebuilt it in the museum. Harry wished
it would have been his paraphernalia.



Although ... some of his things were quite
indispensable. Especially his electronics.
The self built Apple IIe, a Farfisa organ,
the Leslie box, redundant Entropy equipment,
including a Minimoog ... In which he had
hidden some hash to smuggle into Germany.

Museums

Art was a lot more interesting if you were
a little bit stoned. Thus Harry found himself
in the Ludwig Museum on the Wallrafplatz ...
and immediately there at the entrance ...
Duane Hanson's woman with a purse.



Eventually he went with Sylvia more often
to museums: the Kunsthalle in Düsseldorf,
the Abteiberg in Mönchengladbach and of
course the Westkunst exhibition in the
Messehallen in Köln-Deutz. And as top
of the bill a trip to Paris and London.
The queues in front of the Louvre and the
Centre Pompidou had been so long that
instead they went to the Palais de Tokyo
(Jean Tinguely and Niki de Saint Phalle).


Niki de Saint Phalle : Nana

Monochrome

In the Tate Gallery Sylvia had explained her
preference for the so-called monochromes.
The starting point was of course the struggle
of the painter with the painting. For example,
the black square of Malevich (not in the Tate).



Of course, he also had made white paintings
and others too, but Fontana had taken the
conflict to another level in slashing the white
cloth. Then black / white. Didn't he remember
that Franz Kline work on Westkunst? No? That
was her favorite black / white ... or no, there was
an even better one in the Moma in New York,
called Chief.



Subsequently, one color. Her preference was
Yves Klein. Hanging everywhere, including
here in the Tate. There was a whole cult around
that color. Klein had claimed the name, IKB,
International Klein Blue, and the composition
of the pigment. Even hexadecimal #002FA7.



Finally, Elsworth Kelly's multiple monochrome
colors. Several of his works here in the Tate.


Nine Squares

London

Light Red Over Black, 1957

They walked into the Rothko room of the Tate
Gallery. If Harry had been stoned, he probably
would have liked these paintings very much.
A classmate of Sylvia wrote a thesis on Mark
Rothko. About "the sublime" as an aesthetic
principle. Esoteric mumbo jumbo ... according
to Sylvia. In my opinion ... have you ever been
in the bath absent-mindedly looking outside
through the bathroom window? And then
closing your eyes and seeing the after image
fading in strange colors? That is what I see
in these Rothko's. Gee, that might make sense,
Harry thought. But then they were already in
an other room and their attention was drawn
by a number of museum staff members who
were carefully building a mountain of coal.
Afterwards they're gonna plant a Belgian flag
on top of it, Sylvia knew. Marcel Broodthaers.



Yet Sylvia would have to add someone to
her list, that she had never heard of.
In a gallery in Mayfair they saw a white
monochrome that was not a painting.
A light projection by James Turrell.

Studio

What did Sylvia paint herself? Her studio was
filled with hard edge acrylic on coated MDF
panels, but in "ugly" colors. Brown, pink,
dirty green etc. One of them looked like a
three color piece of ice cream between two
waffles. Chocolate, strawberry, pistachio.



Sylvia had bleached her hair a while ago,
but it had quite grown out. Harry was just
cutting it into a kind Kajagoogoo-style,
when the upstairs neighbors and a police
officer rang the bell because of the loud
music they played.



So Harry had moved the studio equipment
to Sylvia's studio. That also was a rehearsal
space for Sylvia's and Annette's background
singers group. Harry had seen a performance
in the Plenum pub, but he didn't like it at all.
No one was dancing.

Ute, Schnute & Kasimir

Harry really was developing a studio tan
because he barely came outdoors anymore.
He was taping and freaking over there in
the Stollwerck. But hadn't the first electronic
composers also begun with a tape recorder?
In California? The Mongolian prince
Ussachevsky in 1951 with an Ampex 400.



With the background singers he had rehearsed
songs by Exile, Lipps inc. and Donna Summer,
but the cover band wouldn't have it. He sampled
New Order bass lines, brought that to a Devo
rhythm and let Annette sing using a vocoder.
It didn't have to be too much Kraftwerk-like,
although to some extent ... people had to come
out on the dance floor ... maybe something like
Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft, Fad Gadget ...


Exile, Lipps Inc., Donna Summer, New Order, Devo,
Kraftwerk, DAF, Fad Gadget... YouTube Playlist

Yes, that was it. They could just go on stage
like DAF did ... with cassette decks. Sylvia
and Annette would sing and he operated the
equipment. First he had to come up with more
songs. The first appearance as an opening act
for the cover band was not entirely satisfactory,
but there were people dancing. Now he had to
find a name for the band and book a real gig
somewhere. A good name for the band was: USK ...
Ute, Schnute & Kasimir. (commercial bumper
comic strip characters). Of course the girls
quarreled about who would be Ute or Schnute.

Lyrics

And the lyrics to the music?
Harry got stuck after:

the windows, the windows,
the windows steamed up,
we don't care what
they're doing in the car ...

But Annette had gone to a bookstore
and came back with poetry by William
Blake and Alfred Tennyson.



With Tennyson she had found in
In Memoriam AHH among other
things, the following:

I can not see the features right,
When on the gloom I strive to paint
The face I know, the hues are faint
And mix with hollow masks of night.

Wilhelm Reich : Mysteries of the Organism

Also the film W.R. Misterije organizma by the
Yugoslav filmmaker Dusan Makavejev was the
inspiration for a great song. An electro version
of Hawkwind's Orgone Accumulator.



And something else too. As Milena did in
the film, Sylvia made ​​a cast of Harry's cock.
So that Harry himself was less necessary.
All in all they had enough songs for a
complete set. And through Robert they
got an invitation for a gig. Hard to believe.
To be the opening act for the Sid Presley
Experience. In the Jugend Zentrum Köln
Mülheim across the Rhine, near the Zoobrücke.

Tesla Girls

According to Robert they had to change their
appearance. And that name ... A-gen 53 wasn't
that a much better name? No way, Harry said.
That spermicidal foam suppository that gave
you such a horrible itching knob. Forget it.
He'd think about a new name. He once had
written a paper on resonant frequency and
then had read a book about the turbulent
life of Nikola Tesla. This combined with a
song by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
gave the new name: Tesla Girls.



Let's see what were the names of the daughters
of Tesla again. He turned out to have three.
What if they asked Sabine, the other background
singer to join the band?. So the successful
performance that evening began like this:

Hello, my name is Marica, I am from Plovdiv.
Hello, my name is Angelina, I am from Arad.
Hello, my name is Milka, I am from Novi Sad.

Eventually they even made a 12 inch
entitled: 7.8 cycles per second.
With a cover designed by Sylvia.



But just like the Experience, they didn't
have many gigs. And especially not after
Sylvia had left Harry for her teacher
Hans Peter. Later Harry had much success
as a deejay at Zum Umbruch. Always
ending the evening with KLF.
We're Justified and we're ancient ...