Day 369

Blueboy: one of my favourite bands is on Bandcamp. Their album “The Bank of England” is now available to listen on Bandcamp and that’s definitely a great thing. The 13 songs from their third and final album are here as well as their previous two albums and a collection of singles. Essential.

Señor Kino: “Estrella Fugaz” is the wonderful new song by this Hermosillo, Mexico, band. It is quite a surprise, I don’t think I’ve ever heard their songs before. The song is poppy, upbeat, catchy, hypnotic at times. The guitars jangle and the melodies are dreamy. Looking forward to their next release now!

The Gabys: here are three songs I found on Soundcloud that don’t have any info about them. They seem to be part of a cassette release, but that’s it. It doesn’t say where the band hails from or who are the members. There’s a photo of a girl, which I assume is the vocalist, and maybe even the solo person behind this lo-fi bedroom pop band.

Painted Shrines: this new project by Glenn Donaldson from The Reds, Pinks & Purples and Jeremy Earl have just released an album called “Heaven and Holy”. It is available so far only in digital format, but it is worth listening for sure. I am sure at some point someone will release their songs on physical format as it makes a lot of sense. From this album you can check out three songs for free, “Gone”, “Not so Bad” and “Heaven and Holy”.

Count Florida: now we head to Glasgow to discover this fine sounding band!! There are two songs that sound ace, “Hot Things” and “Blake”. There is not much information sadly, only that the band is formed by Argo, Isobel and Mel. I am a fan already. Will they release songs soon? I hope so. I look forward to seeing their songs on a 7″!

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Now we head to Germany, to discover The Benjamins.

On Discogs there are three releases listed for the band. I own one of them, the 1991 album “Chameleon Show”. There is another album called “Shanghaimehome” and a 12″ EP titled “Row a Little Harder”. I should track these two down eventually.

I honestly don’t know much about the band. I am hoping with this detective work I’ll be able to find out details about them.

The 12″ was released in 1990 probably by themselves. There is no label listed. The songs on this record were four, two on each side. The A side had “Row a Little Harder” and “I Know It’s a Dream” while the B side had “Dreams Stay Unfinished” and “Oldfashioned Love”. The record sleeve show three photos, three band members. On the sleeve we see that the songs are credited to B. Rinnert, U. Knape and W. Reinfeld. They must be them. We have last names, not first names, not yet at least.

“Chameleon Show” was released in 1991 on Sound Factory (RTD 359.0041.1. 28). This label was based in the city of Bochum. Did they hail from there? There was a vinyl and two CD versions of this release.  The vinyl release had less songs, just 12, the CD had 15. In the case of the vinyl the tracklist was “The Engine”, “Three of Us”, “Different World”, “Chameleon Show”, “Cheating” and “Hey Little Bird” on the A side and “The Only One”, “Nothing Can Harm Me Now”, “The Song is You”, “Venus”, “Letters to the Moon” and “The Engine Part II” on the B side.

When it comes to the CDs, I am not sure what is different between the two versions. One has a sleeve with a blue chameleon with a yellow/orange background, the other has a sleeve with a green chameleon with a blue background. Mine is the latter. The tracklist for both CDs seem to be the same, “The Engine”, “Three of Us”, “Row a Little Harder”, “Different World”, “Chameleon Show”, “The Only One”, “Words”, “Hey Little Bird”, “Venus”, “Nothing Can Harm Me Now”, “Show me the End”, “Cheating”, “The Song is You”, “Venus”, “Letters to the Moon” and “The Engine Part II”.

The artwork for this release is credited to Daniel Schäfer. The photography by Ina Schatz. The songs were recorded at Powerplay Studio in Berlin. They were mixed by Detlef Goy while the engineers were Christoph Rinnert, Detlef Goy, Eberhardt Köhler and Nico Beurmann.

We find the names of the band members too, Benjamin Rinnert, Uwe Knape and Bulli Reinfeld. Bulli played the bass, double bass and vocals, Benjamin played drums, electric piano, violin, viola, accordion, percussion and vocals and Uwe played guitar, electric piano, percussion, harmonica and vocals.

Other people that helped create this record were Hannes Maczey who played fulgehorn and trumpet, Thorsten Doll (from Die Testbildtester’s) who played tenor saxophone, Frank Barucha the congas, and Frank Kramer the trombone.

I start also suspecting that the band hailed from Berlin. The recording studio was there. And I see Christoph Rinnert, perhaps Benjamin’s brother, owns a studio in that city called Headroom Radio.

The other album, “Shanghaimehome” I am not sure when it was released. The cover artwork looks a bit more modern, so that may indicate it was the band’s last release. The songs on it were: “What I Was Probably Trying to Say (Part 1)”, “What a Great Time”, “Something New”, “Tell Her”, “Nice Smiling Dolphin”, “Whenever You See Me”, “Woman at the Counter”, “Choose Your Sides”, “Without You”, “Don’t Say Nothing”, “Going Through the Changes”, “Restless”, “Put on the Chain”, “Winterday”, “What I Was Probably Trying to Say (Part 2)” and “Give Me a Smile”.

It is also worth mentioning that the band appears on at least three compilation CDs. The first one from 1991 called “Total Fatal Vol. 2” out on Sound Factory (359.0091.2) with the song “Three of Us”. Then came “Berlin 1992 – Bands United” where the band contributed “The Only One” and lastly in 1994 their song “Row a Little Harder” appeared on “Sound Factory. The Compilation” (359.0035.2) on Sound Factory of course.

Other good details to add is that Benjamin Rinnert played violin in a heavy metal song by the Italian band Sylvester’s Death, and that Uwe Knape had been in a band called Roxid.

But then there’s more. Uwe and Bulli are these days together in a band called Hunting Island.

I find that Benjamin Rinnert contributed music to the “House and Desert” documentary by Anna Faroqhi. He has also presented his opera “Und das war gut so…” at the Neuköllner Opera and given music to a radio play for kids called “Tartarin, der Löwentöter”. So it seems he has been quite busy with music. Perhaps not indiepop, but still!

And that’s what I’ve found out. Quite interesting what they were involved afterwards but would be great to know if they were too in other indiepop bands? If there are more releases or songs by The Benjamins? And of course details like when did they start as a band, when did they split! I couldn’t find any of that!

Who remembers them?

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Listen
The Benjamins – Dreams Stay Undefined