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Die OEDIES

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1986 - 2006

Happy Anniversary DIE OEDIES

DIE OEDIES ('the dullies', from öde=dull,bleak), children's band, founded April 26th, 1986 in Bremen, Germany.

DIE OEDIES were Boris Hennig, Gregor Hennig, and myself, Florian Bömers. We started off by jamming on the instruments in their parent's house: piano, e-piano, guitar, children's organ, an analog, non-programmable drum machine, etc. I tuned the guitar down to make it a bass guitar.

Initially, all songs were created together: instrumentals with names such as Sound of Dreams, Sound of Music, Sound of Drums. Our first public appearance in the 'Bürgerhaus Weserterassen' was a successful start, but folks were demanding a singer.

So we asked a friend, Vera Hoppe from school, to join us. She came to a rehearsal, where we recorded our first demo tape. For a reason I forgot, she never turned up again and so Gregor took the singer's job.

Over time we got more professional: from our gigs' revenues we purchased synthesizers and drum machines, I got a real bass guitar. Also the musical quality improved rapidly. All new songs were composed by highly creative Boris and Gregor, which we refined in our weekly rehearsals. The musical style was 80's synth pop, with mostly political texts about stuff like the atomic bomb (Pikadon), native Indians in the USA (Solange), bad industrial food (Nr.5). In other songs we discussed the problem groups 'parents' (Eltern), 'school' (Schule) and ourself (I can't manage it, our only English song). We've also retained some instrumentals like Nr.1 which was our way of celebrating the split of German's widely successful soft pop band Modern Talking.

We got some reputation in Bremen, and we were frequently booked for children's festivals. Our 'albums' sold very well (in total about 300 tapes), and we were invited to create a music video, with a real cutter (for the song Nr.5). In the music studio of Boris' piano teacher we recorded a couple of songs, most notably a studio version of our notorious hit song Probleme.

DIE OEDIES fell apart after our last gig in September 1988. Gregor had more and more trouble singing at high pitch in the songs, musical taste shifted, and, of course, with 14 years of age, we weren't children anymore...