Completing the discography of Georg Lawall, part 3, his Rock Opera from 1982, and the dreaded Boogie and Blues LP from 1979

What could have possessed him to put together a rock opera in the early eighties, complete with symphonic backing and rock band?  At least it's not a mystery why this was completely forgotten in the mists of time.  Had it been released ten years before when there was a taste for these things, it might have been remembered, at least slightly.

And the music?  well, it varies between good and bizarre.  So that's quite a wide continuum of possibilities and you can gauge for yourselves whether this enormous space allows the consistency one would earnestly hope for in such a project.  At least (I thank god) the songs don't run into each other or I would have never had the patience to listen to 24 minutes at one sitting, never mind two sides of that same or slightly less length.  As always, without any exception, one can expect a reggae song, at least one, on these early 80s German albums.  From a promisingly composed overture unfortunately too often these projects wind up sounding like off-off-Broadway musicals with overly simplistic numbers and too many different styles without any unifying feature other than, presumably, the plot.  (And what a plot this story must have had!)  There were even times when I was listening to this record where I thought my kids were playing some other song in the background close by, it sounded that chaotic.

One thing that absolutely floored me was the presence of Li Garattoni, the beautiful singer (her album is a masterpiece of progressive jazzy pop), as one of the characters Indi (she sings tracks A3 and B5), and the musicians aiding Georg Lawall include Fuchs, Goos, and Knut Rossler i.e. the members of the Fuchs-Goos Band posted earlier here.

As for the cover, it is simply awful.  The rainbow, the Michael Jackson-like character carrying a violin, the peace symbol a la Max Ernst surrealism-- it just doesn't work,  It doesn't work at all. 

I'll post the Li Garattoni song "Die Geier" which is in the B5 position, the way she sings the melody is quite entrancing:





Gotta love that beautiful voice.

Of course all music and lyrics were by Lawall.  I will not mention, to avoid embarassment, how the overture was recycled from 'Bittersuss in Stuttgart".

What about the other album, the Boogie and Blues?  I am chagrined to say I did purchase it, and I will post it after the other.  Luckily it was quite scratchy.