 |  |
Well, it all started in November 1994 at the Musikhalle in Hamburg. I was there to listen to Mozart's requiem. While I was queuing for a ticket my eye caught a face I knew back from school times. It was the face of Mathias Boehme, a guy I had also met in some rehearsal rooms during my first attempts as a drummer in local school bands some years ago. Actually, he was playing the bass and I was looking for some cool guys to form a band. This is the point where I should normally say: ‚and the rest is history...‘ but we never got famous and this is why the rest isn‘t history and I have to explain it to you. Surely, one of the many reasons why we didn't get famous was that we never found this damned third guy who would really fit us to make the thing complete. But anyway, we found some funny guys and the bands we formed were not that bad. And this is the story of the first serious band with me singing and playing guitar and Mathias playing bass: the story of Colour Me Pop. In spring of 1996 after trying out several drummers we finally met Andree and René Niemann. So you might wonder:‘..but these are two guys, one is playing drums, but what does the second one do??‘. Well, René was playing the drums and Andree was playing some strange thing called Hammond. I was quite sceptical about this first, but then we really enjoyed the first rehearsals and made up our minds to form a band. Furthermore, this was the time of Britpop and we all liked the good old 60‘s stuff. In fact, the organ gave us a very special sound. After spending several weeks in the comfortable rehearsal room of Andree and René (they even had a coffee machine and a sofa corner unit) our first quite naive britpop songs were composed. And in June 1996 we played our first gig in Hamburg, full of nervous energy.
The first gig of Colour Me Pop at LOGO Hamburg in June 1996. They were shy and strangely dressed.
Especially I was nervous because it was my first gig as a singer and guitarist. So most of the time we were looking down to the floor and prevented ourselves from talking too much to the audience in between the songs. But at the end of the gig Andree handed out some candies among the audience and so they liked us. We learned several things from that gig. First of all, shirts in green, red and yellow are not suitable for rockstars, one could also say: they really suck. Secondly, I had to talk to the audience. And thirdly, we needed to make our songs rock more. So we did. And in summer of 1996 we made our first demo. For this purpose we asked some very very patient guy called Ronny to record our music.
Ronny after many hours of recording our demo. This guy was really patient!
CMP discussing the balance between guitars and Hammond organ.
I still remember Andree trying to reach Ronnys mixer to put up the volume of his Hammond in the mix all the time. You don‘t have to listen very carefully to hear this on the tape. But anyway, we took this tape to get gigs and we played a lot of gigs. Starting at Hamburgs Prinzenbar together with some girlie band from Finland called ‚thee ultra bimboos‘. They couldn't really play but they were looking very cute and had really good equipment (this is where Mathias played his first orange amp). In 1997 we played around Hamburg, in Hamburg and in Berlin improving our performance step by step.
CMP playing live in Schwarzenbek near Hamburg in February 1997. As you can see Mathias significantly improved his outfit. Actually, already during autumn of 1996 he became Black Man Boehme.
But we still had no adequate demo and there were some nice new songs to be recorded. So we were quite happy to meet a guy in Berlin who offered us recordings under professional conditions for a non-professional prize. He seemed to like our music. Just after Christmas 1997 we took all our stuff and drove to Berlin once again. At this point I have to thank our mate Olaf Danzer once again for giving us accommodation during our Berlin visits. The following days we spent in a dance hall surrounded by a lot of mics playing our songs again and again.
Berlin recording session at the very end of 1997.
Thanks again to Juergen Hendelmeyer for this nice facility and to
Olaf Danzer, the guy who always gave us accommodation.
Actually, this took a very long time, because at this time most of our songs were at least 6 minutes long. This is why we didn‘t manage to also mix the songs and had to drive home just with a rough mix. Unfortunately, we never got back to mix the songs, because we split up just three months later.
Some big fan of our hammond sound photographed at the Scheeßel festival in 1998
The reasons why we split up at this point should not be discussed here, but let's just sum it up and say we had different ideas of the way to get famous...but anyway, sometimes you might still meet people wearing Colour Me Pop T-Shirts at music festivals in Germany.
COLOUR ME POP:
me (voc/git), Renee Niemann (dr),
Mathias Boehme (bs), Andree Niemann (organ)
Well, it all started in November 1994 at the Musikhalle in Hamburg. I was there to listen to Mozart's requiem. While I was queuing for a ticket my eye caught a face I knew back from school times. It was the face of Mathias Boehme, a guy I had also met in some rehearsal rooms during my first attempts as a drummer in local school bands some years ago. Actually, he was playing the bass and I was looking for some cool guys to form a band. This is the point where I should normally say: ‚and the rest is history...‘ but we never got famous and this is why the rest isn‘t history and I have to explain it to you. Surely, one of the many reasons why we didn't get famous was that we never found this damned third guy who would really fit us to make the thing complete. But anyway, we found some funny guys and the bands we formed were not that bad. And this is the story of the first serious band with me singing and playing guitar and Mathias playing bass: the story of Colour Me Pop. In spring of 1996 after trying out several drummers we finally met Andree and René Niemann. So you might wonder:‘..but these are two guys, one is playing drums, but what does the second one do??‘. Well, René was playing the drums and Andree was playing some strange thing called Hammond. I was quite sceptical about this first, but then we really enjoyed the first rehearsals and made up our minds to form a band. Furthermore, this was the time of Britpop and we all liked the good old 60‘s stuff. In fact, the organ gave us a very special sound. After spending several weeks in the comfortable rehearsal room of Andree and René (they even had a coffee machine and a sofa corner unit) our first quite naive britpop songs were composed. And in June 1996 we played our first gig in Hamburg, full of nervous energy.
The first gig of Colour Me Pop at LOGO Hamburg in June 1996. They were shy and strangely dressed.
Especially I was nervous because it was my first gig as a singer and guitarist. So most of the time we were looking down to the floor and prevented ourselves from talking too much to the audience in between the songs. But at the end of the gig Andree handed out some candies among the audience and so they liked us. We learned several things from that gig. First of all, shirts in green, red and yellow are not suitable for rockstars, one could also say: they really suck. Secondly, I had to talk to the audience. And thirdly, we needed to make our songs rock more. So we did. And in summer of 1996 we made our first demo. For this purpose we asked some very very patient guy called Ronny to record our music.
Ronny after many hours of recording our demo. This guy was really patient!
CMP discussing the balance between guitars and Hammond organ.
I still remember Andree trying to reach Ronnys mixer to put up the volume of his Hammond in the mix all the time. You don‘t have to listen very carefully to hear this on the tape. But anyway, we took this tape to get gigs and we played a lot of gigs. Starting at Hamburgs Prinzenbar together with some girlie band from Finland called ‚thee ultra bimboos‘. They couldn't really play but they were looking very cute and had really good equipment (this is where Mathias played his first orange amp). In 1997 we played around Hamburg, in Hamburg and in Berlin improving our performance step by step.
CMP playing live in Schwarzenbek near Hamburg in February 1997. As you can see Mathias significantly improved his outfit. Actually, already during autumn of 1996 he became Black Man Boehme.
But we still had no adequate demo and there were some nice new songs to be recorded. So we were quite happy to meet a guy in Berlin who offered us recordings under professional conditions for a non-professional prize. He seemed to like our music. Just after Christmas 1997 we took all our stuff and drove to Berlin once again. At this point I have to thank our mate Olaf Danzer once again for giving us accommodation during our Berlin visits. The following days we spent in a dance hall surrounded by a lot of mics playing our songs again and again.
Berlin recording session at the very end of 1997.
Thanks again to Juergen Hendelmeyer for this nice facility and to
Olaf Danzer, the guy who always gave us accommodation.
Actually, this took a very long time, because at this time most of our songs were at least 6 minutes long. This is why we didn‘t manage to also mix the songs and had to drive home just with a rough mix. Unfortunately, we never got back to mix the songs, because we split up just three months later.
Some big fan of our hammond sound photographed at the Scheeßel festival in 1998
The reasons why we split up at this point should not be discussed here, but let's just sum it up and say we had different ideas of the way to get famous...but anyway, sometimes you might still meet people wearing Colour Me Pop T-Shirts at music festivals in Germany.
COLOUR ME POP:
me (voc/git), Renee Niemann (dr),
Mathias Boehme (bs), Andree Niemann (organ)
| 
