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17 Hippies play by their own set of rules
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Global Rhythm, 17 Hippies play by their own set of rules >>
Prenzlauer Berg is a bustling section of Berlin just north of the town center and away from the usual tourist haunts. The neighborhood, once part of East Berlin, offers cheap rent and a hip cachet, making it a haven for students, artists, intellectuals and immigrants. It’s also home to the Kulturbrauerei (Culture Brewery). Built in 1842, the red brick complex operated as a working brewery until the 1960s, and it’s now a protected landmark. Spread over several square blocks, it conceals a half-dozen small courtyards and a warren of inexpensive offices and studios,along with a café, theater, even a grocery store—a cozy village hidden in a bustling city.
Back in one corner is the 17 Hippies headquarters: two large, open rooms—the first with a small kitchenette and large conference table, the second with offices and a recording studio. Several desks are pushed together into a giant workspace for band members who double as publicist, manager, graphic designer, webmaster, and online retailer. On the opposite wall, a clutch of tour gear is stacked near the small studio where the group’s latest CD, Heimlich (Secretly), was recorded.
Heimlich, in fact, has all the earmarks of the Hippies. Their second studio effort and their first U.S. release, the album embraces a wide range of influences from chanson to alt-country, Balkan to beerhall—and beyond. With bittersweet lyrics sung in French, English and German, and with catchy melodies played on a dizzying array of instruments, it’s a mature (if such a word can be used with this zany outfit) set that highlights the growing subtlety and complexity of the Hippies’ original material.
Although they’re well-known in Germany and other parts of Europe (France, Spain and Russia in particular), until recently the group’s only American appearance had been in Austin, Texas, where they played the South By Southwest Music Festival in 1998. All that changed this past fall on the heels of their first American tour, which included dates at the Chicago and Lotus World Music Festivals, the Kennedy Center and the Knitting Factory, among others. For the band’s Christopher Blenkinsop, the tour caps a long and arduous journey that began more than 12 years ago.
“I was visiting friends in Ireland,” he recalls, “and in Dublin on Sundays, if you don’t want to go to the church, you go to the pub and you drink and you play—you never just listen. You’ve got different generations, from kids hardly able to hold a fiddle to grandpa who knows every tune but can’t play anymore because of arthritis. And you’ve got this scene of someone getting up from the table, going up to the bar, tapping someone on the shoulder, giving him the violin and he sits down and plays. We were just fascinated by this.”
Back in Berlin, Blenkinsop and singer/accordionist Kiki Sauer, a couple at the time, wanted to re-create that Dublin experience. “The idea was, you bring your three tunes, I bring my three tunes, and someone else brings three tunes, and then we have a repertoire of nine songs we can play,” Blenkinsop says of the early days. “It wasn’t a band. It was just a group of people wanting to learn stuff and play.”
In the midst of all this creative energy that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Hippies bounced along, attracting a group of players that varied in size from a dozen to as many as 30, along with a growing crowd of ardent fans. Gradually the musicians introduced an even greater assortment of instruments—violin, cello, accordion, clarinet, flute, recorder, trumpet, trombone, saxophone, euphonium, spoons, musical saw, bass, ukulele, banjo, triangle, mandolin, balalaika, guitar, harmonica, Irish bouzouki, Persian hammered dulcimer, harmonium, castanets—all acoustic, so the band could play anywhere, any time. Whether it was a regular pub gig, a backyard party or a wedding, 17 Hippies would be there, in full tilt and full stride.
“We just went for the beer and the fun and the sensation of someone actually liking our music,” Blenkinsop laughs. “After the first half-year, we were playing six or seven times a week. [It seemed like] suddenly everyone was marrying.”
The influences were equally diverse: Cajun, Balkan, Celtic, Klezmer and other world styles would mesh together, with a song plucked from the background of a Fellini film (the group’s popular and insistent trademark tune, “Saragina Rumba”) mixed with the rock, jazz and classical music various members had played before. It was an odd but compelling hybrid—one the French dubbed “Berlin Style,” and which these days in Berlin is often simply referred to as “17 Hippies Style.”
The Hippies continued as a loose amateur outfit throughout the ’90s, looking for nothing beyond fun and a few beers. Like so many Chapters in the Hippies saga, this was something they backed into. “The first album (1997’s Rock ‘n’ Roll 13) was actually just incidental recordings,” Blenkinsop notes. “We put them out on a CD, not because we wanted to do a CD, but because people were asking for stuff.”
Then the French world music label Buda Musique offered to distribute their CDs and help with booking gigs in France. It was a stroke of luck, but it also meant a major round of soul-searching for what until then had been a changing group of players with varying levels of skill and commitment, as well as distinct ideas about what the Hippies were supposed to be.
“That was when the ‘plan’ thing changed,” Blenkinsop explains. “We couldn’t play on a ‘who comes, comes’ basis anymore because we needed to know to book these gigs in advance. So it was actually this dividing line. Do we want to dedicate ourselves? Is it just the thing you like to do or is it the thing you have to do? Is it a company? Who owns the rights to all this? To some people it was, ‘The rights? What the f*** do you mean? I don’t want to talk about rights. I just want to make music.’”
Still, it’s one thing to decide you’ve gone pro, and quite another to be recognized as such.
“Had a company wanted to release our albums,” Blenkinsop says, “we might have thought about it. But nobody did. In Germany, the professional side of the business basically ignores us completely. We’ve never had an offer from one German company. Not one.” As a result, the Hippies have stayed a largely self-contained unit, handling their own production, graphic design, publishing, website, management and more.
The sun is setting and Blenkinsop, as much a whirlwind in conversation as he is onstage, now sits in shadow, somewhat spent and pensive. We chat as I pack up, and the conversation turns to art. “You know, I don’t really believe there’s any such thing as ‘Art,” he says. “Maybe some guys like Van Gogh were artists, I don’t know. But we’re like…court jesters. Our purpose is to entertain. You can’t force people to care you have to draw them in. You have to sort of decorate the room a little.” He pauses a moment, looking away. “Which is kind of sad actually,” he concludes. “You’re not really Lancelot. You’re just the guy in the funny little hat.”
-- by Chris Heim 02/13/08 >> go there
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