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THE MAGIC INTERVIEW 01-13: LORD LITTER |
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A few years ago, Don Campau asked me to write a few words about Lord Litter for his Living Archive Of Underground Music, here's what I said; "If you say the word ‘legend’ is bandied around too much these days, you’ll be accused of using a cliché. Even to say ‘but for some people, no lesser word than legend will do’ has become a cliché in its own right. Lord Litter, however, defies ALL clichés, because he IS Legend. With a capital L. I don’t believe there is a person on the planet who has done more for the cause of true independent music. Jörg Dittmar für Präsidenten!" And, I promise you, that was no exaggeration, this guy is special, and it was a huge pleasure catching up with my old friend... |
 MM:
My first
connection with you would have been through Stephen Parsons’ BBP Records, a
flyer from whom had turned up in my mailbox, circa the middle of 1991, so
I’d sent him a tape. He turned out to be the English wing of something
called Kentucky Fried Royalty which seriously caught my attention; “KFR is a
non-profit organisation,” began the flyer, “the aim is international
communication between the artists and the audience.” Intrigued, I prepared
nice little packages for every wing of it. You, of course,
were the KFR News Department, though I gather you simply became KFR Germany/Europe
after Guido Erfen’s involvement ceased. Then there was KFR USA in the shape
of Don Campau, still highly active to this day, and KFR South America, run
by Carlos Alberto Alonso, a name I’ve not heard in many years. What are your
memories of your involvement with KFR?LL: ha .. we sure wanted to change the world!!! .. at least I did … and maybe Stephen .. he distributed all these anarcho punk bands .. no .. I think we ALL wanted to offer something really different .. something that would go along with a 4-track cassette recorder. Music/culture back onto a “folk” level. YES - I really think this idea was somehow global these days – anti establishment – creating unique own structures. That made it easy to find people interested in KFR all over the world .. if I remember that correctly there was even a group of people involved in South Afrika and in Japan .. putting the KFR logo onto their tapes etc. NON PROFIT!! .. yeah .. what we somehow didn’t realise, non profit means not earning money!! I put lots of my own money into these things and called it non profit … yep .. it also was a getting together thing! .. I met Don Campau .. Stephen Parsons .. Guido Erfen ..Mick Magic(!!!) … Toshiyuki Hiraoka (came from Japan!), who travelled Europe with his guitar on his back .. we had a quite big festival in Cologne and several in Holland and .. and ..and … suddenly it was all over .. one got married .. one got bored . one wanted “to make it” … not just the KFR people but “everybody”… the revolution failed .. as usual .. disappointed me? NO!! .. it put me on the right track!!
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Yes, we really did do it all with things called 'typewriters' in the old days... MM: Beginnings; they seem a good place to start, I think. You are actually a major pivotal point in the whole story of Music & Elsewhere, now there’s a responsibility, eh? The best way to put it would be to describe you as my “entry point” to the global underground movement, thus inspiring me to move from purely involvement in my own projects to setting up an international label and opening the doors to the whole world. I was quite amazed at the scope of the movement and intrigued at how it may have evolved, what do you recall of your own early involvement, how it came about and how it affected what you did? |
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LL: I was in the music biz these days .. well .. we had a management company, managing Berlin bands. Bands we liked, unknown bands. The idea was to keep them as free as possible to keep producing whatever they were producing. The spectrum was from electro pop to melodic hard rock. We organised concerts, travelled to the records biz scene, which was mainly in Hamburg these days, we organised recording dates at big studios, we … it was the early to mid 1980s and the music biz had become a calculating machine .. and I started to realise it will never ever lead to something .. producers adding fashion sounds over night .. the famous DX7 bell sound .. remember? … singer needs a new hairdo .. that was the time I found a booklet entitled “The Independent Kontakter” – I picked one address .. it was Matthias Lang, Irre Tapes in Kindsbach Germany.
MM: I remember him well, a great supporter of Music & Elsewhere, provided a lot of masters for us in the early years.
LL: Then I experienced exactly what you described above … couldn’t stop .. still doin’ it! And sure pretty soon left the management company .. it became part of my life .. it inspired me to be creative ever since .. it helped me through times when life was really hard. I just know I will never stop. I think it “was in the air” these days – looking for real alternatives to be an “independent” artist – it was part of the – almost – political situation these days .. green party … anti atom power .. anti anti anti …. this network was a true alternative if you wanted to spread your music worldwide to people who were also looking for an “alternative” .. even if some of the people taking part probably didn’t see it this way ..
Fast forward > today – some of the ideas / goals became a reality – this worldwide network is now probably the internet (in a certain way) .. a shame I think is, that most people don’t realise that we need to keep on .. the internet already belongs to someone .. rules and regulations were set up and by feeding this system we do exactly what we wanted to avoid in the 1980s … so some years ago I wrote an article entitled: “Today’s alternative independent scene is a fake” .. and I am afraid since I wrote this it became worse ……… |
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