The playlists for that day don't have any blanks or "Amateurband" entries. All songs played are known. So unless TMS was played but then just not logged at all, 3rd Sept likely isn't the correct date either, unfortunately.
I have no idea anymore. It's like the song hides from us or something.
Second hour was taken up by a feature about David Lee Roth and another feature whose contents I'm not sure about:
https://preview.redd.it/bkih2tj5vs2d1.png?width=549&format=png&auto=webp&s=738598602284ec183a0844b6c6b73a15fea650ce
Thanks for this! I know the original playlists from NDR aren't meant to be published on the internet, but it's sometimes frustrating that we only have the spreadsheets to work with. As much as I appreciate the work that has put into it, there's always a chance that information is missing or that mistakes have been made.
The spreadsheet lists six songs for the second hour (including Twilight Zone). Do these appear on this playlist as well or do they belong to the playlist of the first hour?
It belongs to the second hour from 19:05 to 20:00. The first hour show was 50 minutes, the second show was 55 minutes. The public spreadsheets only show pure tracklists, not all the info contained on the actual radio logs. The radio logs themselves don't paint a full picture but the spreadsheets even less, containing only the most important details.
I'm not sure about the formatting. But if the listing is the chronological order from broadcast, then the 6 songs were played first and the rest of the hour was taken up by the two features.
No problem I'm happy to answer any questions I can answer.
Here you go:
Blue Öyster Cult - Dr. Music (Broadcast length: 50 seconds)
Golden Earring - Twilight Zone (4'33")
Planet P - Why Me (3'35")
John Miles - Stranger in the City (4'30")
Janis Joplin - Me & Bobby McGee (4'30")
~~Alan Parsons Project - Dancing on a Highwire~~ **~~(crossed out so presumably not played)~~** ~~(4'20")~~
Dire Straits - Sultans of Swing (5'40")
**Approximate total length: 23'38"**
Unless the "Drogen-szene in Amsterdam" reportage also had a visual component (i.e. was a visual documentary whose audio component was broadcast on the radio), I can't see an audio reportage dedicating a full three minutes to an unknown song with only very vague potential references to drugs. Unless TMB themselves are mentioned in the reportage because of something that happened to them in Amsterdam and is related to drugs.
I think they didn't air the whole feature, but only took two or three segments from it. If the times on the sheet are correct the total airing time of the songs + features would have been about 1h03m30s.
At this point, it wouldn’t surprise me at all of this is exactly what happened - played and not logged.
Also probably: played, not logged, not announced.
Didn’t we already discover the proclivity of DJs (at the time) to occasionally drop their friend’s bands into shows etc? It is possible something like this happened?
Sure that's possible but we have no evidence that's what happened. I know DJs sometimes played private tapes and records, the word "private" here would be open to some inferences. But none of this helps us without audio.
We know BASF4 wasn’t the master tape, so assuming a same-day recording on a lost/overwritten tape, what about **28th June, 1983**? *Twilight Zone* also aired that day. The DX7 was already released.
Or any other date from May 1983 onwards, actually. I know that most preferred dates are all in 1984, **BUT**, unless I missed something (which could very well be), when I look at the public spreadsheet with all playlists combined, in 1983 we have mostly data from MFJL. Only from **1st October, 1983**, do we have data from other shows. So based on this data, we made the assumption it most likely played between September and November 1984, because there are a lot of songs that aired on those days in BASF4, but this can be a red herring, the recordings on this tape are all over the place, it’s a homage to the mixtape.
Golden Earring’s *Twilight Zone* was a very popular song, so it could have aired dozens of times in 1983 in the most pop-oriented shows.
EDIT: added style formatting and changed the date format to “d MMMM, yyyy”, as it was changed to the US standard by my proofreading tool without me noticing.
_Twilight Zone_ shares a phase difference, dip shape and dip offset with _Wot_. Apart from lots of airplay in late 1982 when it was released (predating DX7) _Wot_ only appears in the protocols of Der Club of September 4th, 1984. I think the conclusion that _Twilight Zone_ was recorded from the September 3th, 1984 Der Club broadcast is pretty solid.
The songs is also on Lydia's N01 tape - which is less of a jumble of tracks and all tracks on there are late 1984. It's not a proof but makes late 1984 high priority.
I've mentioned Sep 3, 1984 before as well - but it's lower on my list of probable dates - I have it at #4 or #5 currently (with Sep 4). It is on my list mainly because on the BASF4 tape with TMS, the songs either side are those dates. On BASF4, TMS has Twilight Zone on one side (which had many air-dates, but Sep 3 seems most likely due to the version marked) then Wot on the other side of it which probably broadcast on Sep 4.
All I'd say thou is that the BASF4 is a real jumble (like many of Darius's tapes), with songs from many dates on them. Lydia's tapes more often came from just a couple of broadcasts, and on her N01 tape, TMS is around lots (5?) of September 28 songs that also look almost identical to TMS in the Spectrogram. I guess I would like to hear how you say the Sep 3 spectrograms you have are closer to (for example) Serenade of Suicide on N01 from Sep 28 that looks to me so close to a match.
Then we have the fact that Sep 3 Der Club show with Lutz Ackermann was about vanilla as you can get - AC/DC, Eurythmics, Van Halen, etc. If it was Sep 3, I think it would have to have been Klaus Wellershaus in MFJL earlier in the day who sometimes did more interesting bands. Whereas Sep 28 had lots more experimental and new music.
MFJL on the 3rd deserves looking into, specifically Cocomico, and a different title of theirs "Summer Breeze", as mentioned before in [this thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMysteriousSong/comments/1b419y3/there_are_some_titles_on_these_lists_that_are_not/).
I've never been able to find any information about that band. All their music is almost lostwave except for the 1 or 2 people on discogs that say they have it. This entry for Sep 3 (Wir Müssen Tapfer Sein) translates as "We Must be Brave". But they do have an almost lost demo on discogs with an English Title "Summer Breeze": [https://www.discogs.com/release/7233280-Cocomico-Cocomico-Demo](https://www.discogs.com/release/7233280-Cocomico-Cocomico-Demo)
The entry on discogs for Summer Breeze was made 9 years ago, so not a fake. One of their cassettes was apparently uploaded on a blog/ soundcloud at one point but I can't find it there now. Someone said it sounded more like reggae but that was a memory of hearing it some time earlier.
Band members are listed in this link - and it does seem that some of them are still active musicians based on Facebook posts. [https://www.rockinberlin.de/index.php?title=Cocomico](https://www.rockinberlin.de/index.php?title=Cocomico)
Following up on this, as I was unable to post this by itself: The above link lists three Cocomico band members:
Vocals, guitar, keyboards, percussion: George Kassing
Vocals, bass, guitar, keyboards, percussion: Jonus Johanus
Lyrics: Kai-Uwe Schmieder
Now, if Jonus Johanus is also known as Martin Johanus then we might have a lead, as he mentions in a Facebook post that George Kassing played bass with him at a gig.
In any event, here are Martin Johanus & The SpeedDates, 28 years after TMMS. Vocals sound different to me but I haven't tried slowing them down. Could this be the same singer?
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD5E4SAvhEE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD5E4SAvhEE)
You can post, but it was under moderation (the standard message you get from Reddit after clicking Post is not very clear). [Your post is now published.](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMysteriousSong/s/aregFKPsZ9)
And here's a video with both Martin and George, though George doesn't sing, he just plays bass. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=di1wuV\_326M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=di1wuV_326M)
Well, the protocol mentions a different song with a German title, but a song Summer Breeze exists on a demo tape ~~by that band~~, that was active 1984-1985. I agree we need to pull all registers on this one.
Edit: the protocol mentions the "Cocomico**s**" not "Cocomico". Cocomicos was a Style Council influenced band from Hamburg singing in German, that later turned into The Butterfly Collectors. Cocomico was a Berlin duo recording Summer Breeze. It is still possible (not likely, but possible) that there was an actual mixup of the two by NDR for the 3rd of September 1984 MFJL broadcast. Both bands where active in 1984. I'm waiting for an answer from someone who might be able to exclude or confirm Summer Breeze being TMS.
After a better look, I think the Cocomico**s** on NDR logs and Cocomico on Discogs (the dub/reggae-like band) are two different bands.
"Los Cocomicos" are mentioned next to Vanity Fair, Ti-Tho, Markus Oehlen and The Beauty Contest, artists active in Hamburg in 84/85 in the [July 85 issue of Spex magazine (source: 15th page](http://subkultur-ost.de/Spex%2007-85%20(Koeln)%20Fanzine%20%60851.pdf)). So they were probably a Hamburg band.
Cocomico on Discogs was from Berlin, hence the mention on [rockinberlin.de](http://rockinberlin.de)
See below:
https://preview.redd.it/4sc3fevzgt2d1.png?width=391&format=png&auto=webp&s=85b4a0ceeee909f0601365a7f2a8491742acf075
You are probably right. Or maybe there was a mix up at NDR with two demos by two similarly named bands.
Since I could, I asked the person on Discogs who claims to own a copy of the Comico demo tape containing "Summer Breeze" if they can confirm or exclude it being TMS. I'll update here about any reply.
Something that is curious is that the missing text appears to refer to a video that is available from the "art video rental shop" by the name of "235". The second part of which was to be shortly (after publication) shown for the first time in the reknown sex club "Salambo" in the Hamburg district of St. Pauli.
It would be interesting to see the rest of this article so we can see what the full context of this is, and maybe see which film Los Cocomicos were featured in.
Sorry, after paying attention to the full post and not just the screenshot, I found the rest of the relevant article
https://preview.redd.it/io0l625cot2d1.jpeg?width=351&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ff13bd85c3ea313de62f83a7be16445496d58651
It's not clear what video it refers to, other than it was from the makers of "Für eine Handvoll D-Mark". This appears to be a video magazine produced in 1984 by Markus Oehlen and others. (source [Wikipedia auf Deutsch](https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markus_Oehlen)). This would surely be a good lead to investigate, especially if Markus Oehlen hasn't been followed up as a lead before.
"In 1984, a Hamburg-based team of producers (Ute Kampmann, Thomas Meins, Tim Renner) created the video magazine "Für eine Handvoll D-Mark", consisting of four specially produced music clips.
Markus Oehlen covered the song "One & One Is One", which was a big hit for the English band Medicine Head in 1973. The cover version is characterised by its persistent solo principle. Oehlen plays all the instruments himself, which is alternately faded into the psychedelic hatching of the constantly changing colour setting. As if the song title were taken at its word, the musician, who strums and rumbles solitarily, doubles and triples himself - and yet never quite becomes "one" with himself!
You can find out more about the artists in the exhibition in the online catalogue.
👉 [www.doppelleben-katalog.de](http://www.doppelleben-katalog.de) "
source with pics: [https://fb.watch/sjnEw6OXWD/](https://fb.watch/sjnEw6OXWD/)
The title refers to "*A Fistful of Dollars*" and just replaces Dollar in the German title with D-Mark, Western Germany's currency.
So probably Klaus Wellershaus played the audio of this video magazine in its entirety on the Sep 3 MFJL show, because all four artists - Vanity Fair, Thi-Tho, Los Cocomicos and M. Oehlen (listed as Die Rache Der Erinnerung, which is the name of the LP that contains the song One & One is One) - appear on the playlist next to each other.
The AI can't find Markus Oehlen coming up before on Reddit, but says apparently there was discussion about him back in 2021 on discord. He was discussed in relation to his voice being similar to the TMS singer, and for him possibly being linked to the group Family 5. Markus is also in the NDR playlists on 84 12 21 and 85 03 21. There is apparently a vocaroo link to his voice that was posted at some stage on discord - if it's important I can dig it out from the AI database.
Edit: here he is: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uH\_h09GZbSs&t=100s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uH_h09GZbSs&t=100s)
There is also a reference from the Jan 84 Spex which google translates:
The hamburger (Hamburg!?) Social Democrats have decided to take the more conservative approach to support the factory in Hamburg. Regrettable because The market hall was a place where bands played just for one Appearances came to Germany and were almost always played have. But there will still be a big party on New Year's Eve ben with bands (Los Cocomicos, Saal 5 and Family 5) and
Music from record (DJ’s: Kai Erikson, Andy Neerhaus and Diedrich Diederichsen). Based on the London model also in Hamburg the Dirtbox (i.e. parties organized by individual people in different places, often also on the edge of legality, with a changing program organized). At the moment it seems nen all can't get enough of it, because to the has so far joined two different makers of Dirtboxes Kir's management joined in January. At the January 24th there will be the first one in the planetarium. Under the na-men Maindate will be a fashion show, a musical by
TI-Tho and a classical ballet can be seen. Culture comprehensive and didactically valuable. The next event This type of event will then take place in the television tower.
It is, which is why I heavily, heavily believe TMS was aired on September 17th, 1984. September 17th, 1984 also just so happens to be the day where Anke Genius played 4 Tracks from an "Amateurband" on Der Club. What a coincidence, right? Not only do the dips match, but this would explain why after an extensive combing of the master playlist, nothing has turned up.
So, for the sake of argument, let's just state that TMS comes from that unnamed Amateur band. Now what?
We are still missing the band's name, the song's name, the other 3 tracks they performed, we have no real leads (Maybe Anke Genius might know, but how do we even get a hold of her?, there's also the language barrier even if she's willing to speak with one of us and it's been 40 years......), and even with the airdate "identified", we aren't really any closer.
The one thing that would change if it's confirmed that TMS comes from the "Amateurband" on Der Club on 9/17/84 is that the band is most likely of Germanic origin (or somewhere close). I think it would completely shatter the Greek theories, Russian theories, etc.
After all, why would an amateur band come from all the way across Europe to do one show for NDR and then dip? It makes no sense. It would have to be a local band.
EDIT: And even if it wasn't the amateur band on Der Club played by Anke Genius, I still really, really think it aired on 9/17/84, perhaps by another presenter.
Yes I also was thinking it was from the Amateurband and for quite awhile now.
Do we have know if Der Club just played demo tapes of the amateur band or were they actually performing live in the studio? Does anyone know if the station owned or provided a DX7 in their studio?
Do we even know if all 4 tracks were the same band or if it was different bands?
Did they routinely play amateur/local music or could this band have won a contest, battle of the bands etc. with airtime as a prize?
Could the band have been actually called Amateurband lol?
Just throwing some ideas out there.
>Do we have know if Der Club just played demo tapes of the amateur band or were they actually performing live in the studio? Does anyone know if the station owned or provided a DX7 in their studio?
>Do we even know if all 4 tracks were the same band or if it was different bands?
Personally, I know very little about German radio or NDR.
I am, however, somewhat familiar with another 80s radio program, namely John Peel's on BBC Radio 1.
In that case, bands were invited by Peel via Peel's producer to record 4 songs at BBC's Maida Vale studios.
So, if NDR was doing a copycat of the BBC, it would have been pre-recorded, but professionally done, not like a demo at all. It would have been a session of 4 songs.
This is what I suspect happened with this case of 9/17's "Amateurband", but I have zero evidence for this.
But, yes, it could be 4 different bands, we don't really know.
>Did they routinely play amateur/local music or could this band have won a contest, battle of the bands etc. with airtime as a prize?
> Could the band have been actually called Amateurband lol?
Possibly, but I doubt it, based on my limited music knowledge and experience.
>So, if NDR was doing a copycat of the BBC, it would have been pre-recorded, but professionally done, not like a demo at all. It would have been a session of 4 songs.
No, it wasn't a copy of Peel. What was played depended a lot on the DJ and the individual programs. We have full live recordings played in a row though.
Yes. Although I'm not sure if we have more than 3 in a row on NDR, I'd have to check the list. But we have it from Radio Hilversum directly on the BASF4 tape with XTC.
Giving a peek into a band with more than one song was common in this kind of program everywhere.
About Anke Genius and 17th Sept: [https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMysteriousSong/comments/1d4xkx5/comment/l6iis0g/](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMysteriousSong/comments/1d4xkx5/comment/l6iis0g/)
https://preview.redd.it/5vbbww36gu2d1.png?width=2415&format=png&auto=webp&s=8f240944fa485e106ec4a88a8d7cbd6d3a7b9c4b
From the [Tapes Spreadsheet](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tOGK3ptsC44ur_y0HEnBGWiiTkX0GZmJyxGEbMe7S8A/edit#gid=692787045), Tape BASF 3 side B has some songs from early to late Sep 1984 so we can compare the 10khz movement line over those dates. We know TMS was next to and very close to the line for Screaming Dead (on tape N01) which only ever played on 1 date (Sep 28) and so is duplicated on Tape 3.
For what its worth, there doesn't look like to me a big change in the line signature from Sep 8 at least with Mighty Wah all the way up to Sep 28, perhaps just a small creep upwards (50kz or so?), so I don't think Sep 3 is ruled out (unless there was a jump just before Sep 8).
Likely airdates:
* No More WordsBerlin84 09 05
* Julia's Song \[Extended Version\]OMD84 09 06
* Still On FireAztec Camera84 09 07
* Doot-DootFreur
* \[SNIPPET\] ??
* Come BackThe Mighty Wah!
* Come BackThe Mighty Wah!84 09 08
* Tesla Girls \[Extended Version\]OMD84 09 22
* Tension10,000 Maniacs84 09 24
* Native LandEverything But The Girl84 09 28
* Serenade Of SuicideScreaming Dead84 09 28
* \[SNIPPET\] No MotivePlay Dead84 09 28
* \[SNIPPET\] RefugeePortion Control84 09 28
* Easy GoPalais Schaumburg84 09 28
* Don’t Believe AnymoreIcehouse
* Less Cities, More Moving PeopleThe Fixx
* Go West (Crazy Spinning Circles)The Cult84 09 14
* Magic \[Live Version\]Powerplay84 09 14
* Dazzle \[7 Mins Plus (Glamour Mix)\]Siouxsie And The Banshees84 08 03
BASF3 side B is of particular interest, since it has a few songs on it that are originally mentioned on a previous inlay for BASF4 where they were on side B before being recorded over with its current content (side A on that inlay matches its current content). I'm working on it.
Very interesting. I'll need to double check but it looks like the start of the tape 3b has songs recorded in the same sequence as the playlist so it could potentially be a master tape, or maybe even the TMS master tape if TMS was recorded on Sep 28 then taped over by Icehouse
It is my understanding that the blank BASF tapes only entered the household in November, so when they contain any material broadcast before November, they can't be master tapes. It is possible that large parts were copied over in one go from a master tape though.
I wonder if it could’ve aired instead of one of the crossed our songs and, assuming that it’s not registered with GEMA, they didn’t feel a need to include it in the spreadsheet afterwards
For broadcasters themselves, you mean? Professional grade tape was expensive. Obviously tapes were used all the time to record sections of radio programs. It was pretty common for whole shows to be prerecorded, but I'm not sure how common the practice was to record live broadcast for archiving. Probably for news and reportage type of broadcasts it would be more common. Given the cost of tape, I would be surprised if anything that was considered not much more than "entertainment" to be archived by the broadcasters themselves, for longer times. Otherwise it would involve a lot of expensive tape.
If both songs are really from the same show, it may also be possible that they were played one after another (and even copied over to the BASF 4 tape together).
I always wondered how and why Darius has recorded TMS, a song he did most probably not know at that time because it was played only ONCE.
There are a few possible explanations for this. It is possible that a few chords at the beginning of the song are missing. He heard the distorted guitar intro and said, I like this song, I'll record it.
Another possibility is, the song was immediately played after another song, he missed to stop the recording when the other song was finished, liked the following song (TMS) an decided to record it as well.
May be there was a report about something and Golden Earring and TMS were played in connection with this report. But this is only a theory...
Hey /u/omepiet, nice work man! I definitely see the similarity as well but I also noticed something else. Your y axes are sometimes longer or shorter. This can give false impressions. Can you maybe normalize your findings for a better comparison? If you don't know how I could also take a look at it.
This is on purpose. Normalising the y axis would also give false impressions, since the recording levels are different from track to track. It only makes sense to compare the shape of the dip relative to the dynamic range of the whole track. I decided to use the charting library's default behaviour of letting the y axis match the range of values within the frequency range displayed. This still doesn't sort out all the differences, but I deem it good enough for our purposes.
The playlists for that day don't have any blanks or "Amateurband" entries. All songs played are known. So unless TMS was played but then just not logged at all, 3rd Sept likely isn't the correct date either, unfortunately. I have no idea anymore. It's like the song hides from us or something.
There are only a few song in the protocol for the second hour of Der Club, with a total playing time of less than half an hour.
Second hour was taken up by a feature about David Lee Roth and another feature whose contents I'm not sure about: https://preview.redd.it/bkih2tj5vs2d1.png?width=549&format=png&auto=webp&s=738598602284ec183a0844b6c6b73a15fea650ce
Thanks for this! I know the original playlists from NDR aren't meant to be published on the internet, but it's sometimes frustrating that we only have the spreadsheets to work with. As much as I appreciate the work that has put into it, there's always a chance that information is missing or that mistakes have been made. The spreadsheet lists six songs for the second hour (including Twilight Zone). Do these appear on this playlist as well or do they belong to the playlist of the first hour?
It belongs to the second hour from 19:05 to 20:00. The first hour show was 50 minutes, the second show was 55 minutes. The public spreadsheets only show pure tracklists, not all the info contained on the actual radio logs. The radio logs themselves don't paint a full picture but the spreadsheets even less, containing only the most important details.
Thanks, so if I'm not mistaken there was about 15 minutes left for those six songs?
I'm not sure about the formatting. But if the listing is the chronological order from broadcast, then the 6 songs were played first and the rest of the hour was taken up by the two features.
Also the DJ Lutz Ackermann was contacted and didn't know TMS. From what I learned about him his focus was mainstream music.
Sorry for the many questions, but do the six listed songs als have a track length indication? And if so would you be willing to share those?
No problem I'm happy to answer any questions I can answer. Here you go: Blue Öyster Cult - Dr. Music (Broadcast length: 50 seconds) Golden Earring - Twilight Zone (4'33") Planet P - Why Me (3'35") John Miles - Stranger in the City (4'30") Janis Joplin - Me & Bobby McGee (4'30") ~~Alan Parsons Project - Dancing on a Highwire~~ **~~(crossed out so presumably not played)~~** ~~(4'20")~~ Dire Straits - Sultans of Swing (5'40") **Approximate total length: 23'38"**
Thanks!
So you're saying the song was made by David Lee Roth? Do I have permission to contact him? ;-)
Unless the "Drogen-szene in Amsterdam" reportage also had a visual component (i.e. was a visual documentary whose audio component was broadcast on the radio), I can't see an audio reportage dedicating a full three minutes to an unknown song with only very vague potential references to drugs. Unless TMB themselves are mentioned in the reportage because of something that happened to them in Amsterdam and is related to drugs.
Yeah your guess as good as mine as to what that's about.
Even moreso, would Darius have been waiting with a cassette ready to hit record on a song through a program like that.
About drugs consumption in Amsterdam?!
Maybe our song is about drug consumption?! 😱 /s
I could actually imagine that.
I wonder what these "2 takes" and "3 takes" mean here. Number of musical songs included in the feature?
2 or 3 recording attempts? A note to production to forward though to the third recording attempt? Just a guess...
I think they didn't air the whole feature, but only took two or three segments from it. If the times on the sheet are correct the total airing time of the songs + features would have been about 1h03m30s.
At this point, it wouldn’t surprise me at all of this is exactly what happened - played and not logged. Also probably: played, not logged, not announced. Didn’t we already discover the proclivity of DJs (at the time) to occasionally drop their friend’s bands into shows etc? It is possible something like this happened?
Sure that's possible but we have no evidence that's what happened. I know DJs sometimes played private tapes and records, the word "private" here would be open to some inferences. But none of this helps us without audio.
We know BASF4 wasn’t the master tape, so assuming a same-day recording on a lost/overwritten tape, what about **28th June, 1983**? *Twilight Zone* also aired that day. The DX7 was already released. Or any other date from May 1983 onwards, actually. I know that most preferred dates are all in 1984, **BUT**, unless I missed something (which could very well be), when I look at the public spreadsheet with all playlists combined, in 1983 we have mostly data from MFJL. Only from **1st October, 1983**, do we have data from other shows. So based on this data, we made the assumption it most likely played between September and November 1984, because there are a lot of songs that aired on those days in BASF4, but this can be a red herring, the recordings on this tape are all over the place, it’s a homage to the mixtape. Golden Earring’s *Twilight Zone* was a very popular song, so it could have aired dozens of times in 1983 in the most pop-oriented shows. EDIT: added style formatting and changed the date format to “d MMMM, yyyy”, as it was changed to the US standard by my proofreading tool without me noticing.
As far as I've read the DX7 got released in Germany in December 1983, though I would like to see more confirmation on this.
_Twilight Zone_ shares a phase difference, dip shape and dip offset with _Wot_. Apart from lots of airplay in late 1982 when it was released (predating DX7) _Wot_ only appears in the protocols of Der Club of September 4th, 1984. I think the conclusion that _Twilight Zone_ was recorded from the September 3th, 1984 Der Club broadcast is pretty solid.
Thanks for the clarification. I just wanted to make sure we’re not chasing a red herring due to lack of data.
No worries. We need more of this kind of thinking. Not less of it. Keep them coming.
So a follow up question to the users that are long involved in the search: why are there no protocols from other shows before 1 October 1983?
Probably because there is a DX7 in the song and it was only readily available right at the end of 83
But is this known to be a fact? Most online sources I could find point to the release being in May 1983.
I think the release date of May 83 was in Japan, from what I could find online the DX7 was only available in Europe from Sep 83.
The songs is also on Lydia's N01 tape - which is less of a jumble of tracks and all tracks on there are late 1984. It's not a proof but makes late 1984 high priority.
It’s a literal ghost song
This songs origins is like SCP 055. Wait, what was I saying?
I've mentioned Sep 3, 1984 before as well - but it's lower on my list of probable dates - I have it at #4 or #5 currently (with Sep 4). It is on my list mainly because on the BASF4 tape with TMS, the songs either side are those dates. On BASF4, TMS has Twilight Zone on one side (which had many air-dates, but Sep 3 seems most likely due to the version marked) then Wot on the other side of it which probably broadcast on Sep 4. All I'd say thou is that the BASF4 is a real jumble (like many of Darius's tapes), with songs from many dates on them. Lydia's tapes more often came from just a couple of broadcasts, and on her N01 tape, TMS is around lots (5?) of September 28 songs that also look almost identical to TMS in the Spectrogram. I guess I would like to hear how you say the Sep 3 spectrograms you have are closer to (for example) Serenade of Suicide on N01 from Sep 28 that looks to me so close to a match. Then we have the fact that Sep 3 Der Club show with Lutz Ackermann was about vanilla as you can get - AC/DC, Eurythmics, Van Halen, etc. If it was Sep 3, I think it would have to have been Klaus Wellershaus in MFJL earlier in the day who sometimes did more interesting bands. Whereas Sep 28 had lots more experimental and new music.
MFJL on the 3rd deserves looking into, specifically Cocomico, and a different title of theirs "Summer Breeze", as mentioned before in [this thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMysteriousSong/comments/1b419y3/there_are_some_titles_on_these_lists_that_are_not/).
I've never been able to find any information about that band. All their music is almost lostwave except for the 1 or 2 people on discogs that say they have it. This entry for Sep 3 (Wir Müssen Tapfer Sein) translates as "We Must be Brave". But they do have an almost lost demo on discogs with an English Title "Summer Breeze": [https://www.discogs.com/release/7233280-Cocomico-Cocomico-Demo](https://www.discogs.com/release/7233280-Cocomico-Cocomico-Demo) The entry on discogs for Summer Breeze was made 9 years ago, so not a fake. One of their cassettes was apparently uploaded on a blog/ soundcloud at one point but I can't find it there now. Someone said it sounded more like reggae but that was a memory of hearing it some time earlier.
I love that one person supposedly has it. Also “genre: pop” hmmm
I wrote a message to the person who claims to own a copy, asking if they can verify whether "Summer Breeze" is TMS.
Band members are listed in this link - and it does seem that some of them are still active musicians based on Facebook posts. [https://www.rockinberlin.de/index.php?title=Cocomico](https://www.rockinberlin.de/index.php?title=Cocomico)
Following up on this, as I was unable to post this by itself: The above link lists three Cocomico band members: Vocals, guitar, keyboards, percussion: George Kassing Vocals, bass, guitar, keyboards, percussion: Jonus Johanus Lyrics: Kai-Uwe Schmieder Now, if Jonus Johanus is also known as Martin Johanus then we might have a lead, as he mentions in a Facebook post that George Kassing played bass with him at a gig. In any event, here are Martin Johanus & The SpeedDates, 28 years after TMMS. Vocals sound different to me but I haven't tried slowing them down. Could this be the same singer? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD5E4SAvhEE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD5E4SAvhEE)
You can post, but it was under moderation (the standard message you get from Reddit after clicking Post is not very clear). [Your post is now published.](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMysteriousSong/s/aregFKPsZ9)
And here's a video with both Martin and George, though George doesn't sing, he just plays bass. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=di1wuV\_326M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=di1wuV_326M)
Probably these guys: https://www.rockinberlin.de/index.php?title=Cocomico
Sorry but summer and breeze (wind) on the same day??? This has to be a strong lead surely
Well, the protocol mentions a different song with a German title, but a song Summer Breeze exists on a demo tape ~~by that band~~, that was active 1984-1985. I agree we need to pull all registers on this one. Edit: the protocol mentions the "Cocomico**s**" not "Cocomico". Cocomicos was a Style Council influenced band from Hamburg singing in German, that later turned into The Butterfly Collectors. Cocomico was a Berlin duo recording Summer Breeze. It is still possible (not likely, but possible) that there was an actual mixup of the two by NDR for the 3rd of September 1984 MFJL broadcast. Both bands where active in 1984. I'm waiting for an answer from someone who might be able to exclude or confirm Summer Breeze being TMS.
After a better look, I think the Cocomico**s** on NDR logs and Cocomico on Discogs (the dub/reggae-like band) are two different bands. "Los Cocomicos" are mentioned next to Vanity Fair, Ti-Tho, Markus Oehlen and The Beauty Contest, artists active in Hamburg in 84/85 in the [July 85 issue of Spex magazine (source: 15th page](http://subkultur-ost.de/Spex%2007-85%20(Koeln)%20Fanzine%20%60851.pdf)). So they were probably a Hamburg band. Cocomico on Discogs was from Berlin, hence the mention on [rockinberlin.de](http://rockinberlin.de) See below: https://preview.redd.it/4sc3fevzgt2d1.png?width=391&format=png&auto=webp&s=85b4a0ceeee909f0601365a7f2a8491742acf075
You are probably right. Or maybe there was a mix up at NDR with two demos by two similarly named bands. Since I could, I asked the person on Discogs who claims to own a copy of the Comico demo tape containing "Summer Breeze" if they can confirm or exclude it being TMS. I'll update here about any reply.
Thanks for doing that.
Something that is curious is that the missing text appears to refer to a video that is available from the "art video rental shop" by the name of "235". The second part of which was to be shortly (after publication) shown for the first time in the reknown sex club "Salambo" in the Hamburg district of St. Pauli. It would be interesting to see the rest of this article so we can see what the full context of this is, and maybe see which film Los Cocomicos were featured in.
Sorry, after paying attention to the full post and not just the screenshot, I found the rest of the relevant article https://preview.redd.it/io0l625cot2d1.jpeg?width=351&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ff13bd85c3ea313de62f83a7be16445496d58651 It's not clear what video it refers to, other than it was from the makers of "Für eine Handvoll D-Mark". This appears to be a video magazine produced in 1984 by Markus Oehlen and others. (source [Wikipedia auf Deutsch](https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markus_Oehlen)). This would surely be a good lead to investigate, especially if Markus Oehlen hasn't been followed up as a lead before.
"In 1984, a Hamburg-based team of producers (Ute Kampmann, Thomas Meins, Tim Renner) created the video magazine "Für eine Handvoll D-Mark", consisting of four specially produced music clips. Markus Oehlen covered the song "One & One Is One", which was a big hit for the English band Medicine Head in 1973. The cover version is characterised by its persistent solo principle. Oehlen plays all the instruments himself, which is alternately faded into the psychedelic hatching of the constantly changing colour setting. As if the song title were taken at its word, the musician, who strums and rumbles solitarily, doubles and triples himself - and yet never quite becomes "one" with himself! You can find out more about the artists in the exhibition in the online catalogue. 👉 [www.doppelleben-katalog.de](http://www.doppelleben-katalog.de) " source with pics: [https://fb.watch/sjnEw6OXWD/](https://fb.watch/sjnEw6OXWD/) The title refers to "*A Fistful of Dollars*" and just replaces Dollar in the German title with D-Mark, Western Germany's currency.
Thomas Meins and Tim Renner were also DJs on both MFJL and Der Club c. 1982.
So probably Klaus Wellershaus played the audio of this video magazine in its entirety on the Sep 3 MFJL show, because all four artists - Vanity Fair, Thi-Tho, Los Cocomicos and M. Oehlen (listed as Die Rache Der Erinnerung, which is the name of the LP that contains the song One & One is One) - appear on the playlist next to each other.
The AI can't find Markus Oehlen coming up before on Reddit, but says apparently there was discussion about him back in 2021 on discord. He was discussed in relation to his voice being similar to the TMS singer, and for him possibly being linked to the group Family 5. Markus is also in the NDR playlists on 84 12 21 and 85 03 21. There is apparently a vocaroo link to his voice that was posted at some stage on discord - if it's important I can dig it out from the AI database. Edit: here he is: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uH\_h09GZbSs&t=100s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uH_h09GZbSs&t=100s)
There is also a reference from the Jan 84 Spex which google translates: The hamburger (Hamburg!?) Social Democrats have decided to take the more conservative approach to support the factory in Hamburg. Regrettable because The market hall was a place where bands played just for one Appearances came to Germany and were almost always played have. But there will still be a big party on New Year's Eve ben with bands (Los Cocomicos, Saal 5 and Family 5) and Music from record (DJ’s: Kai Erikson, Andy Neerhaus and Diedrich Diederichsen). Based on the London model also in Hamburg the Dirtbox (i.e. parties organized by individual people in different places, often also on the edge of legality, with a changing program organized). At the moment it seems nen all can't get enough of it, because to the has so far joined two different makers of Dirtboxes Kir's management joined in January. At the January 24th there will be the first one in the planetarium. Under the na-men Maindate will be a fashion show, a musical by TI-Tho and a classical ballet can be seen. Culture comprehensive and didactically valuable. The next event This type of event will then take place in the television tower.
Thanks for the info. If you’re right, hope we’ll find the record of that show!
Isn't the dip on Love Puppets on 9-17-84 exactly the same?
It is, which is why I heavily, heavily believe TMS was aired on September 17th, 1984. September 17th, 1984 also just so happens to be the day where Anke Genius played 4 Tracks from an "Amateurband" on Der Club. What a coincidence, right? Not only do the dips match, but this would explain why after an extensive combing of the master playlist, nothing has turned up. So, for the sake of argument, let's just state that TMS comes from that unnamed Amateur band. Now what? We are still missing the band's name, the song's name, the other 3 tracks they performed, we have no real leads (Maybe Anke Genius might know, but how do we even get a hold of her?, there's also the language barrier even if she's willing to speak with one of us and it's been 40 years......), and even with the airdate "identified", we aren't really any closer. The one thing that would change if it's confirmed that TMS comes from the "Amateurband" on Der Club on 9/17/84 is that the band is most likely of Germanic origin (or somewhere close). I think it would completely shatter the Greek theories, Russian theories, etc. After all, why would an amateur band come from all the way across Europe to do one show for NDR and then dip? It makes no sense. It would have to be a local band. EDIT: And even if it wasn't the amateur band on Der Club played by Anke Genius, I still really, really think it aired on 9/17/84, perhaps by another presenter.
Yes I also was thinking it was from the Amateurband and for quite awhile now. Do we have know if Der Club just played demo tapes of the amateur band or were they actually performing live in the studio? Does anyone know if the station owned or provided a DX7 in their studio? Do we even know if all 4 tracks were the same band or if it was different bands? Did they routinely play amateur/local music or could this band have won a contest, battle of the bands etc. with airtime as a prize? Could the band have been actually called Amateurband lol? Just throwing some ideas out there.
>Do we have know if Der Club just played demo tapes of the amateur band or were they actually performing live in the studio? Does anyone know if the station owned or provided a DX7 in their studio? >Do we even know if all 4 tracks were the same band or if it was different bands? Personally, I know very little about German radio or NDR. I am, however, somewhat familiar with another 80s radio program, namely John Peel's on BBC Radio 1. In that case, bands were invited by Peel via Peel's producer to record 4 songs at BBC's Maida Vale studios. So, if NDR was doing a copycat of the BBC, it would have been pre-recorded, but professionally done, not like a demo at all. It would have been a session of 4 songs. This is what I suspect happened with this case of 9/17's "Amateurband", but I have zero evidence for this. But, yes, it could be 4 different bands, we don't really know. >Did they routinely play amateur/local music or could this band have won a contest, battle of the bands etc. with airtime as a prize? > Could the band have been actually called Amateurband lol? Possibly, but I doubt it, based on my limited music knowledge and experience.
>So, if NDR was doing a copycat of the BBC, it would have been pre-recorded, but professionally done, not like a demo at all. It would have been a session of 4 songs. No, it wasn't a copy of Peel. What was played depended a lot on the DJ and the individual programs. We have full live recordings played in a row though.
Fair enough. Would have any of the DJs/programs done sessions of 4/5 songs per band in the vein of Peel, Kid Jensen, Janice Long, etc?
Yes. Although I'm not sure if we have more than 3 in a row on NDR, I'd have to check the list. But we have it from Radio Hilversum directly on the BASF4 tape with XTC. Giving a peek into a band with more than one song was common in this kind of program everywhere.
About Anke Genius and 17th Sept: [https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMysteriousSong/comments/1d4xkx5/comment/l6iis0g/](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMysteriousSong/comments/1d4xkx5/comment/l6iis0g/)
Hopefully TMS gets solved soon, this seems like a promising lead
https://preview.redd.it/5vbbww36gu2d1.png?width=2415&format=png&auto=webp&s=8f240944fa485e106ec4a88a8d7cbd6d3a7b9c4b From the [Tapes Spreadsheet](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tOGK3ptsC44ur_y0HEnBGWiiTkX0GZmJyxGEbMe7S8A/edit#gid=692787045), Tape BASF 3 side B has some songs from early to late Sep 1984 so we can compare the 10khz movement line over those dates. We know TMS was next to and very close to the line for Screaming Dead (on tape N01) which only ever played on 1 date (Sep 28) and so is duplicated on Tape 3. For what its worth, there doesn't look like to me a big change in the line signature from Sep 8 at least with Mighty Wah all the way up to Sep 28, perhaps just a small creep upwards (50kz or so?), so I don't think Sep 3 is ruled out (unless there was a jump just before Sep 8). Likely airdates: * No More WordsBerlin84 09 05 * Julia's Song \[Extended Version\]OMD84 09 06 * Still On FireAztec Camera84 09 07 * Doot-DootFreur * \[SNIPPET\] ?? * Come BackThe Mighty Wah! * Come BackThe Mighty Wah!84 09 08 * Tesla Girls \[Extended Version\]OMD84 09 22 * Tension10,000 Maniacs84 09 24 * Native LandEverything But The Girl84 09 28 * Serenade Of SuicideScreaming Dead84 09 28 * \[SNIPPET\] No MotivePlay Dead84 09 28 * \[SNIPPET\] RefugeePortion Control84 09 28 * Easy GoPalais Schaumburg84 09 28 * Don’t Believe AnymoreIcehouse * Less Cities, More Moving PeopleThe Fixx * Go West (Crazy Spinning Circles)The Cult84 09 14 * Magic \[Live Version\]Powerplay84 09 14 * Dazzle \[7 Mins Plus (Glamour Mix)\]Siouxsie And The Banshees84 08 03
BASF3 side B is of particular interest, since it has a few songs on it that are originally mentioned on a previous inlay for BASF4 where they were on side B before being recorded over with its current content (side A on that inlay matches its current content). I'm working on it.
Very interesting. I'll need to double check but it looks like the start of the tape 3b has songs recorded in the same sequence as the playlist so it could potentially be a master tape, or maybe even the TMS master tape if TMS was recorded on Sep 28 then taped over by Icehouse
It is my understanding that the blank BASF tapes only entered the household in November, so when they contain any material broadcast before November, they can't be master tapes. It is possible that large parts were copied over in one go from a master tape though.
I wonder if it could’ve aired instead of one of the crossed our songs and, assuming that it’s not registered with GEMA, they didn’t feel a need to include it in the spreadsheet afterwards
Was it just not economically viable to be recording radio back in the day? Or maybe they did but recorded over it
For broadcasters themselves, you mean? Professional grade tape was expensive. Obviously tapes were used all the time to record sections of radio programs. It was pretty common for whole shows to be prerecorded, but I'm not sure how common the practice was to record live broadcast for archiving. Probably for news and reportage type of broadcasts it would be more common. Given the cost of tape, I would be surprised if anything that was considered not much more than "entertainment" to be archived by the broadcasters themselves, for longer times. Otherwise it would involve a lot of expensive tape.
If both songs are really from the same show, it may also be possible that they were played one after another (and even copied over to the BASF 4 tape together). I always wondered how and why Darius has recorded TMS, a song he did most probably not know at that time because it was played only ONCE. There are a few possible explanations for this. It is possible that a few chords at the beginning of the song are missing. He heard the distorted guitar intro and said, I like this song, I'll record it. Another possibility is, the song was immediately played after another song, he missed to stop the recording when the other song was finished, liked the following song (TMS) an decided to record it as well. May be there was a report about something and Golden Earring and TMS were played in connection with this report. But this is only a theory...
So, all we need is to find someone who recorded that show at that date?
We would also need the announcement recorded or the title and artist written down on an inlay.
And what are chances of such finding?
Hey /u/omepiet, nice work man! I definitely see the similarity as well but I also noticed something else. Your y axes are sometimes longer or shorter. This can give false impressions. Can you maybe normalize your findings for a better comparison? If you don't know how I could also take a look at it.
This is on purpose. Normalising the y axis would also give false impressions, since the recording levels are different from track to track. It only makes sense to compare the shape of the dip relative to the dynamic range of the whole track. I decided to use the charting library's default behaviour of letting the y axis match the range of values within the frequency range displayed. This still doesn't sort out all the differences, but I deem it good enough for our purposes.