If I were a stripper, I would dance to “Im Fieber”.
“Back to Brake Bielefeld”: Jochen Distelmeyer
Source: © Sven Sindt
The last unicorn of pop: Jochen Distelmeyer has finally released a new album – “Felt Truths”. Our author Oliver Polak is smitten and feels like he’s in Susi’s show bar on the Reeperbahn.
Nfter the first bass drum beats of “Komm”, the opener of Jochen Distelmeyer’s new album “Gefühltetruechten” sound, it’s as if Jochen gently puts his hand on my shoulders and says: Everything’s okay, you’re okay, me I’m there.
The last unicorn of German pop, Tocotronic’s father, he emerges from the corona war fog, from the Twitter ghetto world, in a golden glitter suit and reminds us with his songs, his words that easily bubble out of him, of what is really important. to love She seemed lost. Jochen brings her back, it seems that not only Steely Dan’s music inspired the new record, no, he also lives her slogan: “Do it again.”
The new songs are about missing, disappointment, healing wounds, longing, separation and the desire for romantic love. Distelmeyer sings: “Everyone knows that without love there is no life, without it we wouldn’t even exist.”
He’s in love fever.
Perfect pop: Jochen Distelmeyer
Source: © Sven Sindt
Jochen Distelmeyer and his band Blumfeld saved my life in the early 1990s in the northern German provinces between Dire Straits and Bryan Adams. All of a sudden there was this guy speaking out what I was thinking, the thoughts I felt left alone in the small town. Jochen understood me. Like a sensitive, understanding father. Maybe because he also knew the sadness of country life – “Back to Brake Bielefeld”.
At that time philosophy in Sonic Youth guitar robes in the opening act for the indie legends Pavement, today Spandau Ballet on the radio. Back then Antifa, today a melancholic prom.
Perfect pop that seems out of date, but that’s exactly why it’s so hard. The childish lovesickness in the lyrics of a grown man who maybe doesn’t want to be grown up. Then the loneliness: Just as you can take off with this record and have a nice party with the animals around us, you could dive into the deepest fears of mankind with songs like “Not lonely enough”. If the “ZDF hit parade” still existed, that’s where Jochen Distelmeyer would appear between the Münchner Freiheit and Falco.
His new album: Soul, which you could already guess from his outstanding Britney Spears cover “Toxic” years ago. On this new album he has perfected it. He only occasionally stumbles over the angular German language, which is difficult to mix into McFlurry like Daim chocolate pieces.
If I were a stripper, I would dance to “Im Fieber” in Susi’s show bar on the Reeperbahn. In the front row, drinking an espresso martini, Helmut Berger and Distelmeyer. I would only dance for her.
One day we will die
With Distelmeyer, every word, every thought, every inhalation is spot on. A promise when he sings, “If you wake up in the morning and nothing is the same / beloved, don’t worry, I’m still here.” He’s really still there. Still best in class. A plea to emotionally crippled people to feel again. to open up. To climb the stairs of fragility. His melodies are the Ritalin as a soundtrack to the world.
In her book premiere, Helene Hegemann recently recalled the Snoopy quote, where Charlie Brown says to Snoopy: “One day we will all die.” Snoopy replies: “Yes, but every other day we will live.” Jochen is Snoopy if also a perhaps melancholic one.
At one of his last concerts, he said to the audience at the end: “Don’t let them fool you, you know who you are.” Shortly thereafter, he left the club through the back exit in his coat with guitar case and cigarette in his mouth and walked into the Munich night .