![]() The young Falco looks like a 80s soft-porn beau with his fluffy hair, shirt unbuttoned to the chest, and orgastic power-rock moves during the saxophone solo. “Mad Cat Sadie” is one of their more tame songs, a beautiful and wicked song with a Devo-style interplay in its middle part. The anarcho-punks first became known for the fact that they were banned from every venue they ever played. Before his solo career, he was part of the avantgarde rock theatre Hallucination Company, then played the bass with Drahdiwaberl, a political Austrian cult band without taboos. This playlist includes some of his greatest songs and is an attempt to explain this great artist’s extremely cool swag and legacy to the non-German-speaking world.įalco was closely tied to the Viennese underground scene and its unique melange of music, burlesque, performance art, political satire and the celebration of anarchy and chaos. After a paternity test revealed that he was not the biological father of his 7-year old daughter, Falco moved to the Dominican Republic, where his car collided with a bus after a cocaine and alcohol fueled night out in the disco. He lived his love for drugs openly and without any depressed attitude, immortalizing them in many of his lyrics. Falco is forever the progressive accomplice of youth, one who exposed false morals and dystopian conditions in society. He was the missing link between pop and avant-garde, successfully moving between hit-machine and experimental artist, between local slang and Esperanto. In his videos and live performances Falco would display an unseen exalted body language and eccentric singing style that we all wanted to copy- he was an absolute idol, cool and fun and subversive.įalco was a poet, an innovator and linker of elements of international language. Invading the mind-numbing conservative German bourgeoise and monotony of the 80s, there was suddenly this beautiful young man with mischievous charm, who behind his winning smile most intelligently mocked society and never took himself too seriously, although his musical productions were groundbreaking and more than once reminiscent of Bowie. He joined Anarcho-punk bands in the ever vibrant and unique Viennese scene of baroque avant garde before he took off as a solo artist in 1982. He was expelled from a Catholic school, dropped out of both his apprenticeship as an insurance salesman and the Vienna Conservatory of Music in order to become ‘a real musician’. His early biography reads like an artist cliché: Hansi loved singing already as a toddler, he got a piano from his parents for his fourth birthday, and when he was five years old, the Vienna Music Academy certified him an absolute pitch. English-speaking people didn’t bother to realize this, and for Germans it was unfamiliar and outrageous- but miraculously it worked.įalco was the only survivor of his mother’s triplet pregnancy and finally born as Johann “Hans” Hölzel into a working-class district of Vienna in 1957. Falco was not only a genius musician, but he delivered his innovative songs in heavy Viennese, the Austro-Bavarian dialect of Vienna. Just like the artist Serge Gainsbourg cannot be understood by listening to Melody Nelson only and without examining his overall language, poetry and cultural contexts, the phenomenon Falco can also not be explained within anglo-saxon pop-cultural frames that are sparing out very specific Viennese aspects of his music and poetry. I didn’t do it because the best thing about the American flag is the red, white and red stripes” Red, white and red stripes is the Austrian flag.įalco’s legacy gets lost in translation. “I often had the opportunity to go to America. But also because he was aware of that he could make a fortune in America, but would never be fully understood and perceived as the great artist that he is in the foreign country. Germans admiringly talk about the ‘Wiener Schmäh’ that he possesses, a unique Viennese charm and wit that is nowhere to be found in Germany.įalco was depressed when “Rock Me Amadeus” peaked in the US charts, knowing that he could never repeat this success. ![]() First of all, Falco is Austrian and not German, which is a very important distinction. Dance music and rap freaks among them may also remember “Der Kommissar” and Falco’s legacy as one godfather of white rap. Falco (1957-1998)Īsk most Americans and other English-speaking people, and they will tell you that Falco is the German one-hit-wonder with that “Amadeus” song.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |