Sing Me A Song

Sing me a Song...

Although I've always loved the electric guitar, I soon found out that I wouldn't be able to play it - my fingers are short and thick (my wife Christina calls them Chicken McNuggets!). So, I didn't dare try to play...

Well, I can speak pretty good English and I've always sang along with every song, so I thought to myself, "Why not become a heavy metal singer!". As Ronnie James Dio once sang, "Sing me a Song, you're a Singer"

In senior public school we formed our first band: Axcid. We had the instruments but nobody really knew how to play them. "C'mon Hemme, you can play a solo" - "No, I can't!" - "OK". That was one of the reasons we covered N.I.B. from Black Sabbath - the song didn't have a guitar solo...

We practised like Hell and got to play our 3 songs at a school event. We told the sound technician to turn up the volume - so he did. The crowd held their hands to their ears - funny because on stage it was still pretty quiet...

Our next gig was at the youth club where we practised - I sang using a guitar amp - unbelievable but it worked just the same. We played open air and the funny thing was (today it's funny - not back then, though!) that my micro cable was the shortest of them all. And that was the reason I didn't stand in the middle of the stage as normal for about 1,000,000,000 bands on this earth - no, I stood behind the guitarists. Besides that my volume was much too low, but maybe that wasn't that bad anyway...

Well, this "band" soon became history. Our bassist, Ronny, got to play with STORMWITCH and got a little fame touring through Germany. They actually made a couple of records too. Our drummer Ansgar didn't have any ambitions whatsoever and quit. Our rhythym guitarist joined a Death Metal band. So it was only Hemme and me left...

We had finished school aand after drinking about 10 beers together we (Hemme, Malz, Jua, Dzida and I) decided to form a new band and so NIGHTMARE was born.

We wanted to be a bit more professional - everyone could actually play his instrument - ok, I still couldn't hold a note but WTF. We practised like Hell and had a lot of fun together on the side, too. Our first gig was on Friday July 13th 1984. We played at the youth club Mittelrain in Heidenheim.

Malz and Hemme taking it easy after our sound check

Just before the gig started we all got pretty nervous. STORMWITCH who had just released their first record Walpurgis Night were in the audience. - so we played the best we could. Malze hat to give an autograph to a girl, who later became his girlfriend.

And as always the girlfriends gave us guys a hard time - only Hemme was to be in control, ha-ha...

And then we played a concert at the youth club in Dischingen.

And what should I say - it was fantastic - there were 50 fans and these 50 fans went beserk - they kicked ass with us and in the end we had to play 3 songs double because we had run out of material...

That was definitely our best gig. The sound was on my side - it was louder than Hell, so nobody really heard me sing and besides I looked a bit like Rob Halford at the time...

After that we opened for STORMWITCH in Gerstetten playing in front of 250 people. They didn't like us at all. In the newspapers the next day they literally killed me, "...the vocalist, who always swung his sceptre was better saying Fuck all the time then at actually singing..."

One last gig at the Hirsch, which didn't really work out good either and I had an understanding. Meanwhile Hemme could play a guitar solo but I still couldn't hold a note...

So I stuck to going to concerts and singing in my car!

And that's what I'm still doing!

It's Heaven and Hell...