It would be easy as invading Poland to say that Trio is what rock ’n’ roll would have sounded like had Nazi Germany won World War II. But it would be a Goebbels-sized lie—rock ’n’ roll would have sounded like Emerson, Lake & Palmer. The Fuhrer would have used their music to warm up the faithful before speaking at the Nuremberg Rallies (“Welcome back my friends to the show that lasts a thousand years…). They would have been groovy totalitarian chic.
Trio, on the other hand, were such an amiable bunch they used the term “Neue Deutsche Fröhlichkeit” (or “New German Cheerfulness”) to describe their music. Which isn’t to say the Hitler-loving hotties in the Bund Deutscher Mädel wouldn’t have loved them. As Jim Morrison once said, “the little girls understand.”
Trio came out of happening Großenkneten in 1979 and played a spartan form of danceable pop/hard rock. Minimalist stuff, but irresistibly catchy—funny too. And they weren’t playing Krautrock—no motorik beat, no indefinable jazzy song structures, no Damo Suzuki. Just boom boom boom with childishly simple melodies and deadpan vocals gratis Stephan Remmler (who also played the dinky keyboards) backed by Kralle Krawinkel on guitar and Peter Behrens on drums. People like to slap absurd labels on them. New Wave? Balderdash. Where are the skinny ties? Synth-pop? One dinky keyboard makes them a synth-pop band? As if! And where are the funny haircuts? Trio were rockers and proved it with “Ich Lieb Den Rock ‘N’ Roll.”
There’s not a lot of product out there but their 1983 North American release Trio and Error is the one you want. It was released elsewhere as Bye Bye but that one has a different track listing and isn’t as good. And forget about 2000’s Trilogie–The Best of Trio. How can it be a best of if it doesn’t include some of their best songs? And is padded with execrable filler? Believe me you don’t want to hear “Energi”—it sounds like Abba on bad acid gone reggae (although that actually sounds interesting!). And “Ready for You” almost makes me question their brilliance. That said, their eponymous 1981 debut is well worth a listen—”Ja Ja Ja” is pure punk genius!
I remember my older brother bringing Trio and Error home to his apartment where my friends and I were subsisting on a steady diet of David Bowie, Frank Zappa, and bales of marijuana, and we loved it! We were some finicky motherfuckers (Ramones, yawn, Talking Heads, well okay…) but Trio and Error instantly became the only album we would listen to. We would have danced to it if we could have gotten off the sofa! It was so out of left field, so beyond anything we’d ever heard or ever thought we’d ever hear we capitulated immediately. Laid down our bong and surrendered honorably. The Germans had won WWIII without firing a shot!
And they did it on charm. Hardly a quality one associates with your Teutonic types, but “Hearts Are Trump” had it in spades. They were endearing. And amiable, another quality one rarely associates with the Germans. I should know, I married one. And for her WWII never ended. She was simply waging it through interpersonal means. And Trio will make you laugh. Germans! Impossible!
Trio and Error opens with “Boom Boom,” Remmler starts things off by going “Boom boom pa, boom pa, boom boom pa, etc.” then in comes this barbarically heavy guitar riff and some drums worthy of Gary Glitter and after that it’s all stop-start charming with Remmler talking through the verses and singing the choruses with some great backing vocals. Why, it’s almost as addictively primal as Flipper’s “Sex Bomb,” and now that I come to think of it “Boom Boom” is the sound of “Sex Bomb” going off! Walk down the street with this on your headphones and it’s like your walking down the Kantstrasse in Berlin and you’re the Koenig von Kantstrasse! Then comes the cheery “Hearts are Trump,” which is faster and features this perky synth figure girded by a mighty guitar riff and prominent female backing vocals. It’s so deliriously upbeat you’ll succumb to acute happyitis!
The lugubrious “Out in the Streets” has Remmler feeling sorry for himself (he even says so) because he’s in his room and his girl is out there somewhere having fun, although even so Remmler can’t curb his sense of humor, at one point muttering “And as the third verse comes up/Watch out for the American subtitles.” After which he throws in some German but I don’t see any subtitles! They forgot the subtitles! How the hell am I supposed to enjoy the movie?
And if you’ll allow me a digression, here’s a useless fact—the powers that be won’t let Arnold Schwarzenegger do his own voice-overs to the German/Austrian versions of HIS OWN films because he sounds like an Austrian hick! Anyway, “Out in the Streets” is a slow one with great organ and a swinging drumbeat and what sounds like an accordion but could be a synthesizer. No matter, really—suffice it to say your Germans go limp the minute they hear an accordion! And the organ solo is great! Move over Booker T.! But if Remmler’s got his tongue at least partly in cheek you’ll still shed a tear when he sings “Where were you in my nights/I said do not go I needed you so.”
“Bye Bye” is a slow one too, but it boasts savage electric guitar and Remmler singing in a slightly distorted pseudo-whisper like he’s John Lennon! A rocker, this one, slow or not, with Krawinkel dominating the proceedings with his six-string razor. “Anna – Lassmichrein Lassmichraus” is a syncopated slice of mid-tempo guitar rock and could be a love song but if so Remmler’s in love with not just Anna but with Bertha, Carla, Dieter, and Peter too!
Besides the names you get six words in German, so pull out your German-English dictionary, although why not just clue you in now—they’re “Let me in, let me out.” Musically you get some badass guitar, a simple drum beat and a chorus that I can only describe as delightful melodic primitivism. And you won’t want to miss Krawinkel’s guitar solo. Sounds like he’s slowly rolling over a gerbil in a King Tiger tank!
“Drei Mann in Doppelbett” (that’s “three men in a double bed” to non-German speakers) could be described as New Wave, or even synth-pop I suppose, thanks to the perky synth line that keeps it breathing; meanwhile the trio sing the title over and over while Remmler does a little whistling and this is the time in Sprockets when we danz! It’s elemental, perfect, and as repetitive as Kraftwerk, but you won’t mistake these guys for an appliance.
A primitive but giddy synthesizer line propels the immortal “Da Da Da I Don’t Love You – You Don’t Love Me Aha Aha Aha,” which is a greater piece of nonsense than Sting’s “”De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da” by a Teutonic kilometer and kicks Mannfred Mann’s “Doo Wah Diddy Diddy” back to the British Invasion where it belongs. The synth beat starts things off, Remmler goes “Uh huh… uh huh… uh huh” then sings a bit, then the boys make some truly incomprehensible noises with their mouths before this wonderfully childlike melody kicks in and the colored girls (who are uncredited and probably aren’t colored) sing. It’s a real beerhall putsch of a singalong and has this vaguely reggae feel to it, and if it doesn’t make you do the robot you’re a robot! You’ve heard of total war? Well, this is total fun, right down to the snatch of whistling that ends things.
From there Trio goes into the best cover of Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti” I’ve ever heard. It’s mechanized reggae with big, bad guitar and has Remmler speak-singing the lyrics with some subtle female backing vocalists. This is what rock ’n’ roll would have sounded like had HISTORY OPERATED IN REVERSE, with The Beatles hailing from Hamburg and traveling to Liverpool to hone their first-generation rock ’n’ roll chops.
Trio eschews the mania of the original for a kind of slacker lockstep groove that I bet the recruits in the German Army sing as they’re making six-mile runs through the Black Forest, or wherever they do basic training. And just to prove they love rock’ n’ roll, Trio follow it up with “I Lieb Den Rock ‘N’ Roll,” an enthusiastic (and Krupp steel-heavy) tribute to Chuck Berry’s baby. While I love Joan Jett’s “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll” I love this one even more because it makes her version sound positively baroque! Although it’s gotta be more expensive to listen to, because the dime you gotta put into the jukebox to hear her song is nothing compared to the Euro (at least) you gotta part with to hear theirs!
“Tooralooralooraloo – Is It Old & Is It New” is more synthadoodle and very Germanic folksy, like the Schlager Musik the little old ladies in Munich love almost as much as they do horsemeat sausage because it makes them nostalgic for the dreadful end of WWII! Has Heino covered this baby? He should. He could just record right over the instrumental track, because it already comes complete with ersatz strings and waterfall piano. But you’ll like it too because its so over the top, and you can spend hours asking yourself if Trio have succumbed to German sentimentality or are having a larf, although if you ask me they’re in earnest because this music is in every German’s DNA, along with a hankering for schnitzel and a throbbing ache to conquer Russia.
I have no idea what the initials in “W.W.W.” stand for but not matter; what’s important is it’s a very atmospheric synth-driven number that’s nice and pretty and features Remmler’s tongue just sort of traipsing along singing nonsense syllables over some nice guitar and subtle drumming. It’s as if for one weak moment they decided to tap into the Germanic strain of ambient music David Bowie was such a sucker for, and while it’s unobjectionable qua music it’s also the only song on Trio and Error I wouldn’t fight the entire Deutsche Wehrmacht for with one-arm tied behind my back. Were they trying to prove they had depth? I don’t want depth! I can’t even swim!
Trio and Error is a sui generis tour de force from a band that revered childlike simplicity—just check out that playful tic tac toe board of an album cover—over the fiendish complexities and seriousness of their native land’s musical history. There’s a buoyancy and lightheartedness to their music—even the merciless artillery barrage that is “Boom Boom” has a pleasingly light touch. Ambitious? Not really. Brilliant? In its way. It takes a kind of genius to do the simple thing and do it right. It takes an even greater form of genius to have fun doing it. Ich lieb den rock ’n’ roll indeed.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A
