in which I record and play and love and record more.
All the full time work, the writing, rehearsing, promoting,
playing and recording was possible since I got up at 5:30 most
days for meditation, qigong, taiji and guitar playing all before I went to work
at Trash. I had been doing this since 82 and finally it all manifested. Since I worked as night manager at
Bandito this became much more difficult though. The restaurant closed at 2:00
AM during the week and 4:00 AM on weekends, with the kitchen often open until ½ an hour before
closing. What do you do after you worked in such high intensity in a city like
New York? Many mornings we hit the clubs while on others we just chilled out on
a bench in front of St Marks church on the corner of 2nd Ave and 10th
St, where Patti Smith got her start. Occasionally after cleaning up and chairs on the table we just dimmed
the lights and hung out at the bar. A few times we had guitars and jammed sitting
on the bar. For a while we walked across the street to another bar every Sunday and had a jam. I remember The Godfathers hanging out at the restaurant after a gig, then joining us for the jam.
I tried to keep the momentum going and in the fall of 86 a full album was released on Moon records. The below text was written in the spring of 2006 for a Mus 477 (A history of Rock'n Roll) class at the University of Hawaii taught by Jay Junker, maybe the most fun class I ever took. The text in italic below some documents was written in the present. With the last two songs, which I uploaded today, the entire album is available for your free download pleasure on soundcloud. You can check on the original order of the songs on the back cover below.
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| Dieter Osten East of Eden, Moon Records, LP cover, 1986. |
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| Dieter Osten East of Eden, Moon Records, LP back, 1986. |
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| Dieter Osten at Danceteria, oil on velvet, 2007. |
ha ha ha, velvet painting, so rock'n roll. I did a couple of test paintings, but so far haven't followed up on it.
Nyack Recordings. (1984), 8-track. East of Eden
Songs: Mystik Mood,
Come on Up, Komm Zu Mir, Love You So Well, Running to You, Can’t Fool the
Music, Stay away, Sea of Happiness. All songs: Dieter Runge.
All released on Moon Records except Come on Up and Running to You
(unreleased).
Dieter Osten (guit/voc/perc)
Ed Steinberg (drums/perc/voc)
Joe Drake (Bass/perc)
Fran Powers (guit/voc/perc)
Ingrid Rudefors (voc/rap on Komm u Mir)
Ja Ja Fisher (voc)
Hurricane Carla (sax)
All these
tracks were recorded in two sessions at Nyack Sound in October 1984 and were
engineered by Gary Solomon. The
8-track board was the one that Bruce Springsteen recorded Born to Run on. Well,
I have always been much more of a Stones fan but this combination worked. The
real reason though was that East of Eden
was a band. We started to rehearse in early 84 and had our first gig at the
Peppermint Lounge in March 84, so by October we had played a lot and knew our
material. The girls were always a bit problematic, since they weren’t
musicians, never could hear themselves on stage, but they always added beauty
and drama and were fun to hang out with, most of the time. Hurricane Carla was
a true professional. Joe always came up with great bass lines, Fran’s single
lines and chord riffs added well to my chord churning and occasional cryptic
lead playing. Besides me writing the lyrics and basic chord structures
everybody came up with their own parts.
Four songs are rockers: Mystik
Mood, Come On Up, Running to You, Stay Away,
Komm Zu Mir and Sea of Happiness are reggae inspired, Can’t Fool the Music is funk and there
is a sort of ballad: Love You So Well.
The first day we recorded all the basic tracks pretty much live and all
together. During the second session we did all the overdubs and the mix down which
you can listen to on the Nyack recording cd. Some more overdubs were done later
and the songs were mixed further. This all happened at Bob Coulter’s studio
called Most Loved Recordings Ever Made.
More about that later. The Nyack sessions were lots of fun, very efficient and
produced some good basic tracks. I think these tracks are worth to consider
remixing, in a contemporary mode maybe kinda dubwise. Nothing was released
until a few years later on Rob Hingsley’s (The
Toasters) Moon Records.
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| Single review in city mag Schaedelspalter (head splitter). Hannover, Germany. |
Mystic Mood is a sped up T-Rex inspired
rocker that I wrote sitting on the roof of 23 St Marks place home of the former
legendary Electric Circus and the Dom of Velvet Undderground and Nico fame. I
had lived there for about a year in a loft with busted windows and hardly any
heat. Mystic Mood presents a new beginning after the depressing time of
alcohol, drugs, digesting the breakup of the New York Niggers. We often opened our show with it. The verse is
entirely on E/E7th with the pinky holding down the b and e string
for the T-Rexy thing, the bridge is G/C/C7/E and the chorus just C/E. I am
playing what I call the cryptic lead just some kind of E chord, with tons of
reverb. There is a reference to Jimmy Hendrix in there too.
Come on up (and see me sometime) was
taken straight from Mae West after reading her biography. It is an invitation
to have sex in a stonesey groove and the only song I played single string solo.
Listening to it now I am not totally clear why we didn’t finish it and included
it on the later album. I guess I didn’t feel strongly enough about it,
especially my soloing.
Komm Zu Mir, a German reggae (sorta)
song advertising my experience in making love, the wish to get laid. Ingrid
does a rap in Swedish, good job too, fun to record and mix, also a good
danceable live song. I used to bring some percussion instruments and use them
during the break. Definitely eclectic.
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| Danceteria postcard. German singer.... |
Love You So
Well. Another love song? Give me break. There are songs with worse lyrics,
but I often felt a bit embarrassed by this one. Ingrid inspired it and I am
using some of her biographical images. My command of the English language was
more limited at the time, but the title is a bit of wordplay. I was aware that
love is not quantifiable, but thought that it was an interesting line. Besides
the lyrics being on the simple side, this song is still very interesting to me
musically. The drumming is great and I especially like the space that is still
in the song. The bass sounds like a deep bell swinging back and forth and has a
haunting quality. Fran is plying some nice guitar riffs and just sat down at
the piano laying down chords that work well. A good candidate for remixing.
Running to You, while Velvet inspired it
has more of a raw pop feel with chord driven rhythm. Since we never finished
mixing it, it’s hard to tell what it could have been.
Can’t Fool the Music. My attempt at funk, also based on some chords
that I learned during a brief period of actually taking guitar lessons. I wrote
the chords and the guitar-riff. This song is about the truth of music, the
power of music to lift us up when we’re down.
Stay Away, written during the New York Nigger days, actually the
second song I started to write was Some Kinda
Lova (Velvet Underground) inspired, the A/E thing during the verse bending
all of the strings of the A-chord.
Great drums and bass line. The count for this song was 123412. It’s
about these girls from Queens who had straight jobs during the week and than
stayed the whole weekend in Manhattan partying and crashing somewhere. I didn’t
really want them to stay away from me. It was just a song, working a theme, things I gave up long long time ago and bybybybybybaby again straight from Lou.
Well, “the creative transformation of source material (JJ).”
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| Small poster handout with silhouette self portrait. |
Sea of
Happiness, a straight love song, what can I say, inspired by Ingrid, more
wishful thinking than the actual truth. The Can’t hurry love lyric,another pop reference.
Nice guitar work by Fran.
1985/86 Sessions
The East Of Eden lineup kept
changing. Basically the scene at the time was that a songwriter formed a band
comprised out of friends and acquaintances, who mostly had their own bands, if
they were songwriters or just played in several bands waiting which one would
take off. With different lineups I recorded four more songs and rerecorded Love You So Well for a second time. Besides me Ed
Steinberg was the only constant.
Dieter Runge (guit/voc)
Ed Steinberg (drums/perc/voc)
David Sardy (guit/voc)
Blacky Pagano (bass/voc)
Fred Smith (bass)
Shauna Curry-Laurie (keybrds)
Diana Steinberg (voc)
Marina Zurkow (voc)
Bill Hemy (slide/lead-guit)
Marc Jeffrey (guit)
Drew Mc Vety (elctr violin)
During a
couple of sessions at Calliope Studio (24 trks) we recorded the drums for Step Into the Fire and Love You So Well (this version appears on
the album). Bob Coulter worked as an
engineer there and we got some slots late at night that weren’t as expensive.
All overdubs and mixing was done at Bob’s apartment in Soho on a 1/4 " 8
trk.
The drums
for Guess I’m Falling in Love, Lonely Sat
Night and Got to Move on were recorded in a hole in the wall
called Shelter Studio in March 86. Often drummers record the drums by
themselves on several tracks first using a click-track to keep their time. Ed
Steinberg was a great drummer who made everybody playing with him play and
sound better. During these recordings he played the drums all by himself
listening to nothing but his own body and mind. He was the most pleasant guy and
was one of the best musicians I ever had the pleasure to work with. The
engineer for this session was Steve Missall. The overdubs and the mixing for these songs three songs were
done at 92 2nd Ave.
Step Into the Fire is one of my most realized songs and I am glad I also made a nice video for it. I really have little memory how this song sounded live with the original line-up, Fran on guitar and Joe on Bass. Joe always came up with the best lines, even though he was steeped in the blues he loved the Velvets, turned me on to Nick Drake and many other things. He definitely had an eclectic taste. He lived in the same building as Alain Ginsberg and Richard Hell, on E 12th St. The rent controlled apartment was something like $ 275 a month. It was called the poets building. I lived one block over on 13th. Joe was my best friend in New York. Well, by the time of these recording Joe was on tour with the Band of Outsiders. I had become friends with Fred Smith from Televison and he plays bass on this and Love You so Well.
What really
makes this song is the guitar playing of Bill Hemy. Bill was Bob’s roommate.
They were both from Canada and Bill hung out at home a lot while we were
overdubbing and mixing, so I just asked him if he wanted to play some guitar.
The verse is just descending AGE (I know, Fortune Teller, I didn’t know it at
the time), while the chorus is Bb/A#/A back and forth. So, we just let Bill go
off for several tracks and then mixed it. He plays both straight as well as
slide-guitar and is doing a great job. Of course the first three Led Zeppelin
albums were just awesome when they came out, but I never stayed a fan and they
definitely didn’t influence my writing or playing, yet I love Bill’s nods to
Jimmy Page on this recording, especially his crisp riffs during the last verse.
I always new I wanted to have slide on this song. The song is about the fire
walk, which I did a couple of times with Mantak Chia, my first taiji and qigong
teacher, with whom I studied from 1981-85.
Love You So
Well, I think, we rerecorded on Ed’s behalf. It is quite interesting to
listen to both recordings today. The Calliope recording has a very interesting
bass/drum intro that has some syncopation. The guitars on the Nyack recording
are more upfront and immediate and I miss the haunting bass from that
recording. It would be interesting to mix the best elements from both
recordings. Everything is more polished including the backup vocals. Ingrid and
Jaja came up with the uuuh – ssh - ssh, which I think is quite unusual, but
Diana and Marina sing more on key, but then that isn’t always what counts in
R’n’R, or is it? I think I like the original better.
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| Caty Monnier on the day she inspired Guess I'm Falling in Love. |
The title
for Guess I’m Falling in Love came
from the Velvet song that first came out on bootlegs. It was a hard rocker with
a great guitar sound and no lyrics. One more love song, yeaaaaah. I am quite
happy with the lyrics of this one. Some Bowie reference here: Wir Waren Helden fuer Einen Tag. Every
thing is true in this one. It is about my dear friend Caty, who I met at one of
the New York Nigger gigs (1979) at a
place that was called Tier 3. It was on West Broadway when there was still
nothing happening in Tribeca. A
week later the Bad Brains had their first NY show there. At the time she was
married to Alex Kayser a Swiss photographer who later took some pictures of the
band (see posters). After she got divorced I really fell in love with her, mais alas, it never happened, but we
still are best friends today. I really like the chord progressions here and
also the minor/major chords dynamic. David Sardy a 19-year-old kid from
Brooklyn is playing lead guitar. Some of his playing is mixed in the back, but
he had a great way of switching back and forth between chords and lines. There
is a weird ascending chord progression in the middle and I love David’s playing
there. This song has some nice space and dynamic buildup. Can’t see why this
couldn’t have been a hit?
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| East of Eden bio. |
Lonely Sat Night really was written on a lonely Saturday night, yes, New York could be an extremely lonely place. Al Green meets the Velvet Underground. Little exaggerations in the lyrics, but in my despair I can’t find the ones that care, is not too bad. Drew McVety was an aspiring actor and a waiter at Bandito’s the Mexican restaurant where I was the night manager. Everybody there was a musician, actor, dancer, performance artist, a great crew. We had some rousing parties after closing time and some of us did all kind of projects together. Drew hadn’t played for years, but I wanted some violin on this one to drive it home. It works. I do like the ending, which is Velvet influenced for sure.
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| Moon Records press release. |
Got to Move
On is about leaving Bandito’s, tired
of working for crazy bosses, who always want more from you than what they are willing
to pay for. Like with all my songs I provide the lyrics, chords, the basic
rhythm and feel and let everybody else come up with their own parts. I’m also
open to listen for other changes or input. Often it is for the better, but
every once in a while I should have stuck with my original idea. This of course
has to do with confidence based on experience. Ed’s drumming is an awesome
homage to Keith Moon. Imagine Ed sitting behind his kit only listening to
himself. No click track, No bass, No guitar. Ed rocks. Also, David’s playing
here, my favorite parts are his staccato rhythm during move on, move, move and his lines during the chorus, very lyrical
playing. I also appreciate the maturity of his playing, leaving spaces during
the verses. The last verse translates: When
will we be free? Then I will be forever yours, but I don’t want to wait any
longer until somebody else will give me a chance, asking the question
whether true long-lasting love can actually happen in a world were oppression
rules.
Out
of all these sessions East of Eden
released Mystic Mood/Sea of Happiness
as a 7” 45 in 1985 on Moon Records with my own designed sleeve this time and Dieter Osten East of
Eden as 12” 33 album in 1986. The album was released as Dieter Osten with the name of the album
being East of Eden. Each time we
released a record the people in the band were different than the people in the
recording, I was the only constant in the band by now. The word Osten means east in German, reflecting
my study and practice of Eastern philosophies and meditation/martial arts. Runge is pretty much impossible to
pronounce for the average American.
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| British Music Mag Graffiti cover, writer Kris Need. |
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| Kris Need Graffiti review. |
Pain Of Love/November18th Session
By the time
the album was released the lineup had changed completely. Now, even Ed was
gone, but the new lineup was all-star and very potent.
Vinny Signorelli, (drums). Ex-Dots and subsequently in many touring and recording bands.
Mark Jeffrey, (guit/voc/piano). Marc, the Band of Outsiders leader and main
songwriter
Joe Drake (bass). By this time Joe spend some time in a few
other bands, but predominantly with the Band
of Outsiders who had released an album in Europe and toured there a few
times. This was one of my favorite NY bands of the eighties and it was a shame
they never made it. They were a two-guitar band in the mold of Television, with
great songs.
Ivan Julian, (guit/voc). Of Voidoids fame, another great guitarist.
Of course
these guys all had their own projects, but weren’t exactly too busy and I had
the album coming out. This was the first and only time that I just sang. I
played during the rehearsals to teach them the songs. It was interesting and a
different sound with two accomplished lead guitar players. This band can be
seen on the Step Into the Fire making
noise in the beginning but not playing on the recording of the video. We went
into a studio with this lineup and recorded two songs in 1986.
These two
songs were both recorded and mixed on 24 track. Pain of Love was developed with Ed Steinberg still in the band and
he is responsible for the hard Clash-like rhythm during the chorus. It was
written more in a Velvet/Jesus & Marychain feel. Nov 18th is a longer song in a minor/major chord
progression with longish guitar attack intro and solos. It has no real
verse/bridge/chorus structure. Both songs also use acoustic guitar. Marc plays
piano on Nov 18th. This is
the most experimental of all my recordings. The song came to me pretty much in
one piece while half sleeping/dreaming. Both songs deal with my relationship to
Chris Kaufman, my girlfriend at the time and the dancer in the Step Into the Fire video. We also did
videos for both of these songs. The video for Pain of Love was entered in a film festival in Long Island, only to
be beaten by a movie about aids.
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| Chris Kaufman at Lincoln Center. |
Cris was a modern dancer who came to NY on an Alvin Ailey scholarship and danced with several modern dance groups. We met working at Bandito. Chris inspired both Pain of Love and November 18th. She can also be heard on on my answering machine, wishing me good luck for my record release gig at the Pyramid in the Step into the Fire video. For the Pain of Love and November videos she was no longer available to dance for me so we got Margret Whaley another modern dancer to act and dance in those two videos.
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| East of Eden record release gig, Pyramid Club Dec 86. Ivan Julian, Vinnie Signorelli, Joe Drake, Dieter Osten, Marc Jeffrey. |
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| Halloween 86, 10 th St/2nd Ave. Same lineup as above. |
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| Halloween 86, 10 th St/2nd Ave. Dieter Osten, Marc Jeffrey. |
There were only a few gigs in all these years where I didn't play guitar and just sang. It is a totally different thing, kinda naked and you have to come up with a solution. Is it in your temperament to go the Iggy or Jagger route, theatrically like Bowie, or more restraint like Brian Ferry? There are of course many more examples and one has to develop one's own stage character. Many performers look awkward and a few can turn that into their own presence. I didn't do it long enough, but I did do some dancing.
It had been
a creative stretch and growth from the punk rock assault of Just like Dresden 45 to the, still
guitar driven, experimental underground sound of Nov 18th . Grunge was certainly not created in Seattle.
Experiments with fast, slow, medium, hard and soft, keyboards, horns and
violins R&B, funk and reggae had opened up new possibilities and nobody
knows where I would have taken my music. Looking back I can see that the
combination of film and music is a field that seems natural to me and I plan to
explore more during the next few years. This is what happened then as recorded
and remembered and it is impossible or moot to ask what if.
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| Video Still, November 18th, East Village, 1987. |
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| Margret Whaley, Video Still, November 18th, Ave C - Ave D. |
Besides
never having been a trained musician or singer I had always been able to attract
collaborators who were better musicians than I and create a chemistry that
resulted in the whole being bigger than the sum of its parts. To this day I am
still most critical about my own vocals, besides having been told that I have ‘something’. Sometimes it works and with
more experience and confidence I do believe that my voice could carry a tune. I
definitely have to credit Bob Dylan and Lou Reed for creating the possibilities
for someone who was always told to shut up and not sing, to actually go out and
say: “F… all of you, I am going to write my own songs and sing them.” There
were many other songs and sessions, only existing on cassettes, even live
videos, other obsolete formats, rotting away, lost and forgotten. These
recordings still sound good today.
In the next post I will go into details about the making of the 4 b/w videos with great stills and stories of freezing temperatures in the war zone between avenues C & D and guerrilla filming in and under Grand Central Station and on subway platforms in Long Island City, bike messengering and finally how I leave the city after 10 years. Till the next time, enjoy!
Aloha, dieter
Feedback: I was asked how I felt when I moved into the NYN loft, fresh from Germany living with a group African Americans. Of course there was an element of culture shock, though mainly around domestic habits, eating, tv, language of course. Since the tv was on at all times I got a crashcourse in American culture. Elliot Harris (Aid Haid) and Leo Faison (The Pope), where the first people I really met in America and they took me in and supported me when I was down and out and I will always be very thankful for what the allowed me to experience. Besides that we were all excited about making music in the city, and trying to make it. I will write more about this time once I have scanned and sorted the 400 plus b/w negatives Mattus has send me recently.
In the next post I will go into details about the making of the 4 b/w videos with great stills and stories of freezing temperatures in the war zone between avenues C & D and guerrilla filming in and under Grand Central Station and on subway platforms in Long Island City, bike messengering and finally how I leave the city after 10 years. Till the next time, enjoy!
Aloha, dieter
Feedback: I was asked how I felt when I moved into the NYN loft, fresh from Germany living with a group African Americans. Of course there was an element of culture shock, though mainly around domestic habits, eating, tv, language of course. Since the tv was on at all times I got a crashcourse in American culture. Elliot Harris (Aid Haid) and Leo Faison (The Pope), where the first people I really met in America and they took me in and supported me when I was down and out and I will always be very thankful for what the allowed me to experience. Besides that we were all excited about making music in the city, and trying to make it. I will write more about this time once I have scanned and sorted the 400 plus b/w negatives Mattus has send me recently.
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| Marc Jeffrey.....with East of Eden graffiti. |
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