Plain and Fancy: 09/01/24

Sunday, September 1, 2024

Dhope - Musical Exhibitions (1978 germany, fine post prog krautrock, 2021 edition)

Dhope from Paderborn in Westphalia played progressive rock in the style of the seventies. Their only LP, "Musical exhibitions" from 1978, contains almost exclusively their own songs, appears only very rarely on the record market and has not yet been re-released. Keyboardist Niko Dragun (born in February 1955) tells the story of Dhope in his own words:

"It all started in the seventies in Brilon, a small town in the Sauerland. In the youth centre there, a soundproof rehearsal room had been set up that was available to everyone. Various musicians met there again and again to do sessions together. Two of them were the singer Thomas Haberland (born in January 1959) and me, the keyboard player Niko Dragun. We both enjoyed jamming together so much that we decided to form a band. We got Heinz Weber as a drummer, with whom we had already rocked out several times. Heinz later played the drums for the Short Romans for many years. Finally, bass player Christoph Brumberg joined us, who later played guitar in the Brilon band Crossfire.

One day Christoph brought along a work colleague: Erlend Luck (born in November 1957) had already gained experience as a songwriter and band musician. And these five 'professionals' called themselves Random Music. Our role models were German rock legends like Jane, Novalis and Grobschnitt, but also English-language bands like Genesis and Jethro Tull. When I got a place to study in Paderborn, the rehearsal room was moved there. At that time, the drummer parted ways with the band. Heiko Klingenberg (born in November 1957) was brought in as the new drummer, and Claus Peter (born in November 1956) also joined as the new bass player. Both also studied in Paderborn. Claus had previously played in the Gütersloh band Corpus and occasionally filled in as a substitute bass player in other bands. Christoph now exchanged the bass for a guitar, but left the band after the first gig of the new formation, which now renamed itself Dhope.

And then it took off. We put together a rock repertoire with German and English lyrics, which we presented at the university festival 'Musik für 'ne Mark' (Music for one Mark) at a late hour in front of a full house and brought the place to the boil. Xenon, whose guitarist Reinhard Hennecke (born in October 1959), who had previously played with the Meschede band Ephesus, met Claus at this event. The two of them did an extensive jam session after the Dhope gig, which went so well that Reinhard also joined us. At some of the early concerts, Christian Voss, a guest musician friend from Bielefeld, had also played percussion. With the new musicians, new, e.g. funky, stylistic elements flowed into the music. More gigs followed. Among other things, we also played as the opening act for Ramses. Soon after, we decided to produce the LP 'Musical Exhibitions' at our own expense.

All in all, the money was enough for just under a week in the studio, although this studio was by no means comparable to that of a Conny Plank. The record label, Harz Records, reflected our limited financial possibilities. With the LP, the possibilities for gigs could be improved, as the acceptance by promoters was increased. And especially live performances showed the quality of the band with a very high degree of joy in playing and improvisation. Although Dhope combined various stylistic elements, they always saw themselves as one of the last Krautrock bands in the tradition of Eloy, Epitaph, Karthago, Jane and Birth Control. Psychedelic passages combined with melody rock and funk were combined according to the motto of the gigs 'Lust und Laune' ('on a whim'). We were also one of the few bands that sang in both German and English. This is reflected in the LP, and the title 'Musical Exhibitions' was meant to express this diversity. By the way, the idea for the cover artwork came from Thomas, the singer. The execution was done by a friend from Brilon, the highly talented draughtsman Ralf Jupe. In the lyrics, an examination of themes of the transition from the seventies to the eighties becomes clear.

'Dream Of Peace' and 'Auf ein Wort, Herr General' ('May I have a Word with you, General?') undoubtedly reflect the pacifist spirit of the time, but when you look at what is happening in the world at the moment, they are more topical than ever. With 'X-Ray', the subject of nuclear power was taken up. And somehow the boys also mourned the ‘old times', the 68ers and the hippie movement, whose high points they had not consciously experienced themselves. This becomes clear in the song 'Monotony'. So besides the fun of music, a social-political approach was also important to the band. Progressiveness instead of conformity. In 1980/81, the original line-up of the band changed. Thomas, who in the meantime had got a place at university in Mönchengladbach, Erlend and I left the band. Heiko, Claus and Reinhard looked for new musicians and played together as Dhope for about two more years. But the style changed from so-called Krautrock to the somewhat harder Neue Deutsche Welle (New German Wave).

I still played in various Paderborn bands such as Chashed Briegel, Wart's Ab and One Of A Kind. Thomas is still the singer of the Stanley Beamish Blues Band from Gladbach. Reinhard joined the Paderborn hard rock band Stryker as bass player after his time with Dhope. Yes, that's how it was back then. It was a long, long time ago that the band carried their heavy equipment out of the rehearsal room into the cars on an early Monday morning to rush into the Harz mountains and record this longplayer: 'Musical Exhibitions'. Have fun with it!"

A few things can be added to this. The artists first asked the well-known producer Conny Plank from Wolperath for the recordings, but they couldn't pay him and had to go elsewhere. The edition of the LP "Musical exhibitions" (Harz Records RP 10213) was 500 copies, as far as the musicians can remember. But for that it appears very seldom. The main purpose of the release was that they could get gigs better with an LP to show for it. The Harzstudio/Tonstudio Hahn in Osterode, where the tracks were recorded at that time, no longer exists, owner Hahn is probably no longer alive. Harz Records was the studio's own label, but only a few records were released there. The actual order number, RP 10213, is written on the narrow spine of the cover. What is given as the order number on Discogs (www.discogs.com) -76.21016-01 is the matrix number in the run-off of the LP. It was probably set by the cutting studio and stamped into the matrix, not incised. The group commissioned studio owner Hahn to handle the pressing order, and he in turn apparently had the whole thing run through Record Partner from Hamburg, as indicated by the abbreviation "RP" in the order number. It is important to know that Record Partner do not have their own pressing plant, but rather have the LPs manufactured wherever there is free capacity.

So it's an agency that provides its expertise, relieving artists and small labels of the sometimes cumbersome steps involved in releasing a record or CD. The rights, however, were and are held solely by the artists. Almost all the songs on the LP were written by Dhope themselves. The lyrics of "Do it another way" were written by Gerry Phillips, a friend of the group, and those of "Auf ein Wort, Herr General" are loosely based on a text by Woile. Six of the ten pieces are sung in English, two are instrumentals ("Aufbruch" and "Flying" which has nothing to do with the Beatles song of the same name), the first ("Monotonie") is sung in German, and the last ("Auf ein Wort, Herr General") is spoken in German. The photograph on the back of the LP cover was snapped by a daughter of studio owner Hahn and shows from left to right Thomas Haberland, Reinhard Hennecke, Heiko Klingenberg, Niko Dragun, Claus Peter and Erlend Luck. What does the band name actually mean? Originally they wanted to call themselves Deutsche Hoffnung (German Hope), sometimes abbreviated to D. Hope in Germish/Denglish. They simply merged that into Dhope. So it has nothing to do with the name Dope for hashish. The meaning of the LP title "Musical exhibitions" has already been explained by Niko Dragun in his review. The cover shows, appropriately enough, a few drawn exhibitionists, an idea of singer Thomas Haberland. The only concert poster of Dhope can be seen here in the booklet at hand on page 13, but there were also a few festival posters on which, among others, Dhope were mentioned. The colour photographs on pages 17 to 23 were snapped at a Dhope gig in Paderborn. The one on page 15 shows Reinhard Hennecke with his former band Xenon. And the black and white photograph on page 14 shows Christian Nóvé from Dice and Claus Peter at a joint jam session in Mohns Park in Gütersloh in the summer of 1976, before Dhope was founded.

Thomas Haberland started his studies in Mönchengladbach in the winter semester 1980/81 - that is in the autumn of 1980 - whereupon he left the group, as did Niko Dragun and Erlend Luck. The others continued to play with new people under the old name for a few years, at least until 1984, roughly in the style of the NDW group Fee from Brunswick. The collectors' value of the Dhope LP increased considerably over the decades. In the fourth and last edition of the "Cosmic Price Guide to Original Krautrock Records" (Reinbek 2018) by Ulrich Klatte, which has been greatly expanded in the meantime, it is listed at €300 for mint condition. The year of release is listed there as 1976. The LP is not listed at all in the otherwise fairly complete Rock&Pop price catalogue 2020/21 of the German record collectors' magazine "Oldie-Markt" - a sign of its great rarity. Hans Pokora, lacking experience values for this record, lists the LP in his book "6001 Record Collector Dreams” (Vienna 2010) with an all too modest two units, which corresponds to a value of €100 to €180; so he preferred to remain cautious with his estimate. On the internet at Discogs (www.discogs.com), only one copy is currently (2021) offered, at a price of €750. At Popsike (www.popsike.com), six sales results are listed. The most expensive specimen listed there was sold for €561, on Ebay Germany in 2012, with 22 bidders, in not quite mint condition (mint-). The next most expensive one sold in the same year for €462, also on Ebay Germany, also not in mint condition. If you extrapolate the results to mint condition, you get a value of about €500-700.

The exact year of the LP's release has been a mystery until now, as it is neither mentioned on the cover, nor on the label, nor in the run-off. The style suggests theseventies, which of course doesn't mean anything. The matrix number in the run-off of the LP (76.21016-01-1/1 on the A side and 76.21016-01-2 on the B side) starts with the number 76, which could be taken as a hint. And so on Discogs, on Rateyourmusic (https://rateyourmusic.com) and in all four editions of Ulrich Klatte's "Cosmic Price Guide" the year of release is given as 1976, on YouTube sometimes 1976, sometimes 1981. Hans Pokora in his book "6001 Record Collector Dreams" gives the year 1977, wherever he got this information - probably just guessed. But if you go to Discogs, where often also the matrix numbers are mentioned, and look there under "Record Partner" (founded in January 1977), you will quickly find that the number sequence "76" has nothing to do with the year 1976. You can often find it there in the run-off, even on RP records from 1980, 1981, 1982, 1985 or 1986, for example. So it must be an internal numbering of the cutting studio, the pressing plant or Record Partner, independent of the year of release. The fact that there are other records listed on Discogs with the release year 1976, although Record Partner was only founded in 1977, also has nothing to say. Because on these releases, as with Dhope, no vintages are named on cover and label; they were merely assumed on the basis of the matrix numbers with the initial digits "76", nothing more - thus worthless and obviously incorrect information. In truth, the LP was recorded and released at the end of 1978, as far as the band members can remember.

Because of its great rarity, only a few reviews of the Dhope LP can be found. A short one, written by Alan Freeman, appeared in the English magazine Audion. Five more, also all written in English, can be read on the internet at Rateyourmusic (https:// rateyourmusic.com). The record is rated there by a total of 24 participants with 3.64 out of 5.00 possible units.

After such a long time it was not possible to find out who had taken the photographs back then. Should their reproduction infringe a copyright, we hereby apologise and are certainly willing to compensate the claims. The same applies to the poster reproduced, lyrics, etc.

Many thanks for their kind help to Claus Peter, Niko Dragun, Heiko Klingenberg, Reinhard Hennecke, Erlend Luck, Thomas Haberland-Jagielski, Ralf Jupe, Christian Voss, Gerry Phillips, Hans Pokora, Jürgen Kaun, the municipal archive Bad Driburg and the Westfalen-Blatt.

CD Liner Notes