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Joined: 28/02/2009(UTC) Posts: 177  Location: Hartlepool/Northampton Was thanked: 10 time(s) in 7 post(s)
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How do and welcome to the Herr Fische website (AGAIN!!) As you may have gathered we have decided to crawl out from the woodwork to inflict on society some more guitar based lunacy purely for our entertainment and hopefully yours. On this here site you will find recent news on the band, any upcoming tours and appearances that you might want to know about and us flogging our wares to you the public/fans. So there you go!! Enjoy. Chris 'Herr Fische' Fisher: Vocals/Piano/Keyboards and Synthesizers/ MultiinstruMENTAList
Kii Kii Lii: Lead Guitars/Sitar/Part Time Vocals
Paul 'Foetus' Fisher: Keyboards/Synthesizers/Audio Abuse
Thomas 'TomTom' Thompson: Rhythm Guitar/Other stringed instruments
Bren Hatch: Drums/Drum Machines/Percussion
Mr Unknown: Bass Guitar/Double Bass/Bass based instruments
Our latest piece of work, the Hold Still E.P is on sale now in all good stockists. It took us long enough but it's here at last. How do,
We've been busy busy busy all week here in the bunker. Firstly, we've been recording, mixing and tweaking almost non stop for the last week or so. Progress has been made, so far as we have mixed, remixed and completely reworked some tracks that we have archived. Also, we've been busy with the launch of our latest piece of work, the Hold Still E.P which has been on sale now for at least a week. It has sold amazingly well (424,770) so far which is very surprising and very motivational for us. So we will continue mixing, remixing and reworking stuff until it's all just right. 'We Have A Problem' will see the light of day eventually.
The album (or possibly albums) is/are coming along nicely. There's a weirdly nice, relaxed, almost not bothered atmosphere to it considering the chaos that has accompanied it throughout its conception, creation and development. The general theme that we have picked up during its development is one of impending disaster and doom. It's turning out to be a really dark album, full of themes such as death, natural disasters, impending doom, end of the world etc. However we've tried to add that British 'Stiff Upper Lip' reaction to it like "Oh the world ending. Oh well we can't win em all" attitude. Our newest work , The Hold Still E.P is how we want the album to eventually sound (think Boards of Canada and Aphex Twin), with maybe a few minor changes. The themes are all the same though. For example, Hold Still implies the story of a person who is trying not to let their abusive partner get to them by carrying on and pretending it never happened until one day they flip. Julie's Gondola is about a girl named Julie (surprisingly) who lives in Venice (again surprisingly) when a Tsunami wipes out the city. Mandolin Baby is about famine and war. Like we said, there maybe a double album yet. We are thinking of a 2nd part to We Have A Problem as we do have more songs in our archive which fit the general themes of doom but some of those songs have a common bond of hope. We shall work on these a bit more over the next few weeks or so.
We have also been discussing our live return. Now the last time we played it was a rushed affair. We had no time to stop and think. The Inevitable Cash In Reunion Tour was a success and we had a blast but it just didn't feel right somehow. It feels as though we rushed into it far too quickly . Sure, it reunited us all but by the end of it we had lost Hetti and Helga. Now the last few dates we played felt more like the proper old days. It felt great and that's the atmosphere that we want to create again. We obviously don't want to go down the route of past tours where we've had to cancel shows here and there due to mental breakdowns, drink binges, infighting, paranoid delusions etc. So we've decided to stop big tours completely (well not completely, once every blue moon!). This will lessen the stress and other complications on us and hopefully stop old wounds from opening again. Given our history, we don't want old stuff to resurface and we would very much like to keep the remainder of us together. We've had enough divorces over the years and we're not letting it happen again. Anyhoo we haven't got any dates yet. We've just discussed it and we will let you know as soon as we know.
Well anyway, best get back to work. We just thought we'd update you if anyone really pays attention anyway.
High Ho
Chris Fisher
(Two Eyes of Herr Fische)  Hold your Horses. There's nothing yet.
After the said altercation, they were forced to work together on a project for the end of year show. They had to form a band and compose at least 2 original songs together. They were not happy and came to blows frequently in the days after being forced together. However, their mutual love of music kept the project moving and soon they began to see the positive side of things. Nothing much was accomplished between the pair except for some jamming and shouting. Eventually they advertised around the school and their 'friends' for others to join the group.
There was not much luck except Chris had brought in his brother Paul who was quite an accomplished keyboardist in a small local band called 'The Zoo'. Again nothing was really accomplished and patience was at an all time low. However, things started moving when one day two German Exchange students, Helga and Hetti arrived and saw the old grafittied notices around school. Helga was a bassist and Hetti had experience playing all sorts of instruments (her father owned a music shop in Munich). Together they jammed with Chris on vocals, Kii Kii on guitar, Helga on bass, Hetti on drums and Paul on keyboards.
Progress was now being made. They practiced and jammed every spare moment they could get in and around school and after school, playing mostly bluesy/rock covers. However they still needed to come up with two original compositions. Chris had no idea how to write songs but had an ear for melody and arrangements. The rest of the group, tentatively called 'THEM' at this point, tackled the task of creating a new composition. Chris focused on lyrics as best as he could with help from his friend Thomas, also a guitarist. Thomas attended another school and was also in another band called 'The Monkey Hangers'. However, the music being created didn't really fit into the bluesy rock category and was a mash up of all sorts of different styles. The band decided to be experimental and from that point on, everything seemed to fit into place for them. They still played their bluesy rock covers but experimented with other sounds and instruments for their own compositions. As it stands, the band played the end of year show and gained a few fans and a new name, Herr Fische. Helga always called Chris and Paul 'Herr Fische' as she could not pronounce their names. The name stuck with the band but their future was uncertain.
The band played a few gigs in local pubs and clubs but once school had finished for summer, both Helga and Hetti had to return to Germany. Kii Kii and Chris had more arguments regarding the future of the band (she was still a 'Pop Tart' as Chris so eloquently put it!)and Paul went back to 'The Zoo'. A year passed and school became college. Kii Kii and Chris studied music at the same college and frequently their paths crossed. However, they never really spoke to each other and went about their own business. However, things changed when Helga and Hetti both moved back to Hartlepool. They had kept in touch with Kii Kii and arranged to meet up again. They also wanted to meet up with Chris and the rest of the band but Kii Kii didn't want to meet with anyone else from the band. Chris had no idea they were there until one day he literally bumped into Helga after college. She was on her way to meet Kii Kii and Hetti. Chris called up Paul and they met up for a drink or two except Paul as he was still at school! Kii Kii refused to show after hearing from Hetti that Chis and Paul were present. However, she had a change of heart and showed up. Kii Kii and Chris put their differences aside and once again they were on the same page. They arranged to meet up and jam again at The Studio, a small club/recording studio.
After a few weeks, the band had written some more music and jammed frequently. The band also gained 3 new members from various friendships and aquaintances within the band. Thomas joined the band as rhythm guitarist after the demise of 'The Monkey Hangers', Paul's friend Gaz aka Mr Unknown, a local DJ was also very experienced in several instruments and Kii Kii's friend Bren who joined as permanent drummer. The band continued to play local gigs and started to gain a cult following in the north east. However, the time had come again for the band to put plans aside as Kii Kii, Chris, Helga and Hetti set off to uni. The band laid dormant, save for sporadic jamming sessions during uni breaks.
Once uni was all over, the band started up again. The band rebuilt their cult following status in the north east and started to tour other places in the country over the next couple of years. Several E.P's were created but seem to have been lost. The band focused on being wildly experimental whilst putting on a visual spectacle for the crowd. Believing in crowd participation, the band developed their famous (or infamous!) dance off competitions, getting various members of the audience up onstage to party while the band jammed around them. Chris and Paul also took to crowd dinghying, sailing on the hands of the crowd. During the developmental stages of their career, the band still had that elusive record deal to find. Several offers had been made due to exposure on websites like myspace, facebook and youtube but none that were workable for the band. Eventually the band took up a record deal with a local company with national links and began working on their debut album, Transparent Songs.
Much of their debut album is based on songs/compositions that were written in the turbulent school and college years. The songs 'Boom Box' and 'Funky Shit' from the first album are the remains of early school based sessions. As a result, Herr Fische's debut album Transparent Songs didn't adapt well to the mainstream (aka pop people didn't get it!). The band's cult following loved it though and as such the band focused on touring smaller venues such as uni campuses and bars/pubs. The challenge for the band now was following up Transparent songs and it's cult success. The band adapted to writing and recording whilst on the road and recorded every little piece of music, every jamming session that they had, eveything that they did as a band or on their own and archived them. The band's manager Micky Fisher (no relation to Chris and Paul) has recorded hundreds of their sessions. The band dipped in and out of the archive and built their 2nd album around their little jamming sessions. The band also upped the ante and began to be even more expermimental with music. This according to Micky Fisher was a gamble. He didn't want them to alienate their fans by being too 'weird'. The band ignored this advice and came up with Freak Out, a collection of the bands experiments with music and substances.
However, Freak Out took them all by surprise. Not only did their cult following love it, it became popular in the mainstream. Radio picked up on the first single from the album Donna Kebab and was widely played not just hear but also in the U.S.A and Europe. A hastily organised mini tour was set up for the band to play a few venues in America and around Europe. The tour started off well with some triumphant shows in New York and L.A but quickly turned sour and the band almost fell apart. One night, Kii Kii was so incredibly drunk on Absinthe she got run over on the way to a show in Paris. At the same time, Chris was experimenting with Acid and refused to leave the hotel room for fear of being eaten by goblins in the hallway. The show was cancelled and a small riot occured. This was quickly dealt with by the French authorities. The tour continued in Germany where the band pulled themselves together to play some homecoming shows for Helga and Hetti in Munich. However, once the show was over, after a particularly heavy night for the band, Chris was arrested after throwing a Steak pie at the mayor of Munich. Paul was also arrested after attacking one of the policemen trying to arrest Chris. The next day, Hetti and Helga apologised to Munich for the shame they had brought to the city. Helga and Hetti refused to tour anymore. The tour was cancelled and the band returned to the U.K minus Helga and Hetti.
The band decided to lay low for a while and concentrate on their next album. Again, the band recorded anything that they came up with and again introduced more and more outrageous instruments into their music. However, due to the Munich Incident as it became known, the band found themselves without a record company. This spelled the end for the band. Kii Kii and Bren began to blame Chris and Paul for all the trouble the band were in. Paul blamed Chris for getting him arrested. Mr Unknown, ever the silent member of the group as usual said nothing. Thomas however, decided to focus on writing and recording music. As the band fell apart around him, he went back to Germany and met with Helga and Hetti. Together, they wrote and recorded demos on what would become the basis for the band's third album Rat Race.
Whilst Thomas, Helga and Hetti recovered Herr Fische, Paul decided to start his own little project called Little Bastard. As it suited Paul better, he declined an offer of a record deal and just toured the underground. Kii Kii Lii made a solo album, collaborating with Emma Blunt for a cover of Blondie's Heart Of Glass for the album. It was a commerical and critical success, full of great controversial lyrics, dirty guitar riffs and tons of filthy language. She toured with her own little band which featured her sister on drums. However, even though she was more of a critical and mainstream success than her parent band, she returned to Herr Fische matters after receiving word from Hetti that they were ready to return.
In the meantime, Chris had been experimenting both chemically and musically and obsessively recording every minute musical note and had built up a huge collection of random snippets of music. He brought these to the Rat Race sessions and these, along with Thomas' own personal archive from the German Sessions, became the band's first massive selling album. However, Herr Fische had no record deal. It was decided that the band would tour the U.K and play a few shows in the U.S.A and Europe to promote their new album which they had completed. The band had also begun working on the next album again using their extensive and obsessive musical archive.
The tour went fantastically well. The band stayed sober (except Chris who had a very brief spell in a rehab facility after too much Absinthe and other substances one night!) and the proceeds went towards releasing Rat Race and the next Herr Fische album. The band also performed a charity concert in their home town in order to pay for a transplant operation for a very ill young child. Rat Race became a huge success and featured what became the the band's anthem 'Acid Woman' as the main attraction.
The band continued to tour and release albums, releasing 4 albums in quick succession, all except one album which were successful. Their 5th album 'Dark Night' saw the band on the edge of oblivion after nearly tearing each other apart due to constant touring and other stresses. At around this time, Chris had become ill both mentally and physically. At one point he had a nervous breakdown which resulted in the cancellation of several dates of the 'Dark Night' tour. There were tensions in the band after Kii Kii had an abortion against the wishes of Thomas who was apparently the baby's father after a drunken session. Thomas also became ill at this time, being taken to hospital with an undetected heart condition. All this led to the 'Dark Night' album which the band later defined as 'SHIT'
The band's 6th and 7th albums were far better both for the band . After taking an extended break in order for Chris and Thomas to get better, and Kii Kii and Thomas to rebuild their relationship, the band reconvened to record 'Transparent Songs 2.0'. This saw the band get back to basics (in their terms. Refreshed from their break the band began recording again, delving into their archives again, using more and more exotic instruments. 'Transparent Songs 2.0' was a commercial success. Herr Fische proceeded to head out on a large scale tour ( The Freakshow Tour) which included several shows in the U.S.A, Europe and a few Asian shows. The band were having fun again, debuting Fische Ball which sees Chris placed inside a giant hamster ball and surf the crowd. The band also offered prizes for their Dance Off's, which saw cash, cars and even a night out with Kii Kii Lii offered as prizes. During the tour and several festival appearances such as the 'Midsummer and Midwinter Mashfests' the band formed an alliance and friendship with two other respected bands at the time 'Waterlelie' and 'The Theosophical Society Collective'.
As a result of the friendship, the bands decided to create a series of albums under the banner of The Grand Society Collective. Herr Fische, featuring various members of 'Waterlelie' and 'The Theosophical Society Collective' created the album 'On A Pedastal'. The album was an instrumental album and was another critical and commercial success. 'The Grand Society' played a few festival shows until the bands went their separate ways.
Herr Fische's 8th Album proved to be their last of the old era of Herr Fische. The album 'Social Club' saw the band visiting Social Clubs across the U.K and interviewing the regulars. Using the information they gathered, the band decided to write the songs around the stories they had heard and characters they met. The band then decided to base the subsequient tour in Social Clubs around the U.K. The album itself was not as successful as their previous two albums and with no plans to tour the U.S.A or Europe put into place, it seemed that all was not right again in the Herr Fische camp.
After the tour, the band decided to take another extended break. During this time, the band only reconvened for festival appearances, some of which were awful. Chris was again being very obsessive over every detail of the band and began to become ever more reclusive. Kii Kii and Thomas moved in together and bought an appartment in New York. Helga and Hetti returned to Germany where they set up a charity helping disadvantaged children to learn music and art. Paul and Mr Unknown continued with the Little Bastard project, again declining a record deal and remained undeground.
During this extended break, Chris took a turn for the worst and completely lost his mind. Being a recluse, he believed that the band was his and his only and worked obsessively obtaining the rights to all of the bands music and rights to the name of the band. This was all behind the back's of the other band members. The other band members only found out when they each got letters from the various lawyers representing Chris detailing the situation. Kii Kii and Paul were furious and attempted to resolve the situation with Chris personally but he would only contact people through his lawyer. Chris had become obsessed with everything about the band even so far as allegedly suing newspapers who gave Herr Fische the slightest of criticism. At the same time, Thomas had also taken ill again and was admitted to hospital again. Kii Kii and Paul launched a counter claim at the high court on behalf of all the other members of Herr Fische.
The case dragged on in private (at the request of Chris and Kii Kii) for several weeks which resulted in the case being upheld in favour of Chris. This prompted furious reactions from the remaining band members. However, Chris finally agreed to meet Kii Kii and Paul to discuss the future of the band. Chris exlained that he did it to protect the band from outside influences and to ensure the future of his band. Unfortunately, the rest of the band could not get around the fact he had did it all in secret. Chris held a series of negotiations in an attempt to reunite the band but negotiations broke down.
Several months after negotiations broke down, Chris called up Paul and asked him to discuss things further. However, he sounded like he had overdosed or was incredibly drunk. Paul went ot Chris' home and found Chris slumped in his recording studio clutching a copy of Rat Race and surrounded by empty bottles of whisky and bottles of pills. Chris was taken to hospital where he stayed for several weeks. Paul then had Chris sectioned after gaining power of attorney. Chris had fired his legal team the week before the incident and had trashed his house in a fit of rage.
After nearly a year in rehab/detainment under mental health act, Chris returned to Paul's home. In that time, the remaining members of Herr Fische had been working on new material and had recorded many tracks. The band announced that they would return for a short tour and a couple of festival appearances. The band had also taken care of the legal aspect of the band, making sure that ALL members have equal rights to the band and name.
The subsequent tour of the U.K was a return to form for the band who were enjoying themselves for the first time in years. The band enjoyed success with their ninth album 'Behemoth' when it was finally released several months after the return tour. After that, the band quickly recorded their 10th and last album to date, 'Zebra' and toured the U.K, U.S.A and Europe with the Inevitable Cash In Reunion Tour which featured dance troupes, the return of Fische Ball and more crazy experimentation in music from the band. Herr Fische then took another unplanned unannounced album whilst recording their next project, tentatively called We Have A Problem. The band were to record a double album, something which they have always wanted to do but as yet nothing has appeared and band members have been no where in sight or have not said a word about what the future holds for Herr Fische. Well we suppose we better sell out. Here's a list of our albums past (Old Era) and most recent albums. You can buy them if you want to.  Transparent Songs: Our debut album.Features the singles 'Micky Fisher Ate My Socks' and 'Boom Box'  Freak Out: Our 'difficult 2nd album'. Features the the surprising worldwide smash hit single 'Donna Kebab' and 'Funky Shit'  Rat Race: My personal favourite. Features the singles, 'The Shape of Things To Come' and 'Acid Woman'  Contemplation: Our Dark Album. Features 'Waiting For God', 'Contemplation' and 'Kick Me'  Dark Night: We generally agree this was our worst album. Features the single 'What Have You Done?'  Transparent Songs 2.0: Our saving grace from a creative low point. Features 'Open Wide' and 'Desert Wanderer'  On A Pedestal: As part of the Grand Society's first album trilogy. Features 'Munchausens' and 'This Black Hole Called Life'. A collaboration between Herr Fische, The Theosophical Society Collective and Waterlelie  Social Club: The last album of the old era. Features the worldwide hit 'The Horrific Song', 'Asking Abraham Pts 1+2' and bonus track 'Sleepy America'  The Old Era: The Best Of Herr Fische. Features a random collection of songs from our first 8 albums plus a bonus live dvd/cd  Behemoth: The start of the new era and features the singles 'Blessed Art Thou', 'Olga' and 'Serving Suggestions'  Zebra: The very difficult 10th Album. Features 'Little Green Man', 'Making Bridges' and the acclaimed single 'River Song' There will be more merchandise/crap that you can buy when we can be bothered. WE WOULD LIKE TO MAKE IT CLEAR THAT ALTHOUGH WE ARE IN THE MUSIC BUSINESS WHICH IS ALL ABOUT MAKING MONEY AND RIPPING PEOPLE OFF, WE ARE IN NO WAY 'SELL OUTS'. ALL THE MONEY WE MAKE GOES INTO MAKING MORE MUSIC FOR YOU THE FANS AND TOURING. WHATEVER IS LEFT OVER IS SHARED BETWEEN US SO THAT WE CAN LIVE COMFORTABLY. Rant over. That's it for now people. Hopefully more will be added as and when. Edited by user 03 October 2012 21:10:46(UTC)
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