FRED FROM JUPITER

 

 

One day in the Spring of 1981, Ed Bahlman, the owner of 99 Records, came back from a reconnaissance trip he'd taken to England. As he always did, he would smuggle in some cool records that you couldn't get in the States yet. He brought four boxes of 45's this time too but they were all of one single.

"Fred vom Jupiter"

100 copies of it. That was the most that he could hide on his person at the airports and on the plane without looking suspiciously bulgey. idk, I seemed to look suspicious at everything I did in my youth. Ed had gotten in on a late flight and called me up at home after midnight.

“Terry, you gotta come over to my place right now and listen to this record!" 

I was already throwing on some clothes. I dashed clear on over to his apartment in Greenwich Village from my apartment on The Bowery. Ed's infectious enthusiasm was magnetic, heartfelt and genuine. 

He threw down the keys to the Lobby door wrapped in a thick, white sweat sock so as to brake its fall and then stand out on the blackened sidewalk. I bounded up the four flights of stairs to his place. He had hidden the sleeve of the single from my sight and relaunched the needle over the record. Ed had been listening to it since he'd gotten back home. They had me at the opening Bassline. Within 30 seconds we were pogoing all over his pad. This tune had us laughing, or should I say giggling, effusively, even if the lyrics were in German. After a short game of “Guess who this is, Terry", Ed finally showed me the sleeve. Really cool artwork that reminded me of like a still from the old Davy And Goliath "Claymation" TV series. It was printed on really heavy duty card stock too. Ed saw the band at their London debut when he was there last week. He bought all of our copies from them the next day when he went record shopping with them. Die Doraus und die Marinas started as a 9 piece band of schoolmates from Bavaria in Germany. Andreas Dourau was the leader of the band and at just 14 years old he was actually their oldest member! The youngest was one of the stage dancers/prop people, who was 8. "Fred vom Jupiter" had already been a big hit in Germany. Ed gave me three boxes of 25 each to drop off at 99 on my way back home tonight. He had to work at his other job the next day. He was still a superintendent in a residential building on Manhattan's Upper East Side. He'd been working there for a long time. Ed started selling records to pay for his own record buying habit, something some of us have tried, and failed, at. Well, Eddy was going to make it work though. And he did. He started out slowly, part-time on the weekends and then with only a handful of records to sell. He had setup a turntable in a corner of GF Gina's store to play any of the records if you wanted to hear it. Then one weekend he had two turntables. From there on in, the music never stopped. Gina Franklyn had opened 99 as a cheaper alternative to the chain Manic-Panic store over on St. Marks Place. She sold skinny ties and Doc Martens. All the accessories that you'd need to stage your own, personal rebellion. Gina also made her own clothes and sold lots of them in the Store. I bought my first bottle of blue/black hair dye from her.                                                               So anyway, I played the single for every single body that came into the store that weekend and by Sunday, I'd sold them all. We weren't able to restock because none of the Importers had picked it up yet. A few months later Andreas and his Dad called the store looking for Ed. He had given them the number when he met them. In a kinda broken, but still very understandable English, they asked if we could help them get a show in NYC. I told them that we could get them a gig at the Danceteria Club. Just so happens that I had been working part-time in their office for the last couple of months. I sold their single to everybody that bought records below 14th Street, including the entire Danceteria staff and all of the other nightclub and radio DJ's too. Danceterias owner, Rudolf Piper, loved them too. Everybody did. That night at work I told him they wanted to play here. When Rudolf got excited, his already heavy Austrian accent gets really, really thick. I would have to read his lips if I wanted to understand him sometimes.                               He screamed saying“Sure!", I think.                    I called Andreas and his father from the Danceteria office phone, which was highly advanced for the time. It had a "Speakerphone" feature. When they answered we could hear the band practicing in the background. Rudolf and I were laughing. We told them about the date and he must have turned around and told the rest of band. We could hear many shrill, Germanic screams of joy and happiness.        The whole band and its entourage all flew in about three weeks later. The gang led a blitzkrieg on our store the day before their big Danceteria gig. Not just the 9 band members but many of their parents and other relatives as well. We were stretching the walls at 99. They brought another few hundred copies of “Fred vom Jupiter" with them and an advance cassette of their upcoming debut album as well. I had them sign about a hundred of the 45's. They were all delightful people who were enjoying NYC since none of them had ever been Stateside before. Their show was an enthusiastic mix of stage props, video/slide show feeds and comic opera kiddie-kitsch. It was smart, bright, and catchy with an international bent. Brilliant. Andreas totally dominated the proceedings and had the confidence of a young man assured that he was right. Andreas and I stayed in touch for quite a few years.               

I think he's a Dentist now.

 you can listen to it hear....>>>   FRED vom JUPITER"