IFA Wartburg - Wenn IFA Wartburg Spielt 1999

Dear Comrades! On the occasion of the celebration of Der Tag des Sieges 9 May 2023, we hereby have the great honor to present a quite recently recorded song from 1999. It has been mixed by our new super producer Nimba Sturm and I must say that he did an amazing job. Also many thanks to tape operator Max Quatschke and our tape baking expert Paola Yevenes. We have mainly used crisis actors for the footage in this video. It is perhaps not entirely unexpectedly due to the Henry Kissinger debacle. We can’t tell you about it because it’s top secret at the highest possible level but here’s what happened: Henry tried to buy an IFA Wartburg but he was too poor so he had to settle for a Volvo. Henry was devastated and hated that Volvo so much that he never even learned how to pronounce Volvo (he said Volovolo). So we don’t dare show our real faces because then he might think we’re Swedes, we think. But we are not. So, here are some benchmarks in the video that is to be noticed with extra attention: 00:15 Jungeljims hål (Jungle Jim’s cave Lat Long ) was an underground temple for teutonic socialism and still today unknown to the Urban Exploration Community. The police raided the place in 1985 and seized a roulette table, an air captain’s cap, a detonator with cables and some naughty books on agricultural science. The entire building was demolished in the autumn of 2011. The memory of Jungle Jim lives on in the song Hey Radiofunker. 00:28 Heinz built this organ pipe because many IFA songs require an organ (Spassjazz, Zwei Tage in Berlin etc) so his idea was to build at least 439 more of those pipes. But one cold winter’s day the property manager carried that organ pipe down to the boiler room and turned it into heat instead of a complete church organ. 00:34 The Kassler Bass Amplifier was a true class AB solid state device with an exceptionally low efficiency in the bass register. Therefore it cannot be heard on many of the recordings made during this era. 01:03 Regular application of cortisone ointment on the kick drum is the best prevention to avoid skin cracks. 01:15 I am no engineer but this is said to be an Abbey Road inspired Glyn B Johnsson drum mic setup. To save the precious transients otherwise lost in live drum recording with noise gates due to preamp/opto slew rate factors, trig microphones were sidechained to open each gate and a second mic captured the drum sound. 01:31 The unbalanced multi cable built from a garden hose and telephone wires was sensitive enough to pick up everything from noise and hum and even some music from time to time. 01:44 The Fender Rhodes MkI 73 was used extensively as a table for tea and brownies. It can be heard on the recording of ”Im dienste des KGB” where the bass line is played on this Fender Rhodes. The most special thing about the character of this strange instrument is probably the slightly rounded top, which often caused the teacups to fall to the floor and to be stepped on. 02:03 Air raid sirens from the U-boat manufacturer Kockums is a tasteful way to gently caress a note into a musical arrangement. The song Ritualtanz for example. It goes in Gm so F# does not fit the scale. The only way to get that note in there is by using a sound pressure of about 137 dB or higher. 02:08 Oh, those were the days… Here I can be seen on stage with Heinz and Rolf! I was working as a roadie for IFA Wartburg at that time and this day I got a unique chance to perform my self-composed song about a piece of smoked pork that seems to be lost but later is to be found again. What a happy ending to a song! This was the only time I got permission to sing ”Wo ist mein Kassler” because Heinz didn’t like pork, he said. 02:36 The Gorbyland certified mixning setup used during the recording of ”Im dienste des Sozialismus“. 02:38 The Gorbyland certified mastering setup. Upper left is the Multiband depression unit and below is the De-Sucker. The rest is mostly just gazillions of songs, sheet music, pictures, tons of recordings and all the other stuff that I have to keep track of. So much to do right now for me here in the office and more and more piles of material is coming up. Everything needs to be sorted and put into binders before I am allowed to go home. And Katrin from the payroll department is always here nagging me that I really must have WORKED the time I report in her timesheets. It’s so unfair and not very friendly at all. And that was everything that I needed to say about these things I hope. Yours most willingly and respectfully, Günther Raubschaentze All-in-all, helping hand but also (and this is a big butt) your comrade. PS: If you have any questions or just want to hang out and eat butter and pickles or whatever, I am forever your humble servant.