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Sparks
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Sportfreunde Stiller
Günther Koch
Revisited – Voll In Den Mann
2 CDs |
The Bavarian Beatman
If there was ever a man of football, a man of today's, totally shabby
media football, if there was ever such a one who managed to become first
a so-called "cult figure" and then a figure of art, a subject
for media art, an artistic character, then it has to be Günther Koch.
Most people sit up and take notice when art is mentioned, or they parade
the title of the work of art (before them), but this does not devalue
the attempt made with Günther Koch Revisited – Voll in den
Mann (Günther Koch Revisited – Full Frontal Attack), this
symphony in twenty-two parts, to pay tribute to, honour and to a small
extent, as befits contemporary art, destroy and, as far as I'm concerned,
deconstruct a living legend of sports commentary, or more accurately:
live radio reporting.
Of course, it would not be totally inappropriate to ask whether Koch,
often and quite rightly called a "poet" and "virtuoso"
and "artist", this several-times award laureate (including the
"Viktoria" from Sport Bild and the Herbert Zimmermann Prize
from ARD), whether someone who is his own DJ can be outdone, ennobled,
so to speak out-arted. Koch improvises like no other; Koch tuts, shouts,
bellows, whispers, sings, implores, blubs, celebrates, curses and extols
with passion and fidelity; Koch modulates maniacally, piles up monstrous
sentences, assembles and combines the incompatible as one obsessed, the
bright tone of hymnal enthusiasm with digression, the dialect touch with
an educated bon mot, casual chat with concentrated information, objective
description with the tumult of the fans. What and who can do justice to
him, this original tenor, the Pavarotti or, hm, perhaps more the Bergonzi
of the microphone?
Ror Wolf, the unsurpassed wizard of the medium and art form of the radio
play, who attributed to the almost faded old radio "something pleasantly
dangerous, something gently forbidden" and had to put together his
famous pieces Der Ball ist rund – The Ball is Round and Schwierigkeiten
beim Umschalten – Difficulties with Switching Over in days and
nights of pasting drudgery – Ror Wolf did not, unfortunately, have
at his disposal the most modern equipment and is probably amazed at what
an artistic stimulus Günther Koch is for the most advanced authors,
tinkerers and musicians; for, apart from the artistic finesse, there is
something strangely emotional and melancholic that flows or flickers through
even the feverish computer sequences which respond to Koch's quavering
voice; or the samples which play their own charming, sometimes confusing
game with the art producer and his word cascades, speech rhythms, interjections
and metaphors; or the pop song that invites us to indulge or, as the case
may be, to dance; or the loops which conjure up, package and preserve
for future occasions Koch's private rituals, since nobody will any longer
be able to receive such voices and moods on steam radio.
Many, no all the contributions collected here owe a debt of thanks to
the delightful first and original recordings of the Bavarian-Franconian
beatman with their sheer infectiousness and abandon. On the one hand we
share the pain Günther Koch felt at the incredible 99th relegation
of 1. FC Nürnberg ("I just can't take any more"), in enhanced,
purer form, condensed into an aesthetic expression; on the other, the
pure passion of the football afficionado swells and swills and bubbles
and wafts, sometimes subdued, sometimes enhanced to a sheer din and tumult,
sometimes close to the material, sometimes a long way from it, continuing,
transforming, reformulating its notion, making it difficult to grasp the
highest and slightly archaic form of journalism, the radio reporter's
live commentary.
Yes, a liaison between Koch and radio drama/music, ”that's not totally
unrisky” (Koch), not to put too fine a point on it: it's not totally
blessed with lack of risk. And since, with the gloomy foresight of a Kafka,
football will possibly be over and done with in the near future, the remembrance,
blessed consolation, of its most beautiful, wonderful moments ("Babble!
Babble! Babble! Babble!") will remain, embedded in our collective
memory, preserved in the resounding works of the eternally Olympian art.
Something like that, anyway.
Jürgen Roth,
Frankfurt/Main, December 2000
intermedium
rec. 007
ISBN 978-3-939444-08-4
Very few CDs left
20.- €
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