Streetmark
Dry
Basic thought was BACK TO THE ROOTS!" After experimental excourses STREETMARK remembered their roots of rock music. The use of synthesizers, keyboards, as well as catchy, meaty guitar-riffs, stamped this album. During the nearly sold out live concerts of DRY-tour in 1979 this has been honored by an enthusiastic audience. With more than 60 concerts this was the most successful tour at all, of the band. At the same time the title ,Lovers" kept his place under first rankings of the German Radio charts (Dorothea Raukes about ,DRY" in 1979) 1969 formed in Dusseldorf, STREETMARK stirring up the German Rock scenery. They signed a record deal at Hamburg Sky Label in 1975 and in October of same year the band (cast at that time: Dorothea Raukes (Keyboards, vocals), Hans Schweiss (drums), Georg Buschmann (vocals), Thomas Schreiber (guitar) and Wolfgang Westphal (bass)) met in the studio to record the debut album. ,Nordland" which has been published 1976 and received warm acceptance at the usually reluctant magazine SOUNDS (,..a mixture of baroque keyboard twirls and cool jazzy fooling.."). With the Beatles Coverversion of ,Eleanor Rigby" the album had a veritable club hit. The degree of popularity raised tremendously, despite of that they seperated from Buschmann and Westphal and instead hired Wolfgang Riechmann (vocals) and Manfred Knauff (bass). With this new cast STREETMARK recorded the second album ,Eileen" in 1977, which presented itself as a complete synthesis out of elements from electronic rock, classic, hardrock, as well as funk and symphonic sound elements. Also in foreign countries the band received notice. The British New Musical Express for example discovered some similarity with NEU! as well as with progressive bands like CAMEL. Again despite of this raising success Wolfgang Riechmann together with drummer Hans Schweiss left the band to record his solo album ,Wunderbar", also for Sky Records. It happened that due to a tragic coincidence Riechmann 1978 for no reason has been attacked by hooligans in the old town of Dusseldorf and has been injured by a knife so heavy that he passed away due to this on August 24th