The asylum of Tamara in paradise – the rock group Silly

Ok, Silly had ever since the middle of the 1980ies arrived in the upper league of the GDR rock music with the Amiga album “Bataillon d’Amour” (1986), but there they weren’t the only ones. Unique though was their sound, which differentiated for the first time from the mainstream in the GDR. The drawers were too small for them. At least since Werner Karma assumed the overall control, the writing, it was clear, that here wouldn’t sung about dying swans, but rather the trouble’s brewing of dying cities, how he framed it.

Silly, those were in the most successful lineup besides the frontwoman and singer Tamara Danz: Uwe Hassbecker (guitar), Thomas Fritzsching (guitar), Jäcki Reznicek (bass guitar), Rüdiger “Ritchie” Barton (keyboards) and Herbert Junck (drums). I personally like the most the studio album “Februar”, not only because the singer-songwriter Gerhard Gundermann wrote the most titles for the album or because it was the first album of the GDR rock history which was produced as a coproduction with a West-German record label.

For Silly the GDR was just big enough for becoming that what it is worthwhile to write about. Other zeitgeists it was too strait here, even so the often with Tamara Danz compared Nina Hagen. In the matter of power “the Hagen” set perhaps a quite high standard. Silly had the piano tracks down to a fine art just before the too soon death of their singer. Here they were really awesome. A “wild Mathilde” Tamara always wanted to be, though this image didn’t want to fit her. Possibly she thought she had to satisfy here the expectations of the late GDR mentalities.

Once Gerhard Gundermann said about the album “Paradies” (1996) with the title song “Asyl im Paradies”, that he never heard something produced that good, neither of a band nor generally. With Anna Loos as the new singer Tamara Danz found in autumn 2006 a worthy sequel.

(Translation: Valerie Holbein)