I think it was 1978 on a trip to Germany, before I lived there, that I came across German band United Balls, whose 1981 album “Pogo In Togo” I would later acquire, with songs like “Blackbird”, Good Understanding”, “Gisela” and the title track “Pogo In Togo”.
What I of course couldn’t know was that I would later meet them and even sit with them at the dinner table a few years later. They were really nice, down to earth guys.
My first introduction to United Balls, who were founded in 1973, was an A5 leaflet I picked up somewhere, either in Munich or Berlin I think, in a pub, café or university dining room. Just a black and white piece of paper advertising a gig.
A few years later, living in Bamberg in Upper Franconia in the north of Bavaria (I am being quite specific here as the Franconians, while part of Bavaria politically, don’t consider themselves Bavarians!), I got a copy of the United Balls album “Pogo In Togo” on tape.
Can’t remember the circumstances, but I have it!
The tracks are both German and English, sometimes mixed up in the same song, and have a kind of staccato, more or less punk/New Wave sound. (The late Seventies and early Eighties were after all the period of Neue Deutsche Welle/NDW, or German New Wave.)
And then in either 1983 or early 1984, while working as a roadie for a local dance band, we were playing in a little place called Hollfeld, just south of the main road from Bamberg to Bayreuth.
We had two or three gigs there sharing the stage with well-known bands from Munich, such as Relax and Münchner Freiheit, and on this occasion United Balls.
Whereas the other acts came with all their gear and their own roadies (on one of these occasions one of our microphones disappeared), United Balls turned up on their own in a VW van, plugged their guitars into our amps and their drummer used our drum kit.
Simple but effective, and definitely economical – and sounded just as good.
Here’s the van (on this occasion photographed in Hamburg):
At first I could only find videos of two songs from that first album (two others followed), and a couple of others I didn’t know, but then I turned up a few more after all.
The title track from “Pogo In Togo” actually reached Number 1 in New Zealand and Australia – in Germany it “only” got to No. 14, but they still sold over a million copies altogether.
The chorus is very simple – Pogo in Togo – and one of several cover versions changed it to “Dio in Rio”.
Here is the original of “Pogo In Togo” (keep your eye on the blonde guitarist on the left, more about him later…):
Don’t you just love the elephants!
And because it’s such fun jumping up and down, here they are again playing in front of a live audience in 1980 (after a pause at the beginning):
“Good Understanding” was the second track from the first album, also in English:
Another English track from the debut album, “Blackbird” (there’s no sound until about 20 seconds into the video):
Short and sweet, “Gisela” is one of my favourites:
They look like maniacs here, but singer and guitarist Horst Lindhofer went on to found biotech company Trion Pharma in 1998, which together with Fresenius Biotech was the first German biotech firm to develop and market a “recombinant antibody” to treat cancer.
After an almost 20 year break the band is playing again, as documented in this brief German language video (the sound of the music recording is a little hairy):
And this live video from July 2013 (Tollwood Festival in Munich, three weeks after ZZ Top played there):
Another one that’s short and sweet but nice to jump about to, “Gänseblümchen” (“I’d like to pick daisies for my girl…”):
“No More Feelings” sounds like a bit like Gisela, but has it’s own charm:
I don’t remember this one, certainly another take on “Sur le pont d’Avignon”:
Hmm, different!
Paul