A member of the Deutsche Kommunistische Partei, or DKP, German protest singer Dieter Süverkrüp, born 1934, took full advantage of the 1960s movements of contestation to put his political views to the fore. He co-founded the Pläne Verlag record company in 1961, named after an anti-Nazi pamphlet from the 1930s. Pläne published agitprop artists of all kinds, as well as South American refuseniks like Atahualpa Yupanqui or Inti-Illimani, and was the label of Floh De Cologne, a sound poetry-cum-free rock band from… er, Cologne. Pläne also had a children LP series with children’s songs and plays. Das Auto Blubberbumm, 1976, is part of this series, with lyrics, drawings and part of the music composed by Süverkrüp with Wolfgang Dauner as co-composer and a team of German free jazz musicians and children’s choir.
The story: chauffeur Adolar has an accident while driving Herr Von Rotz’s special car, called Blubberbumm. He is safe but the car radio is making weird noises. While the car itself is being taken care of by a team of mechanics including Willibald, the kids and Adolar try to get the radio fixed by various specialists, including Ella and her friend, to no success. Meanwhile, harassed by their moronic chief, the mechanics start a strike and finally transform the car to suit their own fantasy, so that they declare it their own at the end of the story. The radio, still producing grotesque electronic sounds, is finally kept as is and enjoyed by the kids and everyone else.
♫ Like any musical, Das Auto Blubberbumm is a succession of songs and spoken sequences led by a dozen or so colourful figures. In this unforgettable play, real life situations are used to vindicate workers’ rights, feminism, employees’ strike and class struggle. While the instrumentation is rather unusual for such a venture, complete with electric guitar, synthesizer, vocoder and reed section, the song writing is clearly under the influence of Kurt Weil. Track #4, for instance, wouldn’t be out of place in the Three Penny Opera, while #6, Fließbandlied I, is close to an electronic version of Kurt Weil. Other tracks update the genre with European jazz touches or pop rock numbers (#9 and 12). During the workers’ strike, car owner Herr Von Rotz tries to plead them back to work with an hilarious aria (#14) that starts like Mozart and ends like Kurt Weil.
01 Das Auto Blubberbumm (:52)
02 Adolars Lied (2:35)
03 Dialog (1:49)
04 Das Lied vom Keine inziges Auto fertigkriegen (2:17)
05 Blechverformung (6:31)
06 Fließbandlied I (4:04)
07 Dialog (3:39)
08 Dialog (1:30)
09 Das Lied von Kalle seiner Freundin (3:16)
10 Aufpasserlied (3:27)
11 Autozusammenmontieren I (1:38)
12 Autozusammenmontieren II (3:06)
13 Streiklied (2:24)
14 Arie des Herrn von Rotz (3:02)
15 Dialog (1:42)
16 Fließbandlied II (1:34)
17 Die umgekrempelte Fabrik (3:34)
Wolfgang Dauner, keyboards, reeds
Jörg Gebhardt, percussion
Volker Kriegel, guitars
Albert Mangelsdorff, trombone
Ack van Rooyen, trumpet
Eberhard Weber, bass
Total time 47:00
LP released by Pläne Verlag, Dortmund, West Germany, 1976
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Das auto blubberbumm is so wunderschön! Danke so viel mal! I really had pleasure to go back in my “kindheit” and to listen at german. I thought I had forgotten that language, and had so much pleasure discovering I could understand so much of a so beautifull story! Thank you for all that dream, like every time! (I’m a follower of your blog, even if I don’t comment very often…)
Das auto blubberbumm is a classic. The story is wonderful and the music is amazing. Thanks for your comment.
Speechless…and I haven’t even listened to it yet…
thanks again for yet another marvel that makes me think all the possible pasts are chuckling away together, combining, splitting, moving down the pipe together and emerging at just above head-height, taking me by utter surprise.
Hope the record will live up to your expectations. Thanks for dropping by.
Thanks! I’ve been looking for this. Ideology definitely won against poetry in the lyrics though ;-)
So it might be a good thing some of the lyrics escapes me, after all. Yet I wish ideology would produce fine records like this more often. Thanks for your comment.
Sadly the file was removed. Maybe anyone could re-upload it? I’m looking for this childhood memory for a long time…
“Auto Blubberbum” is one of the GREAT memories, I’m trying to give to my four children.
It was, it is so great!
Whereas, my children often say, it was to nervous.
Which is, when I listened to it in my childhood, I had the record’s cover in my hand, dreaming about the figures. I guess, that kept me “in place”.
They, then, do not have the record cover to hold in their hands, though.
Maybe that is the main difference between “now” and “then”. We “then” had something to “hold and watch”. They do not.
I’ll try it with some paper prints from the covers.
I do really hope, my children are going to love this musical as much as I was and still do.
“Scheinwerfergluehlampenfassungszuleitungskabelverloetungen” – “klick-bumm”
:)
“so stellt man autos her” – “that’s how cars are made”
Hopefully your kids will get some of the magic in Das Auto Blubberbumm. The play is also a good introduction to teamwork, workplace and office hierarchy. An educational record, in its own way. Thanks for your comment.
Thanks so much, Auto Blubberbumm a great memory of my childhood.
Unfortunately the download link doesn’t work anymore, and the building instructions must be missing some pages. I’m sure I remember a guy that could leave his ear laying around and also the materials list is much longer than what’s needed for those seven figures.
I hope you still have access to the original an can scan the other pages too, I’ld love to rebuild these figures with my nephews. The already know Blubberbumm but only from a cassette.
I don’t have the time to re-upload or scan anything else from Das Auto Blubberbumm. A request for this release was left on the 2012 Re-ups page a while ago, but no reader contributed a re-up yet.