Band: Rosa Extra
Label: tapetopia & aufnahme + wiedergabe, Berlin
Year: 2023
C-50, hand numbered edition of 100
Mastered by Bo Kondren, Calyx Berlin
Artwork: Laireen & tapetopia
Photos: Frieda von Wild
Liner notes: Henryk Gericke
Lyrics & line-ups compiled by Bert Papenfuß & Bernd Jestram
Postage & packing not included
From Henryk Gericke’s liner notes to this release:
…No other punk band in the GDR so clearly had a literary lineage. Rosa Extra would often use texts by poets who were friends with the band, thus turning poetry back into song. The musicians’ collaboration with the underground lyricist Bert Papenfuß, beyond Rosa Extra, would develop into an enduring common-law marriage. Papenfuß had an unrivalled gift of transforming the energy of punk rock and the liberal-experimental basic order of post-punk into a well-set chaos of words. He blended their mythological and personal-mythological meanings with an etymological understatement and a straight-to-hell sense of humour. Poet Stefan Döring’s dry diction and sometimes angular metrics were also set to music by Rosa Extra; the laconic slog of “Was Mir Deine Schleuder Ist Dir Meine Waschmaschine” is a terrific example. The two poets and Rosa Extra were kindred spirits thanks to their disconnection from a scene that, like the overground, was not free of formalistic debates.
Rosa Extra were to be included on the in every way spectacular LP “eNDe – DDR Von Unten”. The first release of Punkrock Ost on vinyl was a thorn in the superimposed flesh of the Stasi, but the MfS conspired against itself to a rather bizarre degree here: it was two of its own inspectors who manned the knobs and faders of this high-risk production. The Stasi knew to prevent Rosa Extra from releasing illegally in the West. The split LP was then released in 1983 as a full load of Zwitschermaschine and Saukerle aka Schleim-Keim on West Berlin label Aggressive Rockproduktionen.
The ripples emanating from Rosa Extra eventually resulted in a plethora of bands that hardly any other underground network can boast of: Hard Pop, Aufruhr zur Liebe, Ornament & Verbrechen or BleiBeil, to name just a few. Almost all of them were part of an anti-socialist canon whose radicalism was essentially a result of countercultural consistency combined with subcultural savoir-faire.