The Guru Guru appreciation thread

Mani has also worked with Acid Mothers Temple as Acid Mothers Guru, including some performances with Ruins powerhouse Yoshida Tatsuya. I find he works best in the classic power trio format of the early Guru Guru albums, but I would recommend Zero Set, an interesting album with Moebius and Conny Plank from the 80s; Neumaier leads from the front and the other two wrap strands of electronica around his mighty percussion, with some guest African vocals on one track. If techno had used live drums instead of machines, it would have sounded like this.

Nice thread Baldjean!2 or 3 hours ago I was playing Dance of the Flames:I love its fusion side and Houschang Nejadpour's guitar playing(by the way what has come of him after Eiliff and Guru Guru?).As Micky said,Kanguru is great:for me a very heavy space/psychedelic affair.Moreover Mani has a great sense of humour(Dagobert Duck's funny intro),is defintely in my top 5 of drummers(Vander,Cobham,Williams,DE Johnette and Mani)and UFO and Hinten kick asses!Is Wah Wah a good album?

Guru Guru have been around for over 40 years now and are one of the most important German bands. they changed their style with almost every album; the only constant is drummer Mani Neumeier. he is as good as they come (he has a jazz background. he used to play with the Irene Schweizer Trio before he founded Guru Guru). their shows are full of action; a lot of surprising things will happen on stage.
their classic is "Der Elektrolurch" ("The Electric Amphibian"), for which Neumeier puts on a self-designed mask and pretends to be responsible for the electricity in our households. he used to wear a tail too, but it turned out to be too difficult to move around on stage with it, so he gave that up. on their first live album from 1978 you can hear him say "Mein Schwanz schlägt heute wieder alles um" ("My tail is knocking everything over again today").
here a photo of Mani in his mask:



Edited by BaldJean - January 23 2010 at 06:11