THRICE MICE

Not a lot of people realise that the music in Germany in the end of the 60's was a cesspool of various genres with their forced collisions. And for every trending genre they took in, they managed to recreate something truly new from them. In the rise of prog in the beginning of the 70's, Germany felt their head first into krautrock and jazz prog, besides the other prog sub-genres. So, amid the general relatively big German prog hits like Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Kraftwerk, Neu!, Ash Ra Tempel, Can, Amon Dull, Popol Vuh, Triumvirat, Grobschnitt, Novalis and Eloy, arose a smaller underground spawn of German prog rock bands. And Thrice Mice was one of them. They playfully incorporated sax into their music and write generally happier Pink Floyd-isms music wich was strongly influenced by jazz rock/fusion style.

Thrice Mice was a German progressive rock band, a sextet from Hamburg. Thrice Mice appeared in 1966 when the two brothers Rainer and Werner Von Gosen formed a beat trio with Arno Bredehoft. At the time, these three musicians were students at the Alexander Von Humboldt high school in the Hamburg district of Harburg. By 1970, the group grew up into a sextet, with the addition of Wolfgang Buhre, Wolfram Minnemann and Karl-Heinz Blumenberg. Then, Thrice Mice also turned into a bluesy jazz rock band, with which they also filled their debut and only album 'Thrice Mice', which was recorded in the same year but only released in the following year. Shortly thereafter, in the early of 1972, the band broke up. Some members of Thrice Mice were employed by the Hamburg jazz rock formation Altona later in that decade.

As I mentioned above, by 1970, when the first and only album of them, which is actually the subject to be discussed here was recorded, the line up of the band had already doubled and the style played by Thrice Mice had also developed significantly. So, the line up on the album is Karl-Heinz Blumenberg (vocals), Werner Von Gosen (guitar), Wolfram Minnemann (organ), Wolfgang Buhre (saxophone), Rainer Von Gosen (bass guitar) and Arno Bredehoft (drums).

I never heard anything about this album or this band before. And I'm not a specialist in krautrock either. So, to listen to this album was a shot in the dark. Still, I like the album. It seems to me a typical underground German prog jazz-rock album. This is a very singular album, a typical example of the early krautrock. It brings to us the echoes of the typical psychedelic sound of the 60's. So, it isn't really strange that it reminds me, sometimes, the sound of The Doors. The production isn't great and so the quality of its sound loses a bit, with that. Anyway, the quality of its music gets over it.

Thrice Mice plays a bluesy herbaceous jazz rock dominated by saxophone and organ, a reminiscent of the jazzed proto-prog of various British colleagues such as Colosseum, If, Mogul Thrash, Web, Blodwyn Pig or Warm Dust. However, the music is even more oriented towards the 60's, which is particularly noticed in Wolfram Minnemann's style ' la Ray Manzarek organ playing, which is somewhat thin and dusty. The progressivity is, of course, the length of the numbers, in which the band is more or less lively and complex is dominated mostly by Wolfgang Buhres' freaking sax playing or by several intricate saxophone lines and the swelling organ. And, from time to time, the electric guitar also plays in the foreground, while the rhythm department pushes the whole thing to forward rather solidly, but the singer is rarely used.

In 2003 'Thrice Mice' was released on the CD format and was expanded with several bonus tracks. As I mentioned above, Thrice Mice, around the brothers Rainer and Werner Von Gosen, started out as a beat trio. That can be perfectly experienced, particularly on the last track on the CD, 'An Invitation'. 'An Invitation' sounds a bit like The Who and was recorded in February 1967 at a beat competition organized by the Harburger Werbung und Nachrichten, the local newspaper in Hamburg's Harburg district, where the group was at their home. Thrice Mice took the first place out of the twenty four bands on that competition. The first six bands were each allowed to publish one of the tracks recorded at the concert on a joint EP, which now gives to us the opportunity to listen to the first sound document by Thrice Mice. Something similar can be heard on many of the other bonus tracks on the album. Some of the pieces recorded on this re-released version are live recordings with quite good quality. They came from three different concerts from 1969-70.

Conclusion: I really think we have here some good stuff. I felt here the presence of the sound of The Doors, at times, and the psychedelic sound with a mix of rock'n'roll and jazz. You know, the sound of the 60's. A lot of the music here is hot, energetic and enthusiastic. Still, we can say that 'Thrice Mice' sounds, especially from the perspective of the 70's, is quite out of date. But, in general, this music is very well made, but not particularly original, somewhat stale and also not terribly herbaceous jazz/blues rock. So, all in all, this is a nice album, but nothing outstanding. When the band fused jazz and less The Doors sound, then they sounded great. However, if you value the above mentioned comparisons and you can imagine music to be a bit more unstructured, freer, harder, more 60's, heavy and a bit bumpier, maybe you should give to 'Thrice Mice' a try. So, as a final conclusion, 'Thrice Mice' is a good album, but nothing more than that.

Prog is my Ferrari. Jem Godfrey (Frost*)

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