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| A GI’s Germany #1 – Side #1 | A GI’s Germany #1 – Side #2 |
EXCERPTS FROM VOLUME #1 TEXT
(from pages included inside the album)
A trip down memory lane, even without the audio
| INTRODUCTION: IN SOUND & MUSIC! Here is Germany as the American servicemen hears it and lives it!Here is the brassy beer hall music, the crashing “Prost!” of 1000 voices from Munich’s Hofbrauhaus, the ever-changing sounds of modern Germany and the never-changing sounds of its bells, beer halls, cuckoo clocks and cobblestone-clattering honey wagons.Here is the Germany that GI’s write home about. Land of Heninger, Hofbrau, and a thousand other beers; homeland of Gemeutlichkeit, lederhosen and schnitzel a la holstein; and slangland of “mox nix!”, “clicks”, and “You bedder belief it, GI!”
And we haven’t let it go at just the sounds. Pages of text inside round up any stray memories which may have eluded our microphones. Hilariously illustrated by cartoonist Dennis Renault (USAREUR, 1956-57), it’s done in the prose form every EUCOM GI understands …. the letter home. Letters to the Folks, the Local Board, the faithless sender of that “Dear John” letter, and all the rest. So, place this record on a player, settle back with the text, and listen. You’ll have the best seat in the beer hall and the noisiest foxhole in Grafenwoehr. You’ll be back again in the bahnhof, entangled again in the madness of the autobahn, in Munich for Oktoberfest, and back in the kaserne in time for the alert bell to jar some more memories awake. You’ll relive the moment your neighbor’s radio a foot locker away blared out the familiar, twangy introduction to AFN’s Hillbilly Reveille, but you’ll hear the music of Germany, too. Favorite beerhall music and songs recorded in walloping stereo in live performance, played by some of Germany’s best (and certainly beeriest) Bavarian bands, and with hundreds of Germans — and maybe you — singing along. For that’s what the makers of this record were after. Not the antiseptic sounds and music of a Germany manufactured in a sound studio, but the real Germany you knew, recorded on-the-spot. The search for those sounds led through Germany’s biggest cities and smallest villages, through its most famed beer halls and most rugged maneuver areas, and through seven weeks of recording and over 15 miles of recording tape. This album represents, too, a first hand acquaintanceship with the subject matter. Producer-editor George Casey served with the Army in Germany in 1955 and ’56, narrator John Hart in 1956 and ’57, cartoonist Renault in 1956 and ’57, chief recorder (an ex-Airman) Jerry Vogler in 1957 and ’58, and editorial advisor Bill Churchill in 1955 and ’56. Here then, in sound, text, and cartoon are the highlights of your tour from the troopship arrival in Bremerhaven to the plane departure for home. May it insure your memories of Germany against the wear and breakage of the years of readjustment to civilian or Stateside life. But, most importantly, may it return you to your own personal Germany whenever you like. TABLE OF CONTENTS: SIDE ONE INTRODUCTION SIDE TWO INTRODUCTION Recorded on-the-spot with the cooperation of: THE U.S. ARMY, BERLIN-HOHENFELS CREDITS: |