"And what did they say?" asked Moonaj.
"They wanted him to pay them."
Moonaj paused a moment. He was weighing up whether to have more coffee to keep him awake or give up now and hope he was still drowsy enough to get back to sleep. Nobody spoke. Constance was already sliding off her stool in the kitchen of her apartment and in Europe, Jan Moencker stood in his office in Berlin fully sentient. He was part of the A&R team in Europe with his ears usually stuck in the sub-woofers of industrial metal or the clubs playing Europop, but even he was confused by the noises he was hearing over his Skype connection.
"Can I say something, Todd?" said Constance.
"Go ahead."
"Wasn't there a music critic in London murdered last week after saying bad things about Toten Herzen."
"So what? John Lennon was murdered for having no connection whatsoever to Jodie Foster."
"Sorry, I just thought it might be relevant."
"Well it isn't and I still don't understand why this was worth waking me up at four in the morning. A dead band from East Germany. How we going to hear them?"
"There is potential here, Todd," said Moencker.
"I don't think so. You've been getting more and more desperate over the last twelve months, Jan. That group you convinced my predecessor to sign, the Abba-meets-Laibach bunch, are all back in Denmark taking their welfare cheques. I think Sanatorium Treatment had it about right. And Constance, take some time off. Take as long as you want. I'm going back to bed people."
-
Jan Moencker blinked in disbelief. He was sure he'd found the deal Moonaj was looking for. It ticked all the boxes: backstory, tick; back catalogue no one owned, tick; predominantly female, tick; (good looking females, especially the vocalist, tick;) good press potential, tick; retro angle to appeal to older people, tick. He could go on all day ticking a list of boxes as long as the Danube. What did Moonaj want? Blood? Fuck it, he could even tick that box! If the target was something that appealed to a contemporary audience with monetizing potential there was no reason why a writing team couldn't be put together, line up a group of A-list producers to add a 21st century name to a 20th century legend, photograph them with a fleet of Volkswagens and off we go.
For now there was an appointment to keep so Moencker pulled on his winter jacket and grabbed his car keys and mobile. As he drove away from his office on Marienburger Strasse he noticed a woman waving to him. He forced a smile and wound down his window. "Eva Matheus? What are you doing here?"
Eva stepped forward. "Sorry, I'm not stalking you. I was coming to drop off the disc you asked for." She waved a cd in the air like a tiny flag. "It's the four tracks you asked us to work on."
"Oh, great," said Moencker. "I was going to an appointment, but. . . ." He could see Eva was shivering in a long overcoat, thin flowery dress just long enough to cover her knees, big clunky boots and beeny hat. "Do you need a lift somewhere? Maybe it's on the way."
"Sure." Eva jumped in without saying where she wanted to go. "Do you have a cd player in here?" She pulled the seatbelt on. The car was filled with an aroma of citrus and cigarettes.
"Yeah." Moencker ejected the current disc and watched out for traffic as Eva eagerly inserted her own recording. "It's good of you to do this, thanks."
"Where are you going?" said Moencker.
"Oh, all the way hopefully."
"No, I mean where do you want me to drop you off?"
"Anywhere." The music started. Oh god, an acoustic guitar!
"My boss," said Moencker, "if you can call him that, doesn't know where he wants to go. He doesn't know what he wants. Well, he does, but it's nothing musical."
"I wrote this section here with an aunt of mine who lives in Hamburg."
"He wants tie-ins and three sixty degree potential, he wants to inherit existing publishing deals. To him these are just acquisitions like buying a soup factory or a travel company." Eva half listened wondering what it all meant. "He has to trust his A&R team or there's no point having one."
Eva nodded. "What do you think so far, are we sounding better?"
"Yeah, much better. Maybe he doesn't like European acts. But David Guetta's European, U2, people are going nuts for Kraftwerk again, Air, Daft Punk, Coldplay, Radiohead," Moencker tickled the steering wheel, "you know, lots of successful European acts."
"Sorry, who are you talking about?"
"Todd Moonaj at Sony. Okay, so he likes his stars to be American, but Toten Herzen were big in America."
"Toten Herzen?"
"You heard of them? You might be too young. They were successful in the seventies. Now they want to make a comeback. Their management are fishing for opportunities."
Eva studied the traffic building up. "Are they like the Scorpions?"
Moencker hesitated and pulled faces. "They, well, no, sort of yes, but not all the time. They're early seventies. No, not as explicit as the Scorpions. They were influenced at the start by Deep Purple." The second song on the disc started. Another acoustic guitar! "Did you write this one with your aunt too?"
"No."
"Guitars only get you so far in the digital age, unless you're stadium drum and bass or already big. But Toten Herzen were already big."
"This song is about homecoming, the relief to be home, the sadness that the journey has ended. You know you want to go back, but it's not the same the second time. Can never be the same," said Eva to the windscreen.
Moencker heard half of that. Eva had a very attractive profile. A strong outline. "We should make them big. What are marketing people for? They make small things big."
Half way through the song they arrived at Granzer Studio and Moencker found a space to park. The band he had come to meet were already here and the session with an engineer was under way. Blast did anything but what their name suggested and Moencker couldn't get Moonaj's criticism out of his head. Here he was in a chilly, matt grey Berlin recording studio surrounded by framed prints of musicians unheard of outside the building. In front of him a band of gangly young men covered in tattoos and superfluous sweatbands, posed with their guitars round their knees. Next to him stood a twenty first century flower child with a disc full of earnest songs recorded beautifully alongside two of her friends from the same squat. He had lied. She sounded better live than on disc, but his centre of attention had been shoved so far out that nothing from the last forty hours sounded tolerable. Everything either annoyed him or bored him rigid. Blast were puny, following a set of instructions; an unfocused tribute band with a derivative sound and a template attitude. They sounded so good in the club where he first heard them, obscured by the feedback and flattered by the attention of an admittedly enthusiastic crowd. But between that night and this afternoon Moencker had been listening to We Are Toten Herzen almost non stop and had made it his new benchmark.
He felt guilty and turned to Eva. "I need time to give your disc proper attention. I've got a head full of rock and it's a little difficult to switch between this kind of noise and your kind of poetry. When are you playing live again?"
"We are due to play at the Goldenkellar a week tomorrow night."
Moencker made a note in his smartphone diary. "Okay. I'll listen to the disc between now and then. I'll come down to see you and let you know if there's some news for you."
"Okay, thank you." She tried to look excited, but it was hard to tell. But then if you jump out at someone in the street you can't expect a rational response. Moencker had been ambushed, but at least his indifference wasn't just about her. He wasn't listening to Blast either and he'd made a point of coming down here to see them.
"Can I ask you a personal question?" Moencker was easily heard over the tinny roar of the music in the control room.
"Yes."
"How old are you?"
"Twenty three. Why?"
He led her over to a computer at the back of the studio and found a website. It was Rob Wallet's blog. "Have a look at these pictures and tell me what you think."
Eva
studied the first image. It was obviously old, taken way back when; certainly before her time. "Who is that? Toten Herzen?"
"Yes," said Moencker. "This was taken in 1975 at the Astoria in London. There's the singer Dee Vincent," he pointed out each band member, "Susan Bekker, that is Elaine Daley and the guy there is Rene van Voors, the drummer. Okay, now look at this image." Moencker navigated to another part of the blog where Wallet had uploaded a photo of a group of unnamed friends. "This is a hotel somewhere in London and there is Dee Vincent, Susan Bekker, Elaine Daley and Rene van Voors." Eva could see that. "Nothing leap out at you."
"Dressed differently, a little more fashionable."
"This was taken three weeks ago."
Eva's eyebrows raised. She was impressed. Then the eyebrows changed shape. "Three weeks! The first was in 1975 you said?"
"Yes, nearly forty years ago."
"They look good," she said hesitantly.
"Not bad for a load of sixty year olds."
-
Todd Moonaj walked into his office on Madison Avenue and tried not to look too interested in the printouts on his desk. He had to get his coat off, calm himself after the traffic. He had to arrive properly.
"They were emailed through about twenty minutes ago," said his secretary.
"From who?"
"Jan in Berlin."
Moonaj leaned towards them. The first printout was a photo of four people, one holding an old guitar. He looked at each of them closely. A woman, smaller than the others, short black hair, white as a ghost, leather jacket, black jeans. The second had long black or dark greyish hair, shadowy eyes, looked dead on her feet, as pale as the first. The third woman had a hairstyle that Moonaj couldn't easily identify; part mohican part Statue of Liberty, but like her colleagues she was the embodiment of late nights and ill health. The man, only identifiable as a man by heavy stubble, was also black haired and white faced, a sort of musketeer from the other side.
Moonaj shook his head and continued to hang up his coat. "What are they goths, emos, vampires, what?" He picked up the second printout. Again, the same four figures stood together, not looking at the camera, but the image was of a poorer quality, slightly blue and faded. In a corner were the handwritten words 'Toten Herzen c1975.' On the other image 'Toten Herzen 2013. Notice the difference? Me neither.'
"What am I missing here?" asked Moonaj, "I don't know what I'm supposed to be looking at here. Is it a hairstyling mailshot? Why are people even bothering me with all this?"
The secretary took the images and studied them. She could see the discolouration, the ageing of the second image, but apart from the band looking the same in each photo the significance was lost on her too. "Well, I guess they've aged well for a rock band. I mean, look at Ronnie Wood. He doesn't look as good as these guys."
"Ronnie Wood's seventy if he's a day. How old are these people? Twenty, thirty."
"In 1975, twenty something, so that would make them fifty something, almost sixty something. . . ."
"What?" Moonaj looked at the first image again. "They're the same people."
"I didn't think there were plastic surgeons in Europe as good as that," said the secretary.
"Plastic surgery my merry ass. The only doctors these guys have seen is Dr Photoshop. Whoever sent the email, get back to them, tell them to stop wasting my time." Moonaj tore up the pictures, threw the pieces in the bin, loosened his tie, repositioned the photograph of his wife and sat back in his chair. "Who else do I have to endure today?"
His secretary checked the diary. "Dianne Warren has another song she'd like you to hear."
"Oh, for fuck's sake."
Terence Pearl: Blog post
Cathar survivors or the new apocalypse
In my book 'The Hidden Agendum in Art and Musik' by Terence Pearl I identified numerous examples of occult practice hidden by the symbolism of the creative arts. I have now identified a bigger more specific threat.
Five murders in as many days and they all have one thing in common: Toten Herzen. If you didn't know about this group of people before you certainly will now. They present themselves, when they choose a moment to do so, as a rock and roll band, but the truth goes far beyond that.
Back in 1977 they performed a ritualistic suicide, abetted by a man from Norfolk who had been brainwashed into doing so. (Fortunately for him the Metropolitan Police saw through the escapade and brought no charges against him except one of wasting police time.) Leonard Harper was only one of many other such unfortunate people lured into a cult of personality that involved other forms of animalistic sacrifice including that of a horse. The group were successful in earning huge sums of money, all of which was done in the guise of record sales and concert tickets, but a closer inspection of their output reveals some tell tale signs of what was really going on.
Their first long playing record was called Pass On By, an ironic title in which the group are calling out to their followers and anyone else ready to receive their message. They specialised in attracting those marginalised by society: drug users and anti-social drop outs. Pass On By was also a poem by the 15th Century necromancer Thomas Gwynn, a Scottish Catholic who was accused of heresy. To quote Gwynn (with somewhat modernised wording) 'Go not the path of deceitful righteousness, but pass on by all signs that claim to offer salvation.' The group will have been in no doubt as to the provenance of their title, knowing that they alone were aware of its significance.
We Are Toten Herzen was the name given to their second long playing record. We Are Dead Hearts is the translation and whilst Dead Hearts may seem an innocuous albeit melodramatic name for a rock band, Die Toten Herzen were a Germanic branch of the Cathars who rejected the gospels and indulged in various shape shifting practices using herbs and potions. The lead figure of Die Toten Herzen, Augustus Wurlichter, was beheaded during the Albigensian Crusade in 1225, but his colleagues escaped persecution. Their whereabouts remains a mystery to this day. Or does it?Records show that four men close to Wurlichter had the names Beckersteiner, Dalen, Vincentius and Vornemburg. The four members of the group Toten Herzen are named Bekker, Daley, Vincent and van Voors. This is more than coincidental.
Nocturn, the group's third long playing record, is a reference to the night and the various forms of life that exist there when the rest of us are asleep. There are stories throughout history of people subjected to 'night terrors' and there is an obvious allegiance to these creatures, in the same way that various tribes and warriors call on the spirits of animals to help them in their activities. The group call upon the various night creatures to instil them with malevolence, powers, physical strength and the ability to draw energy from innocent people.
The final long playing record released by the group was Black Rose and it is here that the first indications of their ritualistic suicide appear. For many practitioners of the black arts the black rose is a potent symbol of death and life combined: the blackness of death along with the life embodiment of the rose. The songs on the record Black Rose were, in total, fifty eight minutes long. This seemingly arbitrary number takes on a macabre significance when you multiply it by four (one for each member of the group) to make two hundred and thirty two, double it (two being the lowest prime number and very important in ritualistic practices dating back to the third century) and you arrive at four hundred and sixty four. From the group entering a recording studio to work on Black Rose to their ritualistic suicide on March 21st 1977 was precisely four hundred and sixty four days.
Toten Herzen will one day make announcements regarding new concert shows and records and it will be interesting to note the significance of titles and related numerological correlations. Having survived death the group will be ready to elevate to the next level of consciousness as they leave this realm. However, there will be a danger in that they will not go alone. How many people, both willing and unwilling, they take with them should be of great concern to all of us.
THE INDEPENDENT
Toten Herzen Have Not Been Spotted Aliv
e
The Mirror's 'Catch the Vampires' Campaign has produced hundreds of false sightings
The villagers of Sabden in Lancashire's Forest of Bowland have grown used to being associated with witchcraft. The Pendle Witches of the seventeenth century have long been a magnet for tourists to the small upland village in the shadow of Pendle Hill, but vampires have never been part of local folklore until the Daily Mirror was informed of the four members of Toten Herzen buying a book of stamps in the local post office.
"I didn't even know who Toten Herzen were until a reporter from the press rang," said a surprised Emily Connor, the village postmistress and manager of the attached newsagents. "He asked me how old they were and to be honest I had no idea who he was talking about."
The confusion follows a campaign run by the Mirror inviting members of the public to send in evidence of the reclusive rock band following a surprise reunion announcement. Sightings have been reported from the Isles of Scilly to Aberdeen, with one man claiming he had seen them on a bus in Darlington 'looking a bit worse for wear.' The fact that this was at three in the afternoon somewhat undermined the campaign's title Catch the Vampires; a breed not known for its fondness for daylight.
The band's spokesman Rob Wallet has tried to calm the Mirror's fevered initiative by claiming the band are currently located in Rotterdam, which resulted in a number of sightings on a Rotterdam to Hull ferry. The Mirror is offering ten cases of wine (red obviously) for the first verified sighting of the band, but for now pensioners all over the country are the subject of speculation and smartphone photography. And history repeats itself; just as they were in the seventies, Toten Herzen are again at the centre of press attention with not so much as a curl of the lip. Modern celebrities take note and learn the dark art of minimal effort publicity.
We Are Toten Herzen (TotenUniverse Book 1) Page 4