Written in April 2024
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The world has changed a lot since the last entry in June 2020: Pandemic, wars in Europe and many other places, economic crises, democracies in danger, global warming, in short: great uncertainties everywhere. All this despite the fact that we should all have the same interests, as we all live on the same planet. It looks as if humanity is standing in its own way. As inventive and loving as it is, as crazy, cruel and unpredictable as it can be. Irony: Even the current era with its protagonists will only take up a small place in the great history book of mankind. Are your/our ideas and actions really sustainable and meaningful? If so, for whom exactly? Wouldn't it make much more sense to leave behind traces of love instead of devastation and destruction, beauty instead of hate and ugliness?
Nevertheless, we must not lose heart, there are so many wonderful things to discover: Nature, people (yes, they do exist) and, above all, culture with its various protagonists and forms of expression in the form of literature, painting and sculpture, film, theatre, much more and, of course, music. It is (almost) uncontrollable, knows hardly any borders, overcomes language barriers, opens doors and connects. We have to fight for all this, not against but with each other. Not a betting fight but a fight for values. Because in the end, it brings us all something of the most important thing that life has to offer: JOY.
Without JOY, there is no rich and fulfilling life. With this in mind, I wish each and every one of us much JOY.
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WHY?
Written in June 2020
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The reason why I give here insight into my thoughts and tell anecdotes or little stories, which maybe one day will be summarized and completed in a book, all this with my own words and without ghostwriter:
They should encourage, inspire, show the view behind the scenes, also include "philosophical", "thoughts", "anecdotes". There is also various picture material.
I have long considered whether I should also write about all the egomaniacs, hypocrites, pompous people, schemers and "over dead bodies walking alpha animals" that I have come across in the music business in the more than 30 years, but I have decided against it, because it is the greatest punishment that you can give someone apart from deprivation of freedom, life and love: That of "not letting it happen": No attention to those who seek it at all costs. Since I don't publish my music through a big record company but also here alone via my own small label and own social channels, it can be listened to at the same time as the different stories on the different portals. On my homepage all these works are directly linked to the most important providers.
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I very much hope that the English translation will be similar to the German text in my mother tongue.
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Musik – Changes make the difference
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I am someone who loves to create and discover new things, be it in music or in life in general. A white paper, a few letters that are formed into words, these into whole sentences, these into stories that did not exist before.
The same with music. Having created something for the first time, chords, rhythms, melodies, sounds, moods, something that was not there before. Unbelievable, this feeling can't be topped with anything.
Repetitions are kind of boring, even if you can't avoid them everywhere. Maybe that's one of the reasons why I never really discovered "playing live" for me despite my experiences, although its energy and the exchange with the audience can be very satisfying. Maybe it was also because I never found the right musicians who were burning for an idea and were willing to put all their creativity and energy into a project. Maybe I just wasn't good or brave enough. It would be possible. So the tape machines and later computers became my partners and friends and I became a project man who tried to make the best of his available possibilities, all this together with a fulltime job and mostly in long night sessions and sometimes gruelling solo effort.
So I became a kind of painter, who lived out his respective ideas and phases, painted with different colours and finished his work at some point. Nobody would ever ask a painter if he would paint the just finished picture again. This also became my philosophy.
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Also the love for a voice is a very personal thing. Not every voice fits to every song, not every voice pleases everyone, not every song works. But it is unbelievable when a voice breathes life into a melody and triggers something in me that cannot be described with words. Then all privations, every renunciation, making debts and not finding sleep are worth it. This is a kind of wealth for me, which no one can take away from me.
I am glad that you are interested in my little world and wish you much joy and good feelings on your journey to these different musical realms. Always remember: It is us who set the limits, not the music or anyone else. Changes make the difference.
Traces!!! Do you lay your own or do you follow existing ones?
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Traces accompany us throughout life.
We see and hear them, left behind in the sand, snow, life, in souls, on the floor, bodies, tapes, data carriers, mattresses, on the Internet. Traces are set, laid, recorded, blurred, eliminated, dubbed, changed.
Traces can fade, become invisible, repressed, forgotten, remain in memory. There are traces of joy, feelings, impressions, pain, hope, anger. Traces convey an image, lead to the chosen, wanted, bereaved, and victims.
Traces! Before it comes into being there is a first step, an experience, an event, a feeling, a wish, a dream, a vision. They influence, manipulate, lead, liberate, restrict, show opportunities, lead to freedom or to dead ends.
In my Emansworld, the world of music & nature, I am particularly fascinated by sound and image tracks that I fill with my musicality and snapshots. The revolution in technology has made it possible to capture feelings, impressions, sounds, tones and moods on audio and video tracks.
I pay particular attention to voices and your palpable expression. Elvis, Rock n Roll Gott, was one of the first, whose voice recorded on a music cassette found its way through the small loudspeaker to my child's ear and touched my soul. The masterpiece of technology called cassette recorder made it possible for me to record voices, noises or music on empty music cassettes at the end of the 1960s and early 1970s. This worked either via a built-in microphone or via appropriate cable connections to a radio. It was a great gift to hear me or to be able to put my favorite music on the radio on my own cassette. How many hundreds of hours my sister and I spent taping our favorite songs and new discoveries! Thanks to my parents' love of music, I discovered their incredible diversity very early on: Glenn Miller, Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, George Gershwin, Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Art Blakey, Art van Damme, Lionel Hampton, Gene Krupa, Mahalia Jackson, Dutch Swing College Band, Eroll Garner. And later I came across the Beatles, Deep Purple, Uriah Heep, Golden Earring, Jimi Hendrix, John Fogerty, Animals, Shocking Blue, Rod Stewart, Pink Floyd, Manfred Mann's Earth Band, Alan Parsons Project, Queen, David Bowie and many others.
All of these artists triggered deep feelings that I still cannot classify and describe to this day. John Miles wrote this wonderful song: "Music" with the lines "Music was my first love .. and it will be my last". Perhaps it was and is exactly that. Plus: That maybe one day I would become part of this exciting globe and the music world with my own creations and my own creations. That I would leave one or the other musical trace; who would have thought that at the time? Certainly all of us bosses, and maybe deep inside, subconsciously me too.
Follow tracks
So I followed the traces of these great artists into the world of music.
What a great find! What a wealth!
With childish naivety and thank God, without the clarity and realism of the adult world, it was very clear to me that I wanted to and can leave my own mark in this fascinating world and thus make myself "immortal".
My great career plan was:
Emulate the role models, strap on the guitar, sex, drugs, rock'n'roll. Whatever this should mean.
Super eeehhh ???
The idea of ​​conquering the world with a few like-minded guys, what a great perspective!
Well, it wasn't that easy and great. I was able to recognize and learn early on that many of my comrades at the time had similar thoughts, but few were willing to work consistently and with the necessary discipline. At least not for the music. Issues like drugs and sex at the ages of 13 and 14 were not quite as common as they are today. In the 1970s there was no internet or cell phone devices to make the information “viral” quickly. We should discover everything slowly and with normal human communication (what a time!), Which was perhaps more exciting. So already 2 of the 3 above mentioned things fell away, at least for the time being .. hhmm .. Parents' homes with a lot of tolerance or lack of interest in the development of their children were even less common. Discipline, order and partial breeding were still in vogue. Nevertheless, I already had my own head at that time. I was wearing my hair long when I was 15, although at that time it was considered lepers and in many places it was considered anti-social. Certainly not an easy time for my parents. In addition: With self-confidence it was one thing: inhibitions, blush, coolness, which at the last moment turned into the opposite .. Yes! Until the rebel and leader, there was still a lot of “work and potential for improvement” in front of me. But the most important part of everything, music, remained for me. And specifically: Rock'n'Roll !!! Yes! I remember it well when I was allowed to keep my boyfriend Gönti's first electric guitar at home for one night. For me it was a "magic" moment. I was there. In the evening, with the curtains pulled back, guitar strapped to the window ... And for the first time I showed myself to the outside world as a little "rock star". Afterwards there were no fans or groupies waiting for me at the bottom of the door and the applause was completely absent; probably nobody saw me at the window. But this feeling!… .. Oooh this unique and indescribable feeling, to get an insight into the world of my idols with a strapped electric guitar; Thank the Lord for that.
leave traces
At the beginning of the way to my first own sound tracks was a long and sometimes difficult path that led through various dark, cold rehearsal rooms and converted cellar dungeons.
And one day I stood there in this room, which was packed with the latest technology and instruments and which was to become my second home. This former and hardly ventilated cold room of a butcher shop was the rehearsal room of my last and most important band, where I played bass guitar. Her name was "NEW AGE". The first few minutes in this basement hole initially triggered slightly oppressive feelings, but from that moment on, the only thing that mattered was that I could create my own music with the existing equipment.
NEW AGE 1981 - Beat, Dick, Pat, Felice, Manfred
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“NEW AGE” really started a new era. I was on my way to my 20th birthday and it was the year 1981. In this and the following years I really started to develop songs and fragments and to create my own music tracks.
It was there that I met Pat, the synthesizer and piano player, who was to become one of the most important people in my life and at Emansworld. We became real friends and it is sometimes an important reason that I will send my partly still unknown music creations out into the world this year.
A moving experience (excerpt from the book Traces) Tokyo 2016
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It's snowing outside, which is relatively rare in Tokyo in this intensity. I am sitting on a small sofa in a single room and less than a meter away from me you prefer Pat, dear friend and in my previous musician life, great band mate. Thanks to you, I discovered the world of electronic keyboard instruments, among other things.
The doctors gave you a few more days to live. I am very grateful that I can accompany you on this last path on this side of our consciousness and that I may be a little support for you.
Your breath is almost regular and you are in a kind of deep sleep, at least almost. You looked at me briefly, recognized me and sent a few Swiss German words through my half-open mouth to my words. Then you are immersed again in a world that we don't really know how it is connected to ours. A light dose of morphine also does the job. The hope that your subconscious receives our words and touches gives us courage and strength.
I arrived here on short notice yesterday in Tokyo to accompany you on this last path in our earthly existence. I would like to share these last breaths with you, dear Pat. Also, maybe I can be a little bit of support for Hiroshi in this very difficult time for you, since you are the focus and anchor in his life. I have rarely met a person who cared for someone as lovingly as he cared for you. Until the very last moment. What a gift. I wish you wholeheartedly and I am firmly convinced that you can continue your journey in new and unknown territory in peace and quiet.
Pat and me: a long musical journey together
I owe a lot to this fine man. For many years he became one of the most important companions in my life, both as a person and as a musician. We spent almost daily time in or outside of our common rehearsal room for a couple of years. Studios. He became a friend and music friend. He was the first and for a long time the only one to believe in my musical talent. It was mainly thanks to him that I developed my later way of working, alone and with electronic instruments, tape recorders and later computers, to be able to create new and own tracks. My instruments bass guitar and guitar were added. That's why I dedicated my first record to him back in 1987. Even if we were separated by many thousands of kilometers; we always knew what unites us.
So on the days in Tokyo on his "onward travel bed", as he had told me again and again the years before, I decided to write down the important moments of my life in a book and my years of music work, my elaborate life project, now finally to publish!
Today I can say with all my heart “Dear Pat, how many times have I discussed my and our ideas, old and old, with you during your visits to Switzerland on our car trips, excursions or evenings in small mountain restaurants or in beautiful Lucerne played new music? How many times have we dreamed together and bathed our dreams in color? How many times have I told you about all the failures and retries to complete and finish? You gave me courage again and again and let me know that this is simply my way, which I have to take, even if my surroundings have not understood or accepted this fact for a long time or I almost didn't want to go any further… no matter. The encounters with you left deep traces in my life. Thank you Pat for everything! Encourage, listening and for taking me seriously. Thank you for your faith, your support and for everything that I have been able to learn from you as a person in terms of generosity and generosity, family and dealing with other people.
I have promised you that the time to consider the interests of others is finally over and I will now think of myself. Various sides have made me aware that the link between all these recordings is ultimately ME myself. Even if I have never looked for the light of the public and still am not looking for it, there is no way around it, there are no concerts, TV or other great promotional opportunities. After many years of numerous discussions with various record companies and people working in the music business, which ultimately led to nowhere, I have now decided to send «MANFRED EHLERT’S AMEN» out into the world beyond my own small label. The time is now ripe to bring to light my audio, video (also during the day) and written works, which I have primarily created at night.
RIP Pat
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Pat took the last breath on this side of our lives on 01/28/16 at 20.55. In the background was one of his favorite titles, Let it be by the Beatles.
"RIP, dear Pat. And keep me a place near you so that one day I can tell you how my story went on like in the old days .. right?! .."
