This is the story of Exciting Café, told by a true insider.
By a man, who was right on the spot, when they started their exceptional career.
He has every right to call his book authentic, because he has been involved in the band´s history not only as a by-stander, but as an innocent as well. He never had a real chance to stop those idiots. He has seen more bad concerts, than any other living person.As a senior stage accountant he has inhaled more dry ice, than seems to be available in Antarctica.
As their road manager, he built new roads. No wonder that the band chose to fly, or trust Achleitner as a driver.
As a security guard, he managed to entertain the crowds with various pantomime sketches, to keep the audience from beating up the band, while performing °God Slime°, °I´m Truely Ordinary° or the inevitably nasty °Dooh Dah Dolls°.
As a writer and biographer he will prove with this book, that he´s not afraid of slandering peole, or of any juridical problems arousing for himself personally.

Now let´s hear it from the man itself...

They were trapped inside a shoebox - like cockchavers.

That's how my book begins.
The shoebox was the Viennese version of the famous lead chambers of Venice, only that it had two neon tubes, instead of one swinging bare light-bulb, obligatory since the 1920 Music Against Man Convention held in Geneva. It was by all means the most horrible rehearsal room between Naples and Aberdeen, but neighbours didn't knock on the walls or call for the police to have those six barbarians arrested. How come, you might ask, that this Luke Hydelberry seems to be knowing all this stuff? Because 'He' was there with them from the very beginning. 'I used to be their driver, and they didn't even know the wheel had been invented I used to be their photographer, and they didn't even dare to expose their faces to broad daylight. I used to believe in them, before they even could spell the word talent, and talents they had ! Boy ! They could have been brilliant architects, tailors, hookers, lawyers, bums et cetera. Unfortunately some of them chose music to be their profession. I used to see all the money they could have made, but in this moment all went down the drain. Me, I still dig the band, besides the fact, the bastards stole my slides for the °Live Wire° albums. If I don't get them back real soon, I'm goin to publicise the Warsaw Protocols, still hidden somewhere up my sleeve.

1982 - 85

In late summer 1982 six guys decided to make some noise. It was rock music they had in mind, and Tom said, 'Let's call ourselves The Exciting Café !'. 'So be it', the others agreed, because of the vicious flaming pie man holding guns to their heads.

This settled, their career immediately started meandering through the lowlands of a first anti-climax, as some of the band's members were confronted with the harsh reality of learning how to play an instrument, before cashing in on show-biz.
Like trapped cockcravers Exciting Café were crammed inside their subterranean shoebox-sized rehearsal room ... room ? NO - Cabin! With the ceilling hanging so low, you could touch it with your raised eyebrow, when hearing a well played note - an incident, which, in mathematical terms, would be a quantity negligable.
An accurately tuned guitar was considered a sensationel achievement during those first weeks.

To make a long story even more boring: the Café did everything any other band would have done, has done and will do: get an act together, get on-stage, get your stuff on a demo-tape, get a contract, get ripped off, get fired, get on your feet again, get rid of people, who constantly stand in your way, get the whole damn cycle started again, get an act together, et cetera.

Complaint and dissatisfaction started raising their ugly heads among the band's ranks. Come 1984, and almost all members seemed to have checked their emotional balances and ties with group members and the group itself and had found both on a dissappointingly low level. Except Jan, a Sancho Pansa of Rock. 'You see so much, and you don't act !' co-producer Walter Seemann would accuse him later in 87. So, with no real success or breakthrough in sight, the first to leave was Ali, soon to be replaced by Karl ( known as Charles Milton Foxx in music circles), and - very interestingly - classicaly trained Sara Bryens joined on keyboards and piano, but for a too short spell to make any real impact on the band. Nevertheless she was the one to say, 'Six more months, and it's gonna be: Make it or break it !'. Hearing this, and expieriencing the outcome - not six, but nine or twelve months later, it doesn't matter - I never in my life ever doubted female intuition again. I just stopped listening to it.

The main issue of growing tension was the music. Ingo's impatiency about part of the band's inability to cope with his more complex material, was immanent. Jan, over the years, had grown tired with his shouter image as a vocalist. He knew, he could do better. As a lyricist he despised silly, self-repeating lines. Until he knew better. As authors and writers they had to face - often unspoken - but nevertheless true allegations that their music had gradually become more and more sophisticated and complicated, while on the other hand, they still didn't seem to be able to write a gassenhauer pop-song with a chorus, proving the combined forces of the CIA an KGB unable to extract it from the people's minds.

The reactions from the National Exciting Café Music Board can be summed up as follows:

1. Mind your own Café, not ours.
2. *Like An Island* is not necessarilly a musical short cut through Mahlers 10th.
3. Contrary to constant pleas, the standards will be raised, not lowered. We are eagerly awaiting the revisionists to throw in their towels.
4. Don't think Cuba's waiting for you.
5. Chairman I. N'Go has fallen asleep.

1986 - 92

Fresh blood was needed and infused by and by, and by means of the skills and talents of bass-player Gerhard Mayr, Aussie-singer Suzan Zeichner, Dieter Libuda on guitar and Karl-Heinz Leschanz on keyboards.
But, somehow, the band's body seemed to reject the cure.
Or at least develop an allergic reaction to the touch of some members of the medical staff. Only great Suzan and Dieter managed to put a constant smile on the faces of Fritz, Ingo and Jan. Thomas Achleitner was the new kid on bass, and Wolfgang Gattringer had joined the Café, because he loved to tour with freaks, play them famous Schleicher Chords and lend his voice to Herford's insane insanities. They had found a line-up and it was time to record their first album. And that's exactly what they did. While all this to-ing and fro-ing had been going on, with all kinds of changes tearing at everybody's nerves, the Café had finally said good-bye to its Shoebox Years, and found themselves residing in a huge three-room basement flight, a facility, which gave them every opportunity to use it for rehearsals, studio recordings, or other non-group-related activities. Maecenas' Basement, as I called it, was located under an inner city restaurant-bar, whose owner - let's call him here Hardy Horinowicz for reasons of anonymity - didn't have any use for the lot (the basement e.g.) and hearing of a band desperately in need of some space and room to create, what they thought to be the music leading away from the dull and dire eighties, didn't hesitate to invite them 'down under', never asking for money, not even for electricity used, only from time to time mentioning, that he thought, the Café wouldn't be wrongly advised to sometimes think a little bit more chart orientated, like maybe 'Starship'.
He knew, he had no chance to convince the hard-liners.
Still, every band on earth should have its own Hardy H. !

LP 'A Night At The Exciting Café' recorded and produced with Walter Seemann, also responsible for the band's live sound from almost the beginning, proved to be a masterpiece in out-balancing the vocal artistry of Suzan Zeichner with the sizzling power of Jan's rock voice, but most important, this first album also showed, that the Café's music had immensely grown and improved. Since '82, almost every musical style seemed to be at their fingertips, and the promise was, they'd go on learning.
It was, by all standards, a brilliant first album. Only, the world didn't take any notice of it. - Okay ! Let's do °Soulflasher° ! We'll gonna teach 'em !

Dramatic changes marked the years 1987 - 89.
Rather shortly after the release of the first album, Achleitner hung up his bass on the proverbial nail for disgruntled Cafétiers, an instrument, which soon would be in the hands, and certainly gracefully played, by the keyboarder's older brother, Hans Gattringer. Shockwaves rattled the band, when Suzan said, she'd had her fill. Only fools would be happy losing a voice like this, but she had every right to leave, because the Café - through the years - had failed to attract enough customers onto its aural premises, to guarantee its personell a fair living free from doing odd jobs. Almost for the same reasons, keyboarder Wolf left.
Peter Thanel was his replacement, showing excellent timing (and musical skill) on any sort of keyboard be it on-stage or in the studio, a talent he seemed to be lacking in private life, when it came down to keep appointments for rehearsals et cetera...
Anyway, he was the best thing that could have ever happened to the Café keyboard-wise.
Eleanor McKinley was ante portas and quickly made her way to the inner circle. Coming from a completely different background, she couldn't replace the Musical trained voice of Suzan, nevertheless she didn't hesitate to define her own status in the band and, a few weeks gone, her influence on the music could be positively felt. She was fun to work with. No wonder autumn '88 and spring '89 proved to be one of happiest and most creative periods in the band's history. That also was the time, they would finish recording °Soulflasher°, which - strangely enough - shouldn't be released before 1992.
It seemed the Café had found its final line-up for a major breakthrough. But the devil is hiding in details, and sometimes people turn out to be nothing but ....details.
April 1989 marked the end of Exciting Café as a live performing band, of course this was unplanned and not intended, but provided with the wisdom that hindsight sometimes offers, one cannot fail - in this case - to hear the writings on the wall.
Personal feuds between singer and drummer errupted.
In July '89 the band decided to move on without the services of Jan.

1991 - 92

In '91 Fritz decided, he wouldn't work with Ingo anymore.
Jan had to be contacted to settle financial matters.
He told Schleicher of an idea, he had been working on for two years: an endzeit drama called Green Hitler, and they immediately started working on it, with Ingo producing twenty-odd themes almost out of nowhere, but autumn of '92 showed, they weren't on par level to commence or continue working with each other again.

1993 - 97

Sometimes, somewhere betwween 92, 93 the idea of the Café must have been dead, and if not dead, very lifeless. The Mafia had taken over Maecenas' Basement. Everyone, who loved his own life or business, as well as his personal integrity would better leave quickly and better yesterday than tomorrow.
By '93 enough material had been accumulated to think of recording another album.
The Café's '93 line-up featured the familiar faces of Eleanor, Hans, Ingo, Peter and the mugs of fresh initiates Thomas 'Toff' Fuchs (dr), Norbert Engelbrecht (g) and Peter Schiefer (voc).
6 of the 22 tracks on *Big Deal* were Herford/Schleicher originals from the eighties, one was a McKinley/Engelbrecht co-operation and the rest showed Ingo's relentless determination to drive any A&R man up the wall of his office for suggesting, that once in a while a piece written in C-Major wouldn't be a bad idea at all. *Big Deal* mainly was avantgarde, with a capital 'A'.

1998 - 3001

Moon is dead. Lennon as well. Hendrix, Zappa too, seem to have left the building.
Schleicher's alive.
So is Herford.
It was in the summer of '97, that Jan got a phone-call from Ingo, asking if he wanted to re-sing one or two numbers from the mid-eighties, which Jan had failed to supply with a top vocal performance.
He agreed and soon they found themselves working on even older stuff, audio cassettes that is, containing live recordings in the possibly worst sound quality, except for a few tapes, which had been cut directly from the mixing desk. But, as often, Ingo's determination and devotion, the studio wizardry of a certain Dieter Libuda and, finally, some vocal over-dubs by Jan, placed here and there to enhance original mike signals proving to be too weak, worked wonders. So, after almost two years of painstaking work ('98+'99), they had the *Live Wires*(3 CD's) ready for release, featuring the Cafe's best available moments on stages between 1982 - 87.

© Exciting Café 2007