triumvirat

[terry michaels]

Message text written by KenÿMacBeth
>Another pretty interesting lot from Germany were
Triumvirat, I had a few of there albums when they
first appeared in the record shops! This ELP like
outfit coined the term Krautrock in the UK, they had
virtuouso keyboard playing (piano/moog/C3), This was
1973 and there first and best album was called
Illusions on a Double Dimple. Stay tuned for more
obscurities....<

I have a similar story to that of Mike Granger and his meeting Rick
Wakeman.

During the early '70s Keith Emerson was my idol, I spent countless hours at
the piano and organ learning various parts of the ELP albums.  I bought the
Illusions on a Double Dimple album mainly because it was a similar type of
music to that of ELP, it turned out to be a good album, and I learned to
play quite a lot of it also.  During this time I ran the service shop at
one of the largest music stores in Milwaukee, and it wasn't unusual to end
up working on equipment belonging to groups on tour when they came through
Milwaukee.

Triumvirat came to Milwaukee to play a show sometime in 1973.  They had
been here a few months earlier and performed a show, which I had gone to
see.  This time, I got a phone call from a stagehand at the hall they were
playing at, he said the keyboard  player was having a problem with his
Hammond C3, could I come down and take a look at it?  I grabbed some tools
and headed down to the hall, thinking I would be able to communicate with
the bass player at least, as he sang on the album (in English), and I
didn't know much German.  It turned out he was the only member of the group
who didn't speak English, the other two members spoke English and taught
all the lyrics to him phonetically, and the bass player sang them in
English without really knowing what they meant.

I met up with Jurgen Fritz, the keyboard player, he described the problem
with his Hammond, I was pretty sure right away what the cause was, we
walked out on stage and I took a look inside and I confimed the diagnosis. 
This was not too many minutes before they were to go on, people were
finding their seats etc, so there wasn't enough time to perform the repair
right then, so I told the keyboard technician for the group exactly what he
needed to do to fix the problem after the show, and left.

The next day, Jurgen called me at the music store I worked at, and he ended
up coming down to look at equipment in the store, and chat. It was a
Saturday afternoon, and he showed up shortly before the store closed, he
had some time to kill, so I suggested going over to the house where my band
rehearsed, and I had my equipment set up.  So we both went over there, he
played my home built synth, along with my C3, and electric piano.  I
clearly remember him playing riffs which ended up on their next album,
Spartacus. We spent several hours playing various other stuff, Jurgen was a
really nice guy, down to earth, no rock star trip attitude.

Terry Michaels