{"id":100,"date":"2009-11-18T09:13:16","date_gmt":"2009-11-18T14:13:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=100"},"modified":"2026-02-05T16:14:06","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T21:14:06","slug":"what-do-you-get-when-you-cross-the-yardbirds-with-german-prog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2009\/11\/18\/what-do-you-get-when-you-cross-the-yardbirds-with-german-prog\/","title":{"rendered":"What do you get when you cross the Yardbirds with German prog?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In or around 1980 I went into my friendly local record shop and purchased a new, shrink-wrapped 2LP set called Shapes of Things<\/em>. It was a compilation of Yardbirds <\/strong>radio broadcasts and whatnot, on the Canada-based Bomb label. One of those semi-legit releases, I think.<\/p>\n

I got home and played it, and it was fine. But where side 4 was supposed to have five songs, the banding clearly showed that there were only two. I played it, and it was this weird music, sung in sort-of English, with an unfamiliar accent. The music was a weird mix of folk and progressive rock. At that time — I was only sixteen, and the charts were ruled by Boston <\/strong>and KISS <\/strong>— I wasn’t familiar with progressive rock beyond Yes <\/strong>and a bit of Emerson, Lake and Palmer<\/strong>. I had certainly never heard anything like this<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I took the record back to the shop and explained it to the owner, who was pretty well-versed in music. We put the record on his turntable and played it. He had no idea who it was. A pressing error, of course, but no clue as to the identity of the artist. He offered to refund my money or let me get another copy of the record, but I decided I liked the music enough to keep it.<\/p>\n

Flash forward to around 2000 — some twenty years later. I recounted the story on one of the online discussion groups I frequented. I provided a sound clip, and to my delight, within hours a fellow list member identified the music: side 2 of Grobschnitt<\/strong>‘s Rockpommel’s Land<\/em>. Grobschnitt, I learned, was a prog\/psych rock group from Germany, and the lead singer (“Willi Wildschwein” or something like that) did indeed sometimes sing in some Teutonic-English pidgin. The by-now familiar prog tropes (loud\/quiet, fast\/slow, hard\/soft) are all in full display on the two songs. It’s a delightful bit of progressive whimsy, sort of a cross between British psychedelia and something like Gentle Giant<\/strong>. But with certain elements (even beyond the vocals) that somehow marked it (to that teenager in 1980, anyway) as foreign.<\/p>\n

The album in question — the group’s fifth long-player — had been released in 1977. How half of it ended up on side 4 of a Yardbirds comp is something of a minor mystery; having a record slipped erroneously into the wrong sleeve is one thing, but pressing one side of one album and the other of another, well, that’s pretty rare. As best I can tell, the tiny Bomb label never had any connection with Brain Records, Grobschnitt’s label. In fact I can’t even verify that Rockpommel’s Land<\/em> was ever pressed on vinyl in North America.<\/p>\n

I still have the vinyl. And I have still never, ever seen a vinyl copy of any <\/em>Grobschnitt LP here in the USA. I got a bit of a laugh when I finally saw the cover art for Rockpommel’s Land<\/em>: Roger Dean<\/strong>‘s lawyer is on line one.<\/p>\n

There’s a great clip of Grobschnitt (which translates as “rough cut,” by the way) performing “Anywhere”, one of the two songs on my LP, on Youtube. Embedding is disabled, but here’s a link<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Postscript<\/strong>: Grobschnitt has re-formed (with some new members, some old) and now tours Europe to great success. And on October 24 2009, in a place called H\u00fcckeswagen Germany,<\/span><\/span> the group performed Rockpommel’s Land<\/em> in its entirety onstage for the first time in 31 years. I vander <\/em>if there’s a bootleg of that ;-).<\/p>\n

Postscript 2026:<\/strong> And now, all these many years later, my third and latest book What’s the Big Idea: 30 Great Concept Albums<\/em><\/strong> devotes an entire chapter to Rockpommel’s Land.<\/em> Based on my in-depth interview with drummer and lyricist Eroc, it charts the early history of the band, the making of their ’77 LP and much more. Details here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Yardbirds<\/center><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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