Flake, the legendary keyboardist of the German band Rammstein, takes readers on a journey of what it is to be a touring musician. The excitement, the boredom, the moments that will be remembered and those that are forgotten. It's the Worlds Birthday Today is a strange and moody book about life on the road.
Content
It’s 4 pm. A man is sitting in a windowless room. He is not sure which city he is in right now, in Paris, Rome or Erkner? And he doesn’t know why he is sitting here. He doesn’t have enough muscles to be a sportsman, so he must be a musician waiting to go on stage. The band he plays in might be called Rammstein, but might not, because by tomorrow, there will be different musicians sitting here. The man thinks about his life and is amazed. Certain things have happened that some would describe as strange and beautiful, others as just loud. He has been making music with this band called Rammstein for twenty years. There really is enough to think about.
It’s the World’s Birthday Today
Hardcover Price € (D) 20,00 | € (A) 20,60
ISBN: 978-3-10-397263-4; 352 Pages
publishing house: S. FISCHER, publication date: 05.10.2017
Hardcover Price € (D) 20,00 | € (A) 20,60
ISBN: 978-3-10-397263-4; 352 Pages
publishing house: S. FISCHER, publication date: 05.10.2017
The Author
Flake was born in East Berlin in 1966. Amongst other things, he was keyboardist with the bands Feeling B and Magdalene Keibel Combo. He has been with Rammstein since 1994. His first novel Der Tastenficker was published in 2015. Flake lives in Berlin.The Press
FLAKE: JUST KEEP ON PEDALLING
Confessions from the Life of the Rammstein keyboard player: Christian Lorenz alias Flake has presented an existentially goofy gem of a book with his “It's the Worlds Birthday Today” („Heute hat die Welt Geburtstag“)
By Lars Weisbrod 27. September 2017
“Like I said, the things that look like a pushover are often the hardest of all. On the other hand, the things that look difficult are not easy, they’re also difficult.“ What beautiful sentences, what beautiful thoughts, straightaway one would like to write like that, one would immediately like to imitate the tone in which the musician Christian „Flake“ Lorenz has written his fabulous memoirs, “It's the Worlds Birthday Today”. But the sentences are not just beautiful, they’re also true, and that’s why it’s not at all easy to write the way he does.
But that’s not the only reason why “It's the Worlds Birthday Today” is a strange book, its content difficult to convey, even if formally it’s as stringently structured as a song by the world-famous German band, Rammstein, in which Flake is the keyboard player. It alternates between humorous passages, in which Flake looks back on the band’s early and middle years (when the record company wanted 46,000 marks from them, because on their first tour the ever-thirsty Rammstein members thought the minibar drinks in the hotels were free; or when they spent a night in prison in a US provincial town after a gig; or all the stuff the singer Till Lindemann stole from gas stations); as well as an extravagant conversation that Flake conducts with himself before, during and after a Rammstein concert in Budapest, one of those internationally notorious, for police and firemen troublingly crazy spectacles for which Rammstein are revered by millions of fans.
"I wrote this book on tour, in my downtime on the bus or at the concert. Any resemblance to actual persons or events is the result of my lack of imagination and is not intentional."
Flake
Rights
COUNTRY | PUBLISHER |
---|---|
Germany | Fischer Verlag |
U.S.A. | Rare Bird Books |
Russia | Eksmo |
Contact
STEPHANIE PLATOW
Mobil: +49 171 788 43 00
mail@platow.net
Germany