Who better to feature on New Year's Eve than the ultimate, cool, party boy of the schlager realm, Bernhard Brink?
The smooth-voiced Northern German is far more relaxed and animated than most schlager performers.
He has been photographed with almost every major schlager girl on his arm -- and often with a drink in his hand. He dropped out of law school to pursue his real love -- music.
He is the closest that anyone in the schlager realm gets to Frank Sinatra cool.
Here is Bernhard Brink with a medley of his greatest hits as performed at Andy Borg's Musikantenstadl on New Year's Eve 2009:
If all middle aged women held up as well as Andrea Berg
men would stop chasing around younger chicks
We just unearthed two smashing new videos which really show German schlager superstar, Andrea Berg at her absolute best.
Performing on German TV just a few months ago, the red-haired, best-selling, Bavarian beauty has never looked more animated in performance or stunning in appearance.
Nor has the seasoned, ECHO-award winning former nurse ever sung more beautifully.
If all middle-aged women held up this wonderfully, far fewer men would be chasing around younger girls.
Here, Andrea Berg performs the featured cut from her platinum-selling 2010 Schwerelos (Weightless) release -- Schenk Mir Ein Stern (Give me a star):
Here in another recent televised 2011 appearance she performs Glaub nicht, dass sie dich liebt wie ich (Don't Think She Loves You Like I Do):
While on tour as a drummer with David Hassellhoff
and Johnny Logan -- Stanley was so good with the vocals
that these major stars told him to start singing on his own
One of the persistent questions in music is, "Are there any drummers who can sing?"
Well the answer is yes!
Of course there was Phil Collins of Genesis and the Beatle, Ringo Starr (well he sort of sung) and Karen Carpenter -- the silky voiced American and probably the only prominent pop girl who played the drums.
And in the Germanic pop/schlager realm the fact that drummers can sing is most prominently proven by the young Austrian musical up-and-comer, Stanley.
Stanley -- whose Christian name is Stefan Wrana -- is something of a musical prodigy from the Southern region of Austria -- Carinthia -- which borders Italy
At age 21, he has a musical resume that would be the envy of many much older musicians -- European and otherwise.
And of special interest to Americans and Brits -- this Austrian is an Americanophile, who has performed extensively in the USA and who speaks and writes excellent English.
Stanley is a drummer who has toured with such schlager and pop superstars as Switzerland's Francine Jordi, the international German-American star, David Hassellhoff, Johnny Logan and a number of lesser schlager luminaries.
He has performed extensively in Las Vegas, Nevada -- the entertainment capitol of the American Southwest as well as throughout Europe.
After being told by Hassellhoff and others that his voice was so good, he really should try to give it a go on his own -- he did -- and recorded his first single just this past fall, "Only You," a reprise of the Platters classic 1955 American hit.
His voice is every bit as resonant as that of Elvis himself and it is amazing to think that this song is being performed by an Austrian-born kid who is not a native English speaker.
Today, he spends much of his time promoting other singers and bands from Austria, Slovenia and the South Tyrol in Italy.
But he's begun to toot his own horn (or beat his own drum as the case may be)and has begun to move into his own as a formidable solo performer.
Here is Stanley's first single, released just last month "Only You" as performed on an ORF network Austrian variety show. The song is originally by the Platters -- listen to this with amazement at the fact that it is being sung by a performer who is not a native English language singer:
To give you a sense of how distinctive Stanley is in style from most Northern Germanic types and Austrians (who are generally as lacking in sponteneity as plywood boards) here he is in an amateur video from the Carinthian, South Austrian Familienfest last year:
This wildly talented and eminently flexible kid is going places -- just watch!!
Believe it or not, the editor of this site was only the 2nd person in the English speaking world to ever write about Germany's Helene Fischer -- second only to the New Yorker magazine. And he wrote glowingly about the stunningly gorgeous and talented Rhinelander who is now taking the schlager world by storm.
Now news comes from Austria that the dark-eyed, raven haired Austrian beauty has not only received widespread airplay in her native Austria but has hit #13 on the top 100 chart in Germany -- a considerably larger market -- with her soulful pop offering, "I wurd so gern" (I would so wish.)
The disturbing part of the development is that her handlers are now packaging her and polishing her up -- new hipper wardrobe and hairstyle -- and she is in danger of losing the bucolic Styrian charm that made her so very attractive as a folk singer (although no one can say that with her new style she doesn't look terrific.)
Sandra May's resonant, deeper octave voice, is hypnotic in quality and her lyrical style and delivery are reminiscent of American folk/rock sensations Carly Simon and Natalie Merchant.
We called it back in October -- this lovely and talented girl is clearly on the way up. Maybe we'll even see her playing to packed houses in the USA or UK someday -- if we're lucky.
Here is Sandra May singing I Wurd So Gern (I would so much):
Sabine Neumeister is one of the rare vocalists
in the schlager realm who writes her own songs
Andrea Berg, the German pop/schlager superstar just put out a new release entitled, "Abenteuer" -- (Adventure.)
It is too bad for the totally cool Alpine Austrian pop/schlager newcomer, Sabine Neumeister -- because she is the real new adventurer -- both musically and personally and she totally should have the exclusive personal copyrights to that term "Abenteuer.".
Americans would naturally love this chick.
She is tall, blond and hot. And she para sails -- for fun -- right over her native Alpine mountains -- how cool is that?
What American or British guy couldn't become instantly enamored of this adventurous Austrian beauty?
But what is more important -- she sings wonderfully -- and adventurously!!
The Styrian Austrian, a masseuse by profession, is not entirely schlager-- her music has touches of American country, Euro-pop -- and even American jazz!! And she actually employs a saxophone in some her tunes -- how cool!!
This girl is really nice -- quite talented -- and eminently beautiful.
Much more than that, she is one of the very few musicians in the schlager firmament to actually write and compose her own songs -- we've seldom seen that in the pop realm since the days of Simon and Garfunkel
She has a new CD just out this year and another coming out next year.
We really hope she becomes a big star -- and if there is any justice in the world, she will be!!
Here is the title cut off her new CD, Sterndl Schaun (Shooting Star)
Here is Sabine's very nice, more traditional piece, Musik auf Oesterreich(Music of Austria) -- you can actually see her parasailing over the Austrian Alps in this clip -- does this girl have charismatic star quality or what?
Four days earlier, The USA had been attacked by Hitler's Axis ally, the Empire of Japan, which bombed the US naval base at Pearl Harbor in the American territory (now a State) of Hawaii, killing 2,800 Americans.
Declaring war on the USA was, perhaps Hitler's biggest mistake ever.
The Anglophilic US President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, had been looking for a way of getting the US involved militarily in saving Great Britain from the Nazi onslaught.
But due to formidable pressures from the millions of German-American and Scandinavian-American voters in the Midwestern US (who did not want to send their sons to fight German boys) and the millions of city dwelling Irish-American voters (who had nothing but contempt for their long-time enemy, Great Britain) Roosevelt was unable to convince Congress to enter the European war.
But with his unilateral declaration of war on America on December 11, 1941, Hitler unwittingly solved Roosevelt's political problem.
After Hitler declared war on the American people, its elected representatives in the U.S. Congress reciprocated on December 12, 1941.
By 1944 American Workers Were Turning Out
9,000 Warplanes a Month -- More Than 300 a Day
In so doing, Hitler put the German people at odds with the greatest industrial power on the face of the earth.
Within a few short years, American workers would be turning out 300,000 combat aircraft -- (at one point 9,000 planes a month -- more than 300 a day) -- and 200,000 tanks and almost 1 million heavy artillery pieces.
20 million American men would leave civilian life and take up arms (including this writer's German-American father and uncles) and become one of the most potent fighting forces ever to take the field in world history.
Those civilian-soldiers fought two powers on two widely divergent fronts, ranging from Burma and China in the West all the way to Berlin and Prague in the East.
Hitler scoffed at Americans calling them "a bunch of undisciplined gangsters who would never fight."
But one Wehrmacht Lieutenant in Italy wrote in his memoirs after the war, "They told us the Americans would never fight. But when the Americans kept coming and coming up the hill at us -- wave upon wave -- I was never so scared in my life."
As Usual, The Americans
Went To War With Song
His sentiment was echoed by the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS men who looked out from their bunkers on Hitler's fortified "Atlantic Wall" on the morning of June 6, 1944, only to see the sea filled with thousands of American and British ships of all kinds and the skies filled with US warcraft in what was the greatest amphibious military invasion in world history.
38% of the United States Armed forces consisted of German-Americans, including the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in the Eastern Theater of Operations, General Dwight D. Eisenhower (later an American President) and a key combat General on MacArthur's Pacific command, General Robert Eichelberger.
In fact, Americans had a wartime joke that went: "The reason we won the war was because our Germans were better than their Germans."
And as usual, Americans went to war with music.
Here is the very famous Big Band hit of 1943, "The American Patrol," by the famed US trombonist and Big Band orchestral leader, Major Glenn Miller.
At age 38, Miller was too old to join the US Army, but he pulled political strings and obtained entry into the US Army Air Corps and was tragically killed when his plane went down over the English Channel when he was on his way to entertain US and British troops in France. "The American Patrol" was among his greatest ever compostions:
Here is the Andrews Sisters big US wartime hit, "The Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B":
"He was a famous trumpet man from 'round Chicago way.
He had a boogie style that no one else could play.
He was the top man in his craft.
But then his number came up and he was called to the draft.
He's in the Army now.
A blowin' reveille.
He's the boogie woogie bugle boy of company B."
