Fischer-Z

Last updated

Fischer-Z
Fischer-Z - Wacken Open Air 2018 03.jpg
Fischer-Z at Wacken Open Air 2018
Background information
Origin Sandhurst, England [1]
Genres Rock, new wave
Years active1976–1982, 1987-present
Members John Watts
Sinisa Banovic
Adrien Rodes
Marian Menge
David Purdye
Past membersSteve Skolnik
David Graham
Steve Liddle

Fischer-Z are a British rock group and main creative project of singer, guitarist and poet John Watts. In 1982 Watts temporarily dissolved Fischer-Z and started a solo career under his own name. John Watts has gone on to release both solo and Fischer-Z projects. The original line-up consisted of Watts (vocals, guitar), Steve Skolnik (keyboards), David Graham (bass) and Steve Liddle (drums).

Contents

The band's name is pronounced /fɪʃəˈzɛd/ ("fisher zed"), a pun on "fish's head" with the "h" dropped, as is usual in many British regional accents. The pun also relies on leaving the "r" unpronounced as in common British non-rhotic accents.

Fischer-Z found success across Europe and sold more than two million albums. Joint recordings were made with Peter Gabriel, Steve Cropper and Dexys Midnight Runners. Fischer-Z performed alongside James Brown in East Berlin and toured with The Police and Dire Straits. They also toured the US and Canada and were on the bill with Bob Marley on his last festival tour of Europe. John Watts has released 20 albums and played around 3,000 concerts so far.

History

While studying clinical psychology and working in psychiatric clinics, John Watts formed Fischer-Z with Stephen Skolnik in 1977. [2] The first performances took place in English punk clubs and the first Fischer-Z album, Word Salad , was released in 1979 on United Artists Records, in parallel with The Buzzcocks and The Stranglers. [3] The band broke through thanks to John Peel playing their first single ‘Remember Russia’ multiple times and championing the band. Thanks to this, Fischer-Z appeared on The Old Grey Whistle Test and following the European success of their second single "The Worker", they appeared on Top of the Pops in 1979. [4] With his second album, Going Deaf for a Living , Watts cemented Fischer-Z's ability to capture global political themes against the backdrop of ‘quirky’ pop music. [5] The hit single "So Long" was released in 1980. The following year, it found success on the newly founded TV channel MTV. 1981 also brought the release of Fischer-Z’s third and most commercially successful album Red Skies Over Paradise , which featured the singles, "Marliese" and "Berlin". [6] Due to the success of these albums, Fischer-Z played over 200 shows between 1980 and 1981 across the UK, Europe, the US and Canada. [7] Watts dissolved the original Fischer-Z line up in the summer of 1981, believing that the band had moved too far from their original punk ideals. [8]

Watts then started a solo career and released his first two solo albums, One More Twist (1982) and The Iceberg Model (1983). [9] These albums produced the politically charged single "One Voice" which he performed at the No Nukes Festival in 1982. [10] In 1984, Watts founded a band called The Cry and released the pop/dance album Quick Quick Slow, which was produced by Jimmy Douglass. In 1985, heavily influenced by the political events of the 1980s–especially Margaret Thatcher's dealings with UK unions–Watts released the song "Dark Crowds of Englishmen", which dealt with the miners’ strike of 1984/1985 and the disappearance of humanity politics in Britain.

In 1987, John Watts decided to re-establish Fischer-Z in a different form. In this line up, the band celebrated further success, with hit singles "The Perfect Day" (1988) and "Say No" (1989) from the albums Reveal (1988) and Fish's Head (1989). [8]

In 1991, the next Fischer-Z album Destination Paradise was recorded at Peter Gabriel's Real World Studios. The song "Further From Love" and the title song highlight the sufferings of the civilian population during wartime. [8] The next two Fischer Z albums, Kamikaze Shirt (1993) and Stream (1995), continued to combine a political perspective with songs based on Watts' observations and experiences in real life.

1997 and 1999 brought the release of two very different Watts albums: Thirteen Stories High and Bigbeatpoetry. In Thirteen Stories High, Watts looks back at the ups and downs of his life and music career, with emotive pop songs like the single "Brilliant Career". Whereas in Bigbeatpoetry Watts worked with a combination of poetic lyrics and musical beats, signing with Motor Records and working with the German DJ champion, Ingo Werner. [11]

This would produce the single "Walking The Doberman". Watts then release the Spiritual Headcase album in 2000, which was a remix of the Bigbeatpoetry album done by Peter Ely. Watts’ era of multimedia projects began with "Ether" in 2002. For this, he traveled throughout Europe and collected musical contributions of local musicians. Minimal equipment was used for the recordings: just a high-quality microphone and a laptop. The entire project was filmed and released as an album and as a DVD.

There was a 2004 reunion of the original band for one short show which featured on the Garden Party DVD which was released along with the Fischer-Z Highlights 1979-2004 25th anniversary compilation album.

In 2005, Watts released Real Life Is Good Enough, a 2-piece guitar and drums album recorded with Sam Walker. [12] After touring that album, Watts found strangers on his travels from 10 different European countries and wrote a song for each of them based on their life stories. Those 10 songs became the It Has To Be album which was released in 2007. The next album by Watts was Morethanmusic, which also contained poems and short stories. It contained the single "Head On", which was inspired by Watts' experience of watching a seven-year-old child streaming the live execution of Saddam Hussein on their phone. Watts shot a movie for each title, which was released as Morethanmusic & Film in the same year.

In 2011, Watts re-recorded 14 of the most famous Fischer-Z songs with his current band and released it as John Watts - Fischer-Z. In contrast to this release, Watts released an album of live solo recordings the following year called Realistic Man.

On 24 April 2014 John Watts Fischer-Z started a four-day tour of the Netherlands in De Vorstin in Hilversum, which continued into Germany.

In 2015, Watts decided to return with the Fischer-Z name and release the This is My Universe album, [13] which was an introspective look at his own life and the changing world around him. [14] It contained the track "Martha Thargill", in which Watts reassesses the miners' strike 30 years on. [15]

In 2017, Watts released his nineteenth original studio album Building Bridges, which was a statement on the challenges of today. [16] "Damascus Disco" was the lead single and challenged the same idea, encouraging the listeners to put aside their differences. [17] Swimming in Thunderstorms was released on 13 September 2019, preceded by the single "Big Wide World".

On 3 April 2020, Watts announced the release of the new EP Choose. Their latest album 'Til The Oceans Overflow' is released on 8 October 2021.

Discography

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<i>Word Salad</i> (album) 1979 studio album by Fischer-Z

Word Salad is a 1979 debut album by Fischer-Z. John Watts and Steve Skolnik formed the band in 1976 whilst at Brunel University. John Watts had been travelling up and down the country playing the club circuit. Fischer-Z was playing a crossover of the new wave, punk and reggae genres. In 1978, the band secured a record deal with United Artists, alongside the Buzzcocks, The Stranglers and Dr. Feelgood.

<i>Going Deaf for a Living</i> 1980 studio album by Fischer-Z

Going Deaf for a Living is a 1980 album by Fischer-Z. This was the second album by Fischer-Z featuring the "classic line-up". The guitar on this album was made more prominent, after their rather keyboard prominent debut. This album, as well the following Red Skies Over Paradise, are considered by fans as the best work to be produced by Fischer-Z. The album featured the singles "Room Service", "Crazy Girl", "Limbo" and the most popular "So Long", which hit #72 in the UK singles chart, #15 in Australia and #26 in the Netherlands.

<i>Red Skies over Paradise</i> 1981 studio album by Fischer-Z

Red Skies over Paradise is a 1981 album by Fischer-Z. This was the last album released under the classic line-up, despite the departure of keyboardist Steve Skolnik. This album featured many songs about politics and several references to the Cold War, the album title and cover in particular. The album received positive reviews from fans and encouraged band leader John Watts to pursue a solo career, thus ending Fischer-Z until its revival in 1987. Two of these songs were used in Deutschland 83. The sleeve stated: "This record owes a lot to Brighton."

<i>Reveal</i> (Fischer-Z album) 1987 studio album by Fischer-Z

Reveal is an album by the new wave rock band Fischer-Z. In the summer of 1981 John Watts split up with his group, Fischer-Z, on the grounds that his art could not evolve within the context of the band. Prompted by the encouragement of the well-received Fischer-Z album, Red Skies Over Paradise, Watts soon embarked on a solo career, releasing his first solo album, One More Twist (1982), followed quickly by his second, The Iceberg Model (1983). Watts toured extensively and even produced a mini-album for Zulu artist Busi Mhlongo. He released an album entitled Quick Quick Slow under the name The Cry in 1984.

<i>Ether</i> (Fischer-Z album) 2002 studio album by Fischer-Z

Ether was an experimental music project by John Watts, released under the name Fischer-Z. After releasing two successful solo albums and one album of remixes, since the last Fischer-Z album, Stream, John Watts had started to take an interest in creating big beat music. After creating a whole big beat style album in 1999 entitled Bigbeatpoetry, Watts carried on in a similar style for Ether. He recorded a number of songs, featuring only his guitar and voice, and then put them over cut-up beats as a rhythm track. Watts had also added a filmic touch to the project, he travelled throughout Europe and post-9/11 New York City to find musicians at random and record them using his laptop, in their homes and on the street. Sarah Vermeersch filmed & edited the process into a road movie. Ether was further released as a John Watts solo album, including the road movie DVD and a CD of tracks from the Ether album that appeared in the movie.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Watts (singer)</span> Musical artist

John Watts is a British musician and multimedia artist. He was born into a family of singers on 27 December 1954 in Frimley, Surrey. Watts began his career as a mental health worker having studied clinical psychology before finding success as a musician with his band Fischer-Z. He currently lives and works in Brighton, UK.

References

  1. ↑ "Fischer-Z - Munzinger Biographie". Munzinger-Archiv.
  2. ↑ Lucini, Gianni (20 August 2017). "La prima volta dei Fischer Z di John Watts". Dailygreen (in Italian).
  3. ↑ "AllMusic Review by Stephen Schnee". AllMusic.
  4. ↑ "Fischer-Z blikt terug in Paradiso". Maxazine (in Dutch). 20 January 2018.
  5. ↑ Larkin, Colin (1997). The Virgin Encyclopedia of Seventies Music . London: Virgin Books. pp.  155. ISBN   0-7535-0154-6.
  6. ↑ "BAP und Fischer Z rocken am Brombachsee". nordbayern.de (in German).
  7. ↑ Dallach, Christoph (13 May 2016). "John Watts und Fischer-Z: Big in Deutschland". Spiegel Online.
  8. 1 2 3 "Ikone des "New-Wave": Fischer-Z kommt nach Brilon". Wp.de (in German). 19 January 2018.
  9. ↑ "John Malcolm Watts". The European (in German). 10 October 2017. Archived from the original on 29 March 2019. Retrieved 11 March 2019.
  10. ↑ "Fischer – Z: brug naar een betere wereld, het kan! | Alternative". Written in Music (in Dutch).
  11. ↑ "Concertrecensie: Fischer-Z in Paard van Troje, Den Haag". Lust For Life Magazine (in Dutch). 11 May 2017.
  12. ↑ "- John Watts mit bittersüßen Klängen". General-Anzeiger Bonn (in German). 11 November 2005.
  13. ↑ "Dieses Comeback gleicht einer Beerdigung". laut.de (in German).
  14. ↑ "Gewinnen: neues Album von Fischer-Z – "This Is My Universe"". Rolling Stone (in German). 19 April 2016.
  15. ↑ Könau, Steffen (30 May 2015). "John Watts aka Fischer-Z: Gallebitteres zuckersüß". Mitteldeutsche Zeitung (in German).
  16. ↑ ""Building Bridges" von Fischer-Z". Echo Online (in German).
  17. ↑ "Fischer-Z: Building Bridges - Album Review". SOUNDS & BOOKS (in German). 28 March 2017.
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