Another Heino-rific Update!

The stats are down. I love stats, I gotta get the views back up....I don't even make money or anything from this dumb blog but I love numbers and I love stats.

This blog's views by country basically breakdown into this order:

1. USA
2. France
3. Germany
4. China
5. Canada
6. Russia
7. UK
8. India


So I gotta give 'em what they want. Those countries are the countries that tend to peruse my blog at times.

I write a lot of of baseball articles which probably explains why the Americans are number one in hits on this blog.

France? I have absolutely no idea why so many people in France read these articles. I don't know which articles interest them but something in this blog does, it seems. Maybe one day this month I'll write some nice french poems for France.

After I did a Chinese movie review I gotta lot hits from China...so I gave them what they wanted and did some more Chinese movie reviews by reviewing the heck out of all those Chinese Gamblin' Movies.

Germany? They like the Heino ones. I Haven't wrote anything about Heino in a long time...so let's reach out to Germany and do another hard-hittin' Heino article.

If you wanna read this blog's previous Hard Hittin' Heino articles please see:

1. The Secret of Re-Invention (as Exampled by Heino) (Oct/2011)
2. Is Heino's Final Form Finally Upon Us? (Jan/2013)

To sum up those two articles, we looked at Heino's ability to Heino-Volve at will and shift himself within the music paradigm and the second article chronicled what is likely to be Heino's final Heino-Volution...his transmogrification into Metal-Heino.

No, Metal-Heino isn't like a Mecha-Godzilla sorta robot version of Heino...the "Metal" in Metal-Heino refers to the musical genre...."Heavy Metal."


Why do I even Know about Heino?  

Before we get started, I bet a lot of Germans are wondering why I even know about Heino let alone why I write strange essays about him.

Heino became well know in North America for two reasons.

First, Late Show talk show host David Letterman mentioned Heino on a minimum of two separate occasions in the early nineties. The first time holding up a Liebe Mutter CD (one of the oddest looking records covers ever), and the second time showing a clip of Heino's great music...as seen here:

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NS5geZgcXAc)

The other party who introduced Heino to North American audiences was one of my favoritist bands ever, The Hanson Brothers, who back in 1996 released their smash-hit single "You Can't Hide the Heino" on their smash-hit record "Sudden Death" (the single was previously only released as a Europe-only promotional tune).

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hw0mJfgJtJA)

Hansons live in Berlin (Heino's Heimatland)

The confirmed story as to how this song came about is believed to be that Hanson's guitarist Tommy Hollistion was in a bar in Germany after a performance....and being a known-fan of awful music...had purchased many a Heino record prior to entering the establishment. The bar in question was quite a swanky place and he felt ashamed that he had so many Heino records on his person that he attempted the best he could to hide them (under his shirt, etc.) yet the records were simply too big to conceal. It proved to be a difficult endeavor to conceal Heino records to avoid embarrassment yet in the end the truth of the matter was...the simple inarguable ubiquitous truth that..."You Can't Hide the Heino."

Alright, so that's why I know about Heino...due to Dave Letterman and the Hanson Brothers.

Heino-Volution Complete

As most people know, Heino's current form is that of Metal-Heino, which is surprisingly a monstrous hit over in Germany.

The initial larva stage of Heino's Heavy Metal transformation was met with skepticism to put it lightly...and with good reason. Heino is a very odd fellow in more ways than one and I don't think anyone thought he would try and conquer the Metal scene at the tender age of 75. When he released his first cover album of harder songs he was met with terrible criticism by many of the bands he covered.

In the second of my Heino articles, I pondered why Die Toten Hosen hated Heino so much, and I came to the conclusion that they did so to form an offensive to keep Heino away from the hardcore scene...for they knew they could not compete with his record sales. I feel this is the same reason many bands covered by Heino on his hardcore CD had such vicious criticisms of him...they feared the chameleon of music known as the Heino was now officially entering the hardcore genre.

Heino never had a number 1 hit on the German charts, ever, yet at the age of 75...Heino's hardcore CD hit number 1 on the German charts and proceeded to go platinum. Yeah, his record sales blew everyone else out of the water the second he stepped into the hardcore scene. Wow.

What about all those haters who hated on him...where was the hate when his record sales blew them out of the water? Nowhere, he shut the haters up. The metal scene figured that if they can't beat Heino...then join him. Need proof? Look who took the stage at Germany's biggest Metal Festival last year...

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4X33xnSfC0)

 Heino.

It appears the larva stage of his Heino-Volution has completed and the time has come for Heino's Final Form to reach 100% of its true Music Power Level. Behold Heino's new promo photo...

Holy shit....he looks cool.

It only took him 75 years, but Heino finally looks pretty cool. He looks like Vigo the god damned Carpathian over here! What the fuck!?

Ok, Heino's not satisfied with just out-selling the other metal acts in Germany...he actually wants to become the King of Metal. He looks fucking bad ass, man.

According to a recent press release, Heino has a new Metal album coming out in December called "Black Enzian" which is supposedly way hardcorer than his last album. If this photo is any indication of how hardcore this fucking album is gonna be...then yo...this album is gonna be crazy.


Why Has Heino So Easily Conquered the Metal Scene?

How could a 75 year old man with chronic exophthalmos just walk into the metal scene and totally conquer it in less than a year? Maybe because metal kind of sucks these days.

I think it was Jello Biafra who said, "Metal has done what no gym teacher could ever accomplish...to get everyone to dress exactly the same." It's true too, metal is very uniform...the whole scene is very cookie-cutter. They all try to look the same, act the same, dance the same, and make the same song over and over and over and over. I personally cannot tell the difference between one metal band of this era to the next...I really can't...it's too cookie cutter, man.

It wouldn't hurt to fuse some other style with metal to try and get something new. I've seen rap/metal and other fusions but everyone expected that. I want real original shit...like real weird ass fusions.

Heino's not the first person to try and take his personal style and fuse it with Metal...here are some other less famous instances.

1. Pat Boone

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeKjmB2DaAs)

In 1997 Pat Boone put this garbage out. Oh boy. This album sucks ass.  Boone just takes the lyrics of harder songs and sings them in his style. It sucks balls...it really does. Don't buy this or even listen to it.


2. Richard Cheese

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qx_SEMdAlU)

This album, like Boone's, isn't really a fusion. The only thing taken from the hardcore songs are the lyrics and none of the musical components are used in the fusion. Cheese is better than Boone though...some of his numbers are pretty catchy.


3. Anton Maiden

Okay, here we go, now this is what I'm talkin' 'bout. Anton Maiden took Iron Maiden songs...converted them to 8-bit MIDI files, took out the lyrics, and put his more better lyrics over them.

Website with mp3s: http://antonmaiden.altervista.org/

I like this, I find him very original. Very unique fellow. In fact over the years when I have had the urge to listen to Iron Maiden songs...I often find myself loading up the Anton Maiden versions of them...almost as if I enjoy them more than the actual Iron Maiden versions. It's odd.

Like many Internet Celebrities of the late nineties...Anton had his share of suicide rumors. Most internet celebs did, I guess it's because it's so easy to make a suicide rumor and people seem to believe more readily that an Internet Celeb would be prone to suicide.

For example, there were countless suicide rumors about that guy who sang Aicha back in the day...but it turns out that Gellieman is not only alive and well but was not even Eastern European to fucking begin with (evidence).

There were countless rumors that Mikey, the kid who made a site to find his "future girlfriend" had done himself in. Again, all those suicide rumors were untrue...in fact Mikey is not only alive and well but is a now looking for his "future boyfriend."

With Anton though, it was a different story. When the suicide rumors started flying...unfortunately they were 100% true. Riddled with drug addiction Anton killed himself in 2003. That news floored me when it was confirmed back then...everyone loved Anton...it really seriously floored me when I read he killed himself. You were the best Anton.

Anton's unique take on Iron Maiden songs is in essence what the metal scene needs...originality!


It's Heino's Time to Shine

Metal World...take note, there's a new act on the scene...he's 75 years old and he aspires to be the King of Metal.

Hey, who says you can't teach an old dog some new tricks? That cliche has been torn to shreds by Heino in the last year.

I have a feeling his next album is gonna actually be fucking cool as fuck.


EDIT (December 10th, 2014):

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tY57TYnr9w)

Here's his smash hit music video single for his album and it's....something. Hahahahahah, this rules. The only thing I don't understand is why Heino has mounted a flare gun on his wrist watch to shoot old ladies in the face with. Metal-Heino rules.

Heino's Final Form...Is it Finally Upon Us?

Too much serious stuff of late. I'm gonna knock out a fluff piece now. I think I am gonna write another article about Heino.

A couple of Dutch-moons ago (which is around 15 months or so), I wrote a piece about Schlagermann Extradinaire...Heino.

Right Here: https://writingsonsubjects.blogspot.com/2011/10/the-secret-of-re-invention-as-exampled.html

In that article we looked at Heino's many transmogrifications and Heino-Volutions throughout the 20th and 21st century. In the conclusion, I pondered if Heino was going to stay retired for good or if he had one or two transformations left in him.

Recent news articles, tweets, and Facebook updates...lead me to believe that Heino may indeed be in his lair, focusing his music power, and attempting to reach his final form.

For instance, this article from German Heavy Metal news site "Metal Hammer" is reporting that Heino is attempting to fuse his Schlager style with Metal to create a hybrid musical genre known as "Schlager-Metal." The article goes on to say that Heino will cover Rammstein songs using his new Schlager-Metal technique.

You're probably familiar with Rammstein without even knowing it. You know when you're at a strip club and there's a chick who's trying to look all domineering and intense with her stage dance? Chances are she's doing that shtick to Du Hast by Rammstein...I'd say that's the case 95% of the time.

Anyway, Heino's official Facebook Page is claiming the same thing. It has even posted a picture of Heino's new logo and a picture of Heino preforming hardcore songs with an unknown band. The following three photos are from Heino's official Facebook so it's not a joke.

An artist's view of Heino's Final Form

Heino's official new biker gang banner.

Preforming in a small club in Bremen.

From the last picture, we know that this is not a stunt. Heino is starting from ground-up to reach his next musical echelon. He's preforming in small clubs to hone his skills before he reveals his true form and what his Schlager-Metal will sound like. He's honing, cultivating, and refining his musical technique.

What is Heino's current Music Power? In the last article I made a guess-timate but...honestly I don't know. We can't measure it properly because he's been out of the lime-light for so long.

Some music scientists are estimating him at higher levels than he was during his preivous Rap incarnation...but what are they even going on exactly? Do they know something we don't? Some witnesses claim seeing Heino engaging in heavy music-training in a remote Black Forest locale with Thomas Dolby and M.C. Pow-Wow-Wow. Could there be any truth to those rumors?

Personally, I think music and Heino have a strange relationship together. I don't think Heino chose to evolve at all this time. I actually think that Heino goes deep into hiding to get away from music...yet music keeps finding him. The forces of nature keep Music and Heino bound for life in an inter-change of action and reaction. No matter how hard Heino tries to flee from music...it keeps finding him and forces him to Heino-Volve again, again, and again.

For the above reason, I don't think Heino has been practicing as much as music scientists are claiming he has. I think he is resisting the flux in the genre change....yet he knows it is futile in the end and is finally letting it take hold.

With all that considered, is it possible that Schlager-Metal will be bad? This writer thinks so. I think there's a possibility that Heino's new musical transmogrification may result in a failure. Will Schlager-Metal be more of a mutant than an offspring? Will it be a music genre gone horribly awry, with seven arms and eight heads? It is possible.

In fact, in prior eras, hadrcore and more edgey acts used to openly poke fun at Heino's style. For example, here we see the punk rock-and-roll group "Toten Hosens" (Dead Pants), famous for their songs about pushing whales and welcoming Alex, dressing up as an army of Heinoes (not as a tribute but to make fun of Heino):

In this writer's opinion...it's possible they shunned Heino because they were scared that if one day Heino was to become a hardcore act himself...that they would be unable to compete with his record sales. Were the Dead Pants poking fun...or simply taking an offsenive stance to try and keep Heino away from the hardcore genre? An obvious question to pose now would be, why is Heino still famous...yet the Dead Pants are not? Could it be that some icons last the test of the times, while others simply fade away?

In the end, the only question one has left to ask at this point in the Heino-Volution cycle is....

....Are You Ready For the Heino?


EDIT (FEB 06/13)

After hearing the album. I am going to say with 100% honesty (no sarcasm, no nothing)...it's good. Four chunes in particular (5, 7, 10, 13) are good. I'm not even joking, it's actually really good. It's not "metal" by like any metal head's standards, it's just a little harder, but it works. I'm 100% serious.

He even re-tries rapping to some extent and he pulls that off too. After laughing at Heino for many years, I'm taken back, he just shut me up. It's like a new person.

The Secret of Re-Invention (as Exampled by Heino)

Synonyms of "Heino": Exophthalmos

The flows of history are interchanging and non-static. You cannot become stuck in your ways and become stuffy in the same style. The freshness runs through the veins of past, present, and future like a freight train of energy and it causes the past to collide with the future to create pockets of "freshness vacuums" wherein is written the histories of next year. One may argue that tradition will constantly fracture and re-fracture the future's bones and bind those bones in castes in order to resist change...yet this is certainly impossible. The freshness flows like a river, and will flow around rocks and debris that stand in its way unto a fresher tommorow.

To explain this let's take an example from Germany, their albino super star, the one and only Heino. The H-Man, has been around since the dawning of history and has adapted his style to the age like a freshness chameleon. The chronologic stylevolution of Heino is beautiful and awe inspiring, coupled in with the fact that nothing outputted from Germany's muscial scene ever makes any sense, the transgressing Heino Epochs are some of the most odd data out there.

The Beginning

It's Schlager time...

...and Heino said, let there be Schlager. What's Schlager? Schlager is a type of mutagen or cheese-based mayonnaise sauce that parts of Europe use in music to create original musical dishes. For example, the Schlager Sauce when added to this Rolling Stones song turns it into...this. Obviously it's a potent condiment, and it should be used in musical dishes sparingly.

Heino is what you'd get if...you took Frank Sinatra, filled a vat or a bathtub with the Schlager Sauce, submerged Sinatra into the mutagen and marinated him for 400 years.

Heino (circa 1968) was a wide-eyed albino alien who schlagged about drinking whiskey and chilling in Mexico and various South American countries...

His first form is his most iconic form. He likes to go on vacations, get drunk, and sing songs about that. However, this style died out in the late sixties, forcing Heino to channel his freshness and ascend to his second form.

Disco Inferno

The sixties saw Germany leaving their Martin Heideggerian and Nihilistic ways, and some Germans even started to smile and dance...almost...

Look at them go in that clip, my goodness, I think one of them even looked happy for a second. Way to go Germany! The spirit of the 60's was taking shape and it was ushering in a new era, the global era of disco!

Disco fever hit the world in one devastating fell swoop...and no one was spared, certainly not Germany. The Disco Inferno that took Germany by storm was led by Dschinghis Khan, who fused the loveableness of ancient dictators with funky Disco beats.

This video has close to 7 million hits now, and I don't wanna be a "one upper" or a filthy "hipster" but its one of those things that I have the right to say "I knew about this shit before you did!"

My sister went to Germany in the year 2000, and I asked her to bring me back a Heino and a Dschinghis. She thought they were some cutting edge punk rock group (that's what I was interested in back then) and apparently marched up to the hip german record store dude and asked for "Dschinghis Khan" upon which she was scorned and laughed at. She told me not to ask her to buy cheesy garbage for me on her travels again, but is something that has garnered 7 million internet hits really garbage in retrospect?

Anyways, back to Heino. Was Schlager being pushed out the door in favor of Disco? The Schlagermen were going extinct with Disco on the horizon and if someone wanted to remain on the pop scene, they would either have to adapt or be overcome and buried by a tidal wave of leisure suits and platform shoes. Heino chose to adapt and preformed the first of his many Heino-Volutions. He threw on a leisure suit, hired some lumberjacks, and lip synched his motherfucking ass off....

It wasn't a question if Heino could handle the Disco Inferno, it was more a question if the Inferno could handle the Heino. Disco came and went (thank goodness) but Heino survived and only became more powerful.

Nihilistik Electronik Supersonik 1980s

Uh oh you guys, here comes "New Wave". The end of the 1970s represented a new era of German music. If you thought that video of Germans dancing was odd, it's because it was. They were out of their element, and Germans wanted desperately to get back into their element. They needed for the emotion to be drained out of their music and they needed it bad. They needed nihilism and they needed right then. The most iconic band of the German "New Wave" movement was Kraftwerk as shown in their "song" below...

Oh boy, nice emotion guys...you really knocked that song out of the park. Personally, I prefer New Wave Satire to actual New Wave but each his own...you know?

The above video was made many years after New Wave but sums up the genre very well. It's a great song.

Okay, what about Heino? Is he dead by the 1980s? Of course not, he's unkillable and ultimately un-hideable in every aspect of human existence. You think Heino can't cope with this shit? You think he can't make his beats all unpredictable and get down with nonsense? Think again man...Heino loves nonsense. Hell, he'll trade in his guitar and throw a moog synthesizer into the mix, change the pacing of his Blue Flower song and get all elektronik all over the damn place. New Wave better take it's notebook out because Heino is about to get down with the new age sound...the hits...the whole hits...and nuthin' but the mud flappin' hits!

I love that the Schlager high-notes survived the second Heino-Volution. aaaaah-AAAAH-AAAAH-AH.

New Wave came and it went. It tried to get rid of him, but couldn't so New Wave decided if it couldn't beat Heino to join him. Heino has now fused himself with both Disco and New Wave, his documented Music Power in this era was measured at 170,000mp.

DJ Guillermo's Watered-Down 90s Club Mix

The arrival of the 1990's meant the term disc jockey stopped meaning "a person who changes the records at the radio station" and started meaning "a person who mixes records and calls themselves a musician." I could relate to the people who fought Disco and fought New Wave in their era, because this was the shit music of my era and it wasn't very good. I liked that one Barbie song by Aqua, and I wanted to bang those chicks from the Venga Boys, but other than that this was a regrettable shift in the music paradigm.

Many leading music historians of the timeframe wondered if Heino could withstand a third flux in the freshness. Some argued that music would move into a new area of freshness that Heino would be unable to find. They claimed that Heino wouldn't be able to get down with Techno, that he wouldn't be able to make music that could make the young women of the era grind on random men like total fucking sluts.

Whoever the "some" were who argued this couldn't have been further from the truth...do it Heino:

Heino technoed-out his Blue Flower song and found a hot woman to bust it up with (thank goodness he chose a hot one, unlike his brief yet unspeakable Nina Hagen duet phase). Antonia is a fox, and because of the autotune you can enjoy her aesthetically as opposed to aurally. 

He did it again, he survived the movement in styles. He adapted and re-invented for a third time. This man is unreal. He's now been singing about how blue that same flower is for almost 40 years!

Rap? (please, for the love of god...don't.)

Did he have it in him? Could he handle rap? This seems like a stretch by all means, and I don't think anyone on earth honestly believed that Heino could pull off a transformation of this magnitude. 

Sadly, the following video is the only youtube vid of the end-result of Heino's final musical transmogrification and it gets interupted in the middle by some guy making fun of it. Do you really have to make fun of Heino rapping? Can't you just let us enjoy it? Making fun of Heino rapping is ridiculous, it's so beatifully bad that it's wonderous. It's ages of stratification, it's layer upon layer of silliness...bred from Schlager, hand woven over aeons, and now finally achieving its crystallization...the epitome of Heino-Volution....and you're gonna ruin it by poking fun at it like you're the only one who thinks this is bad? He should've just laid back and enjoyed the fruitification of decades of labor and harvested with us the Heinotables that took years to grow. Anyways, here's Heino rapping...

I had the mp3 of this for many years, and knew there was visual footage somewhere on the net. One day I found it, and it was as great as I imagined it. The girls dressed like Sir-Mix-A-Lot's girls, the kid "dancing", it's as bad as can...and then that guy has to come on and think he's funny. Making fun of Heino rapping is like poking a dead body with a stick and then robbing its valuables.

Kudos to Heino on hundreds of years of keeping himself "real." You threaten to retire every year and seem to have a retirement tour every month...but I know you're not going anywhere and I can't wait to see what you become next.

(April 09/2012 edit:YES! A NEW LIVE VERSION IS ON YOUTUBE!!!!! OH IT'S SO BAAAAD. Gives me sa beat! Are you ready for Heino?)

They gave him the beat!

His name on the side of his Shades: Vain or Totally Cool? You be the judge...