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...