40% Chanson, 20% R'n'R, 10% Punkrock, 3% DAF-Sequencer, 4% Jacques Dutronc-Rhythmique, 7% Brigitte Bardot and Serge Gainsbourg, 1,5% Cosmonaute, 10% really old synthesizers, 10% 8-bit Amiga-sampling, 10% transistor amplifier, 1% really expensive and advanced instruments.
—Brezel Göring
Stereo Total are the craziest goobers ever to mix disco-new-wave-punkrock-and-ROCK N ROLL; they also sing it in the most languages, play it with the fewest instruments, and look the sexiest doing it. They do the most booty-shaking cover of Salt 'N Pepa’s “Push It” possible in under a minute. They admit to weirder influences than most bands and are more fun than most things.
They are Françoise Cactus and Brezel Göring. Françoise was in The Lolitas and Brezel was in The Sigmund Freud Experience. They met in Berlin in 1992, started playing music in 1993, and released their first record in 1995. They live in Berlin and drink a lot of green tea.
At times the band has also included Angie Reed, Iznogood, Lesley Campbell and San Reimo.
I first saw them play in the student union at San Francisco State. The space was very literally a wide spot in the hallway where about six tiny tables squeezed around a miniscule stage. Luckily the band had almost no equipment: a snare and hi-hat, Brezel’s weird square guitar, Angie’s bass, a megaphone, a microphone, some tiny keyboards and a few mysterious boxes with twiddling knobs. But good God! They rocked. The audience (all 30 or so of us) were freaking out. As is their custom, at the end of the show they let the samplers take over playing “Wir tanzen im 4-eck” and invited the audience to disco boogie with them. Party anticonformiste! It was rad.
They’ve continued this practice of inviting the crowd onstage to dance with them, at least every time I’ve seen them, though no doubt they were tempted to stop after the Nov. 2002 show in Seattle, when some evil person stole their banner.
DISCOGRAPHY
Props to www.stereototal.de