LUSTFAUST

Introduction Hello and welcome to the Lustfaust fan-club website, a place for those of us lucky enough to have been in the know about one of the great unsung bands of our time. My name is Kevin Ashworth and if you’ve found your way here the chances are you might be familiar with the Fanzine I ran on the band back in my student days, Falke Tranen. The excitement and urgency of those times, the buzz of Berlin and being able to get so close to and share so much time with the band make it one of the happiest times of my life. So when I finally succumbed to the pressure of my taunting colleagues to shake of my cobwebs and join the internet revolution, nostalgia led me to seek out my old friends and fellow fans. However, I was shocked and dismayed to discover that my search for Lustfaust yielded no results. Although they never managed to make it big and were sadly overlooked in their own time, to find no trace of them at all on the hotbed of obscure obsessions that is the internet still came as a surprise. And then I got to thinking about whether there were others like me, middle-aged punks looking for stuff kids young enough to know about websites would never have heard of. As former editor of the fanzine, it seems only fitting that I should be the one to right the wrong of Lustfaust’s falling into further obscurity. My intention for this site is to act as a beacon for those of us who remember. We used to have a pretty big following and it would be great to hear from anyone who remembers the band or the fanzine. If you’d like to get in touch, my address is below. Additionally, if anyone can offer any help to make a more involved and impressive website your help would be most appreciated.

(From left to right; Hans Berger, Matsushita “Bobby” Kazuki, Peter Kruger, Johnny Oracle, Guido Van Baelen) For those of you that don’t know or with failing memories, Lustfaust were an experimental rock band active from 1976-81. In that time they made 13 albums, all of which were self-produced and self-distributed. Comprised primarily of session musicians who worked for the same studio and primarily fronted by the antagonistically extrovert Peter Kruger, son of the studio owner, they formed initially through a mutual distaste for the mediocre and inoffensive music that it was for the most part their job to produce. Featuring a Japanese jazz drummer (Matsushita “Bobby” Kazuki,) a Belgian guitarist/multi-instrumentalist (Guido Van Baelen), a German bassist (Hans Berger) and the California born German/American Kruger, it was a curiously international mixture. Exceptional for both the quality, range and vision of their music and musicianship and their truly turbulent on stage antics, they played live frequently throughout Europe; in Germany supporting Randy Pie in ’77, then solo later that year, the UK in ’78 and 80 (with different line-ups) and Northern Europe in ’79. It wasn’t the smoothest of roads though. They could be equally loved or loathed depending upon the audience. They were sacked as support for Jethro Tull in 1980, due to a change in direction between the time they were booked and the time of the show and the subsequently conflicting tastes of the audience. They were booed off stage at least twice in the UK, although once was for the replacement of the injured Kazuki with a miked-up brick-filled cement mixer, which is I suppose understandable. This kind of disregard for convention was undoubtedly one of their greatest strengths though. The combination of Kruger taunting the audience while dressed in a series of increasingly ridiculous costume, the decadently narcotic habits of Kazuki and the potentially fiery Berger (who once started a fist-fight with an audience member before collapsing of an overdose) and on/off in-band animosity gave them a hugely exhilarating stage presence. Good or bad, you were always guaranteed fireworks. At their best they were divine. Their debut show at the Quasimodo, as well as many of their gigs at their spiritual home der Blau Auster Bar, are they stuff of legend for those of us lucky enough to have witnessed them. Much of the recorded material still stands up today and was decidedly ahead of it’s time. A precursor to the noise and industrial bands of the 80’s Blixa Bargeld has previously sited them as an early influential for Einsturzende Neubauten.

Kevin Ashworth,

1421 SE Orange Ave,

Portland, OR 97214