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Featured News
The Pretty Things announce their retirement
By Mark St John
As I write this, the snow is banked up across roads all over the country, the military are air-dropping supplies to rural areas and power is off across half the country. R -
Featured Articles
Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper Remembered 60 Years On
By Harvey Kubernik
February 3, 2019 is the 60th anniversary of tragic airplane crash that subsequently became known as “The Day the Music Died,” sadly referenced in Don McLean’s so -
The Phantom Brothers – Germany’s Wildest Beat Group
An Interview with Olgerd Wokock by Mike Stax, with Anja Dixson
(This article was originally published in UGLY THINGS #24)
The Phantom Brothers, 1965. L to R: Rudi Kruger, Horst Kruger, Olgerd Wokock, Wolfgang Wokock (Photo by Astrid Kirchherr)
In my personal Sixties rock’n’roll pantheon Germany’s Phantom Brothers occupy a special place near the very top of the heap. I actually became a fan of the group before I’d even heard a note of their music, my enthusiasm based entirely on a set of photos in the German pictorial book, The Beat Age. Surly and stone-faced, decked out in leather and stripes, and with a lead singer with hair down past his shoulders—in early 1965!—they exuded style and attitude. And the live shots, with that singer shaking maracas and tambourine together, and a guitar player windmilling his arm Townshend-style, suggested a sound that couldn’t be anything less than flat-out WILD, man.