RIPPER 45, one of 70s punk BEST !
updated as of sept 13th '04
GERHARD HELMUT from Austria was the bass player for SHADY LADY, an underground early 70s L.a. glam rock band in the mold of DOLLS/STONES, they recorded an EXCELLENT lp, but it was never released, the band broke up in early '73, a few yrs later when punk rose up he formed this band RIPPER, for reviews of this single see page 7 of the 70s invasion, ( after the WASPS review ) or u can see the review right now by entering this link into your browswer , then come back here -
https://www.angelfire.com/droid/pysch/7.html
reviews and info on SHADY LADY in our gateway 1 # 24, 2nd page in our gateway 2 close to the bottom, and see page 23 for a writeup he sent to us on his old band....
GERHARD on stage in the 70s
70s inv. mgmt. - PLEASE WHAT ARE THE DATES OF THE 2 RIPPER SONGS?
G.H. 'Mid 70s'
70s inv mgmt. - MID 70s ? U CAN'T TELL ME FOR SURE, LEMME ASK, DO U REMEMBER RELEASING THIS RIPPER SINGLE BEFORE OR AFTER THE RAMONES FIRST LP ? SOUNDS LIKE IT COULDA BEEN ' 77 OR ' 78 THOUGH...
G.H. Was right about the same time we recorded it. I know because I saw them do theyr 1st gig in Hollywood before an audience of 20 people at the Starwood.
70s inv. mgmt - DID RIPPER RECORD ANY MORE TUNES ? ANY UNRELEASED ONES ?
G.H. The single "Unter Der Faust" wound up on a Hollywood compilation record through BOMP and Decca London. There are lots and lots of Live recordings when we played the RockCorporation in N.Hollywood. The owner taped every show we did there and a release was planed. Then the club closed down and he disappeared. And so did the tapes. We did about half an album in a studio.I~m sure Bobby Paine (Bass for Ripper) still has those recordings somewhere.He is in Tennessee now. As a side note. Bobby and I wrote the title song for "Revenge Of The Nerds" in 1982 :)
70s inv. mgmt - ALSO WHERE WAS THE BAND BASED, L.A. OR IN AUSTRIA ?
G.H. - Ripper was a Hollywood band. I am sending you a picture that Stefan took.
and here are 3 pictures as u folks can see, and here is a story of how the band came to be sent in by the man himself
JJst gotten off the road with Enoch Smokey, (a band I toured with in the Midwest, performing my concept show “Soiled Angel”), I was strolling down the strip one day and stopped off at the Guitar Center . They had a new line of basses in. I picked one really good looking bass off the shelf and started to play it.. Wow, very kewl,Great tone and nicely balanced, I thought. Then I looked closer and to my surprise I was playing a Gibson model named “Ripper”. How strange. Gibson never named axes like this before.
Ripper. Great name for a band, I thought. But for a Gibson Bass?...........On I went making my way down Sunset and up to Hollywood Blvd. I had heard of a new club called “ The Masque” and I wanted to check it out. I found the place in the bowels of an old office building .This was as bare and as punk Hollywood was able to get. A black hole in SinCity. A vacuum eager to be filled by desperation and angst to miss out on the famed 15 Andy Warhol minutes. I loved it. I needed to play here. This was exciting.
The place was run by an English dude named Brendan Mullen. “ I wanna play here”, I told him. He said: “ All I got open tonight is the 9pm spot. If you want that, you can have it. ”Kewl” I said ”see u then”. Wow, I thought, never been that easy to book a gig before. I just remembered though, that I didn’t have a band. As I made my way up the stairs I heard Brendan yell after me:” Hey, what’s the name of your band?”................................... Oh shit , forgot about that too. All I could think off was” Ripper”.......................Yeah, that’s it “Ripper”
Outside the club, in the alley I saw some characters hanging out, shooting the breeze, so to speak. All looked like they had taken the solemn vow, to abstain from the 12 bar blues in E forever................It was 3 pm now. Better get my act together if I want to do a show by 9.00............I took a closer look at the small crowd, trying to guess if any of them where players.
Some puny Weasel leaning up against a wall looked like he could cut it.Me “You play guitar?”
PW “Yup”
Me “I got a gig booked for tonight. Wanna play?”
PW “ Sure”
Me” Still need a Bass and a drummer.”
PW “ I got a Bass player”
PW “ I think this guy plays drums” points at this Bozo looking dude , red, wiry hair sticking straight out from his head.
Me “ Hey, you play drums? Wanna play with us tonight?”
Bozo” Sure, When?”
Me:” We meet here at 8.30, work up a set and we open at 9.”
Bozo:” Kewl, I’ll be here.”
Its 8:30. The puny Weasel brought along his bass player. This one looked like
Chewbacca. Let’s see: One puny Weasel, one Bozo , Chewy and me........Don’t get better then that.
Up on stage we break into a set that consists largely of basic riffs, at “death to the universe” volume, fast and furious, me singing arbitrary lyrics on top of this divine cacophony, between yelling chord changes to the Puny Weasel, who in turn passes them on to Chewy that seems to get it just a few bars later. Meanwhile, Bozo is happily bashing the crap out of his drums. I see Sigmund Freud smiling down on us.
A Shady Lady lyric seems stuck in my head “ Gimmi whisky, gimmi a gun, don’t wanna know what I have done….............After 15 minutes we are out of material...................Shit. Ok, here is what we do. Start the set from the beginning. And here we go again……............15 minutes later: again.........Wow what a rush.
My Buddy Bobby Paine, a seasoned musician himself, is in the audience watching this and laughing his ass off. He had seen me do strange things through the years he had known me, but this took the cake. He came backstage laughing, yelling:” Man, you are tooooo much” Then” But you know, you got something there.”
“All you need is another Bass player and a better drummer.”..............“I’m hip” I said” that’s why you are going to play bass for me.”
“What? I don’t play Bass.”
“Well you play guitar. right? Bass is just like a guitar, except you only got 4 strings to worry about.”
“But I don’t have a Bass”
“You have one tomorrow. I found one this afternoon at the Guitar Center. We get it tomorrow. You gonna love it.”
So Chewy got replaced by Bobby Paine, Bozo was replaced by a bald headed drummer, The Puny Weasel was allowed to hammer his Rickenbacher guitar through his Bass amp, and Ripper was happening.
I decided to break up the band after the greatest gig we ever performed, at Mabuhy`s gardens, San Francisco, and released a single of 2 of the songs we used in the Ripper set.
This was not the Ripper sound, however, it made it onto KROQ, was released on Bomp Records and made it onto an international release through Decca/London on an compilation album that high lighted the Los Angeles Power-Pop scene, a term first coined by the Who, then later adapted by Greg Shaw of Bomp Records.
And that’s the way the cookie crumbled.
Gerhard Helmut
see more of GERHARD's comments about female fans of SHADY LADY, and ZOLAR - X on our ZOLAR X page atop our gateway 2 ....
alternate RIPPER sleeve credited to GERHARD
...............'those vampire bats are sucking on my soul, let the good times roll' !!!!!!!!!
( This tune is one of the best punk/goth tracks we ever heard )
Many are routinely arrested and beaten by the l.a.p.d. others are forced to sweep the streets to get a gr check,
still others are forced to live in shelters which are the worst places to sleep on the planet, THEIR NUMBERS GROW EVERYDAY , most of these people are completely normal, and have college degrees as well,
see this link for more info -
http://www.snorko.org/cyberwrite/eng103/students/jatikaw.html
( allthough musically different from RIPPER, RAZOR was a punk band who formed and released a STRONG single in '78, they featured JIM AVERY formerly of THIRD WORLD WAR, one comparison we are making is that both AVERY and HELMUT were from obscure and GREAT rock bands of the early 70s, who broke up due to being poorly managed and both ended up fronting punk bands a few yrs later
and each released one single only allthough RAZOR did record another a and b side which never was released, even both bands names starts with R and both sound punk........anyways u can see reviews of all 4 RAZOR songs and an unreleased one by JIM AVERY on our page of his and RAZOR accessible from the bottom of page 21, and also some new music is reviewed by him and TERRY STAMP's....) or simply see this link -
https://www.angelfire.com/ex/super0/Razar.html
going a little further we find that a glam band called SLASH had a single called 'Jack the Ripper', released in '74, to see a picture see the bottom of our gateway 2....
GERHARD HELMUT downloads, some new music of Gerhard's can be listened to here, u can get there directly thru our downloads 3 page....
http://www.ampcast.com/music/12959/artist.php
this one just in, GERHARD sent in the url for a site he made,for more on RIPPER, SHADY LADY, and more music in the career of GERHARD HELMUT see this great link -
http://gerhardhelmut.net/