Poor Max

This is a folk/rock ballad with a twist as the 'story' it tells comes straight out of a novel by German author Günter Grass', Local Anaesthetic (1969). 

 

Phillipp (Flip) Scherbaum, a 17-year old Berlin high school student, wants to do something, anything to protest what he has been reading in newspapers has been happening to the people of Vietnam. (Remember this is 1967!) He comes up with an idea:  he has a little Dachshund puppy called Max. Flip decides to burn Max right outside the most famous cafe in Berlin, Kempinski's (it is still there), to shock complacent Berliners into paying attention to what is happening in Vietnam. His history teacher, Eberhard (Hardy) Starusch, agrees to Flip's protest idea but draws the line firmly against killing an innocent animal. Hardy sets out to dissuade his student from carrying out this doggiecide. Instead, he resolves to steer Flip to less harmful ways of protesting. The effort drives Hardy to a lot of hard thinking and hard drinking and a lot of trips to the dentist!

 

Poor Max is a realisation of one of Hardy's suggestions to Flip: to write and perform a protest song outside Kempinski's - and elsewhere in Berlin, too. You will not be surprised to hear that head-strong Flip rejects this suggestion but I have taken up Hardy's idea and written my own protest song for Flip. The words and the music are my own: I have not borrowed either from anyone else (except for one little phrase which I discovered I had unconsciously borrowed from Robert Schumann)! Let me know if you recognise it. I will give you a free Cool Wind Music score as a reward. You can contact me at the email address found on all first pages of Cool Wind Music titles.