STEREO TOTAL "MIAU MIAU" (1996)

Miau miau wilde Katze mit grünen Schlitzaugen
Miau miau wilde Katze steht ganz nass im Regen
Ich lasse dich vor der Tür miauen und jaulen und fauchen
Ich sah dich auf allen Dächern der Stadt dich rumwälzen

Miau miau wilde Katze komm bitte nicht nach Haus'
Weil du nach wilder Strapaze nur etwas Milch brauchst

Miau miau wilde Katze zeigt ihre weiße Tatze
In dem Schlitz meiner Tür nach wilder Strapaze
Wenn dir nichts Schöneres einfällt und wenn dich der Hunger quält
Wenn das Wetter dir missfällt miaust du vor meiner Tür

Miau miau wilde Katze komm bitte nicht nach Haus'
Weil du nach wilder Strapaze nur etwas Milch brauchst

Miau miau wilde Katze verbringt die ganze Nacht
Auf einem fremden Dach und kommt am nächsten Morgten
Zu mir ihre Milch holen

Miau miau wilde Katze komm bitte nicht nach Haus'
Weil du nach wilder Strapaze nur etwas Milch brauchst

Miau miau wilde Katze der Sturm und der Regen
Sind meine Wut, meine Tränen um dich böse Katze
Miau miau nur wenn es regnet wenn sich böses ereignet
Wenn ein Feind dir begegnet miaust du vor meiner Tür

Miau miau wilde Katze komm bitte nicht nach Haus'
Weil du nach wilder Strapaze nur etwas Milch brauchst

[From the lyrics of "Miau Miau"]



During winter 1992-93, Françoise Cactus and Brezel Göring were living in the same neighborhood in Berlin and the legend has it that they casually met while shopping in a bakery in Adalbertstraße.

Françoise was about to close her experience with the French girl-garage-punk-R’n'R-Band Lolitas (...they released six albums in Germany and France and toured all over Europe and America, for more information about them have a look here...) and Brezel was keeping himself busy with an Experimental-noise-copyright-ignoring-tapeloop-soundeffects project called Sigmund Freud Experience (...he released three vinyl records under this guise, 100 copies each...).

In 1993 they started playing together. Their first recording was a ten minute cooking-recipe, in which all ingredients had sexual connotations. The recording is sadly lost... In 1994 they started rehearsaling and recording in Hamburg at the Alien Sound Studio of Peter Stein, and began to perform concerts in small venues in Berlin and Germany.

In those early days, the band logo consisted of two tits that were originally painted on a mix-tape Françoise made for Brezel entitled "Stereo Total", and I easily guess this is how the band's name was born... The logo was later shown on the backside of their first album "Oh Ah"; here you can have a look at the inlay-card of the CD version.

At this time the line-up included Françoise (vocals and drums), Brezel (vocals, guitar, organ and synthesizers) and Lesley Campell from Scotland (distorted guitar). With their unusual mix of music influences and languages, it wasn't easy then to find a label... The band used to play French Chanson, Disco, Rockabilly and Garage in a very minimal, simplified, essential way, often with self-built guitars and cheap electronics; lyrics were both written in French and German.



At last, in 1995 Desert Records released their first 7" EP entitled "Allo... J'ecoute...", available here on Stereo Candies. This single is strongly linked to Lolitas, in fact the track "Je suis venu te dire que je m'en vais" was recorded in New Orleans by Alex Chilton - who had produced the group's "Fusée d'amour" back in 1989 - and "Avec ma valise" was originally included on "Séries Américaines" in 1987.

During the same year, Palestinian bassist Ghazi Barakat, a.k.a. Iznogood - ex member of the Hardcore / Experimental combo Burst Appendix - joined in and for some time the band became a quartet.

In January 1996, Stereo Total finally released their first album entitled "Oh Ah", which included tracks recorded during 1994 and 1995 at the aforementioned Alien Sound Studio in Hamburg, and a lot of 4-track home recordings.

The CD version of the album was published in Germany by Peace 95, while the vinyl edition came in the form of a 2.000 copies limited edition LP on Little Teddy Recordings; these were divided into four different colours, with respectively 500 copies in black, translucent red, translucent blue and clear translucent.

The album spawned two singles which, once again, were divided equally betweeen the labels: Little Teddy Recordings released "Dactylo Rock" in the form of a CD single that included remixes by - among others - Chrislo Haas, A Certain Frank, Alec Empire and Le Hammond Inferno, while Peace 95 took care about the release of the "Miau Miau" 7" EP, which is the subject of this post.

   

"Mia Miau" comes with a cheap black and white postcard...

Here's the track list for this release:

01. Miau Miau (2:01)
02. Tu m'as voulue (2:11)
03. Aua (2:06)
04. À la sortie du lycée (2:01)

All tracks were remastered in May 2015 and are available in FLAC lossless format or high-quality 320 Kbps MP3 files; both formats include scans of the complete original artwork.

Please have a look at the comments for the download links.



"Miau Miau" was released in Germany by Little Teddy Recordings sometimes in early 1996 with catalogue number "LiTe2-UP". The EP was available in a standard black vinyl edition and in a 200 copies limited edition on clear vinyl. My copy looks almost white in the scans presented on this page, but I swear that the vinyl is clear, my friends!

Side A opens with the title-track "Miau Miau", a song which - as Françoise Cactus puts it - "...is about a cat, a stray cat, wild cat, who comes home too late next morning and gets problems with his girlfriend, female cat..." or as someone else explains in a comment I found somewhere on YouTube again - "It's a story about a man and a woman who live in an open relationship and she sings about how the guy only comes home to get food and maybe sex... and she doesn't want that ;D"...

Based on a Rockabilly groove, "Tu m'as voulue" - or "Tu mas volu" as printed on the center label - offers an infectious riff and French lyrics about what seems to be the disillusion and grudge that often emerge after the end of a love story: "...Tu m'as vue, tu m'as voulue, tu m'as prise, mais tu ne m'as pas comprise...". Françoise's voice is compressed, distorted and effected with other delay treatments.

"Aua", an interjection which can be translated in English as "Ouch", seems to be a female/male call and response about a master/slave intercourse, as detailed in the description of this clip... Anyway, nice little guitar solo in here, and cool electronic bits too!

The EP ends with "À la sortie du lycée", or "Sortie de Lycée" as on the center label, another winner which in 2002 was released on the old Stereo Total website as part of the "Trésors Caché" online rarities compilation, with the following description: "This is a song about a home for pensioners, that is built next to a school. The girl in the song gets molested by old daddies."... Amazing, isn't it? This is just one of the one thousand nine hundred and sixty-three reasons why I love Stereo Total!!!



Here's the complete credits and personnel list as translated from the back sleeve of the EP:

Lesley Campbell: guitar
Iznogood: bass, vocals
Brezel Göring: music, synthesizers, organ, guitar
Françoise Cactus: lyrics, vocals, drums

Go Go Girls: Ogar, Beth Love, Lesley, Siggi

Recorded in 1996 by Peter Stein, Gerd Bluhm, Brezel Göring.

Artwork by Sabina Maria Van Der Linden.

Postcard picture by Holger Flosz.

Stereo Total 1996: Iznogood, Brezel Göring, Lesley Campbell and Françoise Cactus, picture by Holger Flosz

The following clips offers a preview of the remastered single, enjoy "Aua" and "À la sortie du lycée"!





As a bonus, enjoy the original videoclip for "Miau Miau"...



...and a 2012 live performance of the same song with introduction by Françoise Cactus, enjoy!





More information about Stereo Total is available here:

http://stereototal.de

http://stereototal.stereototal.de

http://monokini.free.fr/index.html

http://www.discogs.com/artist/Stereo+Total

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereo_Total

http://www.facebook.com/StereoTotal

http://www.myspace.com/stereototal

http://soundcloud.com/stereototal

If you have any other useful information about Stereo Total - especially corrections and improvements to this post - or if you spot any dead links, please get in touch with me at stereocandies [at] hotmail [dot] com or leave a comment in the box below, thank you!