The Formative Years – Karl-Heinz Stille
As a prepubescent on my quest for interesting new underground music, I was lucky enough to find someone who had been there from the very start, done that and was open enough to graciously let me pick his brain to push me in the right direction by not only gaining me access to the finer things of punk rock but contextualising my explorations with his benign guidance.
I vividly remember roughing up my voice by intently smoking the Thin White Duke’s favourites, i.e. Gitanes cigarettes, before our phone conversations to irritate my vocal chords in a feeble attempt to sound older and more seasoned than I was.
Karl-Heinz Stille was patient enough to answer my cold call and share knowledge in an open and honest fashion, without there ever being a concrete incentive for him.
The fact that he had a keen sense of humour, shared a Yellow Pages sized print out of his collection and suffered my requests to invest countless hours into curating and compiling mixtapes for me did not hurt either as it provided me with insights I would otherwise not have had access to.
It might have been the fact that we both shared a common background in terms of having grown up in rural regions where one had to actively look for exciting pastime activities beyond what was offered by the local small-minded club culture, paired with the experience of music becoming the gateway to alternative and intriguing concepts, which spawned a lifelong thirst to find a sonic equivalent to one’s longings.
I remember first picking up the phone because I had lapped up Kalle’s tape compilations, which he had released under the moniker “Vollsuff”, accompanied by his idiosyncratic drawings.
He also had a split 7” out with his band FOH and had just started to release his fantastic fanzine "Think!?!", a unique endeavour which deliberately broke with all conventions and stereotypes punk rock fanzines were confined by in a bid to challenge the status quo with humour and push the envelope in every direction.
In my youthful mind there was no doubt that this man was a renaissance man and interactions with him proved that I was not wrong. It turned out that he was not merely the epitome of the Do It Yourself credo, but was also smart, open minded and generous to a fault.
Kalle went on to found his own label, i.e. Crime Records, to unearth unreleased treasures, designed a myriad of artworks for records, took photographs and documented each show he went to, released two books and eventually went on to write for literally every slightly relevant punk rock publication in Germany (Plot, ZAP, Ox, etc.) as the unpretentious elder statesman of German punk rock royalty. Via his countless extracurricular activities, he continues to infuse punk rock culture with some of the more interesting unofficial releases, with the common denominator being a level of attention to detail that remains unrivalled.
While our interactions ebbed and flowed over the years, I never ceased to check in on Kalle’s emissions, which was never a not rewarding experience as he always effortlessly proved to be relevant, at times brutally honest, level headed and fuelled by an indelible passion and care for interesting music without being confined to musical styles or resorting to preaching in an elitist manner about his eclectic tastes.
