"The Sound Of Geri Reig"

When Greg Oropeza and Sharon Nicol coined the term “Geri Reig” in the hot summer of 1979 they thought of a music so totally home-made with the simplest tools you could find in any kitchen and toy instruments from your still operational children’s room, performed by uneducated youngsters in virgin innocence, that the result would not only be completely novelty for its lack of musical professionalism, but also expose the unruliness of youth in its pure natura state. Living in the south-bay-area culture wastelands commonly referred to as “the pit”, where kids had no place to meet except on the streets, in burger joints or their homes, a small group of teenage drop-outs were experimenting with sex, drugs and rock’n’roll. While the rest of the world still disagreed wether punk had already kicked the bucket, they listened to the Venture and hit on cooking pots with wooden spoons and banged on pre-musical plastic guitars.
One evening in San Francisco’s “Mabuhay Gardens” one of them spotted a guy with an alien looking “Residents”-button on his jacket. Because the Californian mystery band was still generally treated as an insider tip, Sharon could see the sticker wasn’t made domestically.
It turned out a first-time-visitor to America from Germany had brought it from London. Tha visitor happened to be Moritz R out of Düsseldorf, who had been fooling around with the idea of becoming a musician himself for a while, not being able to play even those three chords on the electric guitar that would have made him a fully valid punk. Soon they found out, they had more in common.
Next day Moritz boarded an old choo choo train in San Francisco (there was no BART yet) and got off at high noon somewhere in the hot and dusty nowhere of San José. Greg, Sharon, Moritz and occasionally Cindy spent two kinky mind-boggeling weeks together, ultimately finding themselves sitting on giant concrete bank reinforcement tetrapods of the docks of Santa Cruz, high on acid, eating a pineapple together and being surrounded by a surreal scene of nightly biker gatherings. A decision was made and a promise was given. “Geri Reig” (onomatopoetically derived from the verb “to jerry-reig”) shall be made real, whatever it would take. Back in Düsseldorf Moritz took the message of Geri Reig to his homey Frank Fenstermacher who was an eminent dillettant and amateur artist himself. Together they plundered the feature of their toy pianos and Italian vintage synthesizers, and banned the brash sounding results on two-channel reel tape. Later joined by Kurt “Pyrolator” Dahlke, who brought a Korg MS 20 synth into the family, they branded their own type of post punk music. “Geri Reig” became the title of the first album of Der Plan, published soon after that summer of 79. Meanwhile, in San Jose, Greg, Sharon, Cindy and their friend Pete, who encouraged them not to let lack of musical talent get in the way of creating cool sounds, continued to make Geri Reig noises, so crude that few recordings survived.
On this album you find the original music of those irreproducible days, played on this and the other side of the Atlantic. Completely unproduced and left in its raw beauty, the music takes you back to a time and state-of-mind that still fascinates people to this very day and age Somewhere between the classic era of Rock’n’Roll and the new times of computerized music we hear a solitary and unique sound, we would like to call “Geri Reig” - The Sound Of Geri Reig.

1. jerry-rig

To fix or put together using non-standard or improvised materials. A derivation of jury-rig, from the nautical term jury mast. This term refers to a temporary mast raised when the normal mast has been lost due to storm or battle. This is probably a short form of injury mast.
Not to be confused with Jerry-built, which refers to an original construction of poor quality.

2. jerry-rig

To fix an object (usually mechanical) to a working condition in a haphazard way. Also known as doing a MacGyver on it. This can apply to any non working thing, to fix it in a nonconventional way. This term was created during WW2, in reference to the Germans who were referred to as "Jerries" as slang. Allies often came across hastily repaired objects left by the Germans hence the term Jerry-Rig came to be.