Originally released as a cassette tape on May 4th, 1997.
www.discogs.com/release/12721400

With a bit of background knowledge, the origin of the Top Banana Trio can be decoded from some text on the inlay of the cassette: “We are Henry D., Earl Richard and Almighty Conscious Kersche, and can be heard on this tape. Lyrics and music are by the Earl, produced is this by Jo Ment, we are grateful to Julia Sorgenbrecher, DJ Premier, Roste, Chuck D., Herb Alpert, the boys from Horst and our two parents!”

Henrik Lafrenz, Richard von der Schulenburg and Annette Kerschbaum had met while members of an organization committee for a charity concert in Hamburg. The proceeds were to be given to the Hamburger Tafel, an organization which distributed leftover food to homeless people. The mysterious Roste was, among other things, the person in contact with this organization.

Jo Ment was my pseudonym as “producer”. Today the meaning of the producer in hip hop and R&B gets discussed in the Arts section of the paper on a weekly basis, but we of course already knew its importance back then.

Julia was an acquaintance who sometimes poured drinks at the Sorgenbrecher, our favourite bar on a street called Hamburger Berg, in Hamburg’s St. Pauli district. Besides providing us with Becks from the bottle, the Sorgenbrecher proved to be ideal terrain for Annette and me to try our DJ chops in front of an audience.

Which brings us to DJ Premier. Hip hop was a big topic for us in those days, but we didn’t know the first thing about making beats. Luckily, there were records with instrumental versions, and what were they good for, if not adding something new on top? Wasn’t that the whole point of DJ culture? And so it came to pass that DJ Premier, back then one half of Gang Starr, produced some of our beats (without being asked).

Chuck D. from Public Enemy was another hip hop hero. Why he got a credit here is not quite traceable. Probably just because of his very high consciousness, both generally and especially.

Herb Alpert was Annette’s main inspiration for her unmistakable style on the trumpet.

The “boys from Horst” are Der Tobi & Das Bo, hip hop heroes as well, but local ones. If I’m not mistaken, they played at the mentioned fundraiser, which of course made us mega-proud.

The Top Banana Trio itself also played shows in this line-up. Two or three, maybe? I vaguely remember a gig at the club house of the FC St. Pauli, organized by the music and exercise room fanzine Bunker. “Two meters below the underground” was a fitting headline in Szene Hamburg about some of our activities.

The time of the Top Banana Trio in its original line-up was over soon, but the seeds were sown. Richard and his new sidekick Raphael became a kind of Top Banana Duo, though still called “Trio”. Then Richard became simply Top Banana Richard. A remix of Diese Augen surfaced on Jungs & Mädels on a Dub Tip, re-release number one. Richard and I continued to play together in Soup De Nüll, see re-release number two. Some Soup De Nüll songs had an afterlife at live shows of later projects of Richard’s. But nobody ever played Kleinstadtgarten again. I wonder if we played it at the St. Pauli club house?