Babylon - Tshigiten-Legende [1976 Hard Rock Heavy Metal GDR Germany ]

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Here’s one of the straight forward harder-rocking tracks in the set, with plenty of galloping metallic swagger. When Victor Heyse, Bernd Bangel and Dieter Wiesjahn left the Peter Holten Sextet (See v146) in 1975, they started their own band. With the aim of realizing their own musical ideas, the trio hired drummer Bernd Schwitzke and keyboarder Harald Wittkowski, who came from the group Joco Dev (v146). They called themselves Babylon and started as a new amateur band.

A year later there were two changes in the positions of drums and keyboard. Wolfgang "Paule" Fuchs from Joco Dev took the place of Schwitzke and Manfred Hennig from the New Generation took the place of Wittkowski. With this line-up, the first original songs were produced with "Gestern kamst du" and "Jeder Abend" at the radio station in the GDR.

Babylon then played two tours in the Soviet Union. The song "Tshigiten-Legende", composed by Dieter Wiesjahn and produced for the radio, became the band's first hit. Shortly thereafter, "Paule" Fuchs and Manfred Hennig left the band and started the group Pond. There they both met again with the keyboarder Harald Wittkowski, who had left Babylon two years before.

The band reformed in 1980 and after various changes in sound and lineup, reached a peak of success. They continued to play until 1989 when they disbanded for good. Dieter Wiesjahn, who played bass in the early years and later switched to guitar, was the only member of Babylon who was there from start to end. In 2009, the 1988 album "Dynamit" was released on CD for the first time. The Amiga record label gave the CD the title "The Greatest Hits" and added eight previously unreleased radio productions to the regular album tracks. See Babylon's full bio at https://www.deutsche-mugge.de/portraits/2734-babylon.html