Music Reviews (Musik-Besprechungen)

• 304 pages
• Softcover
• With a preface by Norbert Abels
• and an epilogue by Ralf Zühlke
• as well as a glossary

978-3-86638-441-5

20.00 €           

A reader, an enjoyable journey through music, compiled by someone with two ears, his own poetry, and a broad sense of lyrical environments: From his observation post as an enthusiastic listener, Olaf Velte has broadcast the following texts from 2013 to the present day as reviews in one of Frankfurt’s daily newspapers to those with an ear for catchy tunes – now they are also to be made available to bookworms. As poetic notes, they have a much longer validity than just a day's news. Or as Corin Tucker and Peter Buck said/sang: »I'm brand new today«.

Ralf Zühlke notes in his afterword: Velte embraces »the sounds of a wide variety of genres without reservation. He writes down what he feels while listening, letting his thoughts flow freely and unchecked, so that they sometimes blend with everyday life« – and that is exactly how he brings us closer to the musicians. Or as he himself, the poet Olaf Velte, says:

Rhythm is language. Feel the sound, feel the energy. Before the mind kicks in, the body has already embarked on its journey. So first come the short passages, before horizons open up. Pieces built on very little: drums, bass, guitar, sometimes a singing voice. Sometimes much more. And here too—what was instilled in your ears as you woke up, as you grew up.

With the exception of big names such as Lucinda Williams, many of the bands discussed here are virtually unknown: Margo Price, Ghost Woman, Ryan Bingham, Pale Blue Eyes, Brent Cobb, Yard Act, Alice Randal, and Lizzie No are just a few of the names. But they are worth discovering. Velte often introduces them to us with heartwarming words, compiling background information throughout the nearly 100 reviews (of course it's true: »Music doesn't come out of nowhere«), which will change the way we listen.

HERE you can find the table of contents and an overview of the bands discussed. (HIER das Inhaltsverzeichnis)

Positive press reviews of our book launch as a hoodoo pop evening on the open-air stage in Friedrichsdorf can be found HERE and THERE.

Narration About The Merinos (Erzählung über die Merinos)

• 64 pages
• flap brochure
• With pictures
• plus a special edition
• 33 copies with glued-in color photograph
• and »Fädchen«, a tuft of wool
• from sheep shearing in the Taunus mountains,
• signed by the author, priced at 33 euros:
• available on request

978-3-86638-363-0

18.00 €           

Author and sheep farmer Olaf Velte has already featured his Merino sheep in a narration: »Neben mir einer, der sich Mörike nennt« (Next to me, someone who calls himself Mörike) accompanied Eduard Mörike across the Swabian Alb and to shepherds with their flocks – now Velte goes back to the roots: to those Merino sheep that arrived in Württemberg from Spain in 1786 after an adventurous journey (see Manfred Reinhardt) and revolutionized European sheep farming from there.

But one has no name. It follows like a shadow, ghost ink on fragile file sheets. Hundreds of pages, thousands of kilometers, miles, rods. A creature that lived, licking its paws, the blood from its fur. No trace remains on all the paths, water-soluble for two centuries. Others bear names, show [*] their identity papers, spell out their very essence. Name them, the men, name them by name.

Accompanied by their own imaginative * footnotes, Velte follows in the footsteps of the fine-wool Merinos, which were also settled in Hesse. And it doesn't stop at Hesse. For just as the »white sheep« have spread even overseas, Olaf Velte lets his narrative gaze wander, finding the cause of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holiday’s shootouts in Tombstone in crude attacks on the American sheep, calling on various dogs to bear witness to the gentleness, intelligence, and tenacity of the woolly animals, puts shepherds in the picture, and has Argonauts whisper about sheep farming.

The ram of Colchis is said to have been golden, to have spoken, flying. In its youth, it wears purple wool, giving its shorn fleece in pure black. Kings danced to it, masked, begging for rain. Simon, a well-traveled shepherd, tells of pheasants, horses, slaves, gold dust, and dazzling linen. They are said to have sewn their dead men into bull skins and hung them in the branches of weeping willows. Conjectures, sayings.

Velte’s narrative is partly based on Manfred Reinhardt’s superbly researched non-fiction book »Das Goldene Vlies« (The Golden Fleece) about the historic sheep trek that brought the first Merino sheep from Segovia to Württemberg in 1786. We have reissued this book in our publishing subsidiary, Frankfurt Academic Presse, in a cleverly revised edition by the author Reinhardt – together with Olaf Velte’s story, it’s a great double pack!

• 41 minutes
• 5 poets
• 40 poems

Hör-CD

This poetry listeners CD is enclosed with the poetry volumes that come out in my publishing house from spring 2019—an attempt to make the poets audible and to discover some more voices from each poetry volume.

The following authors can be heard: Wolfgang Haak, Judith Hennemann, Olaf Velte, Ewart Reder und Joachim Durrang.

(We would like to thank Hannes Druener and the Klangetage, Frankfurt am Main, for the careful recording of the poetry CD).

The excursion's second part: A family and farm story

• Swabian brochure
• 88 pages
• with numerous images

978-86638-930-4

16.00 €           

Scarcely Olaf Velte had happily survived his excursion to Christian Reuter's place of baptism, when he met the Reuter-descendant Wolfram Reuter - and conceived with him the plan for a family and farm story about the wild baroque-poet. And here it is!

A co-reading with Reuter's Box is absolutely recommended ...

An excursion

• Swabian brochure
• 80 pages with big cover

978-3-86638-916-8

16.00 €           

A linguist is travelling to the region of an almost forgotten nation of poets, he is onto a legendary chief of a travelog – and by taking a look into Olaf Velte's brilliant expedition-diary it is getting obvious quite swiftly that he contracted a nasty infection, that he catched a disease, which is still not exterminated after 400 years: he fabulates!

It got him between the Petersberg and the Saale, whether there is hope can be read at the end of his lines. In between young scientists and old luminaries are flaunting in all of their ambition, there are fierce clashes with the great and institutions of the literary scene, poets of position and authors with honors are summoned to get one thing straight: He who writes, remains – and be it falling by the wayside. – Just like that Christian Reuter, author of the Schelmuffsky, about whom and whose posthumous reputation as well as descendants is this book.

Could not one have said all of that more distinct and especially shorter? – Well, then read Olaf Velte's travelog in the years around 1700!

Stay curious!

A narrative

• 72 pages
• Swabian brochures with gate-folded covers

978-3-933974-45-7

16.00 €           

The Swabian countryside of the year 1829: Hardly 25-year-old Eduard Mörike is dreaming himself overland:

In 2002 Olaf Velte approached the poet Christian Dietrich Grabbe in his prose in the course of his 200^st birthday; he dealt similarly with Raabe. In this prose he lets a squad of nomadic shepherds, colleagues in Olaf Velte's own bread-and-butter job, break in Mörike's homelessness, which is at the end far more revolutinary than Mörike's former youthfully companions from the Tübinger Stift could have become ...

A prose for the 200th birthday of the poet and drunkard Christian Dietrich Grabbe

• 24 pages
• Series »16pages«

978-3-933974-25-9

9.00 €           

He was born on December 11, 1801 – so, recently it was his 200^st birthday to celebrate.

He died, not yet 35 years old, on September 12, 1836 – a short while ago it was his 165^st obit to bemoan.

There is talk of Christian Dietrich Grabbe.

The literary scholar, dramaturg and poet Olaf Velte gave a wayward narrative funeral oration, which lives up to Grabbe's individualism. A narrative, which is set in the head of the ingenious dramatist; which sticks with the ravings of the Detmold advocate Grabbe (pursuant to the rank of a military court council) and portrays his only a few months lasting stay in Frankfurt am Main.

Narration about Wilhelm Raabe

• 36 pages
• Series »16pages«

978-3-86638-001-1

9.00 €           

On the day of his wedding in 1862 Raabe leaves his northern German home with his wife and migrates to Stuttgart. Here starts Velte's narrative. Since »Chronik der Sperlingsgasse« Raabe is a famous and popular writer and now hopes to further progress in the then literary capital. Important acquaintances are emerging, one assembles in the artist association »Bergwerk«. While Raabe is writing obstinately on his narratives and novels and the first daughter comes into the world, the political mood is exacerbating. Prussia and Austria claim the hegemony for Germany, the debates are getting fiercer. With his acquaintance Jensen Raabe is siding with Bismarck – and is soon standing isolated in southern Germany ...

At all that Olaf Velte has the moment of aesthetic decision in mind, in which Raabe is shifting his basic narrative attitude from the one of a readily read entertainment-writer to a harsh version of realism and experimenting with time leaps and switching of perspectives. Leap along!

Poems

• 80 pages
• Series Label (Reihe ETIKETT)
• Sponsored by Possmann Kelterei

978-3-929232-38-7

11.00 €           

A volume with scenic poems, in which old apple varieties and pears are occuring as well as the landscape of the Hintertaunus, in which Olaf Velte lives and works.

Poems about Grabbe, Lenz, Büchner, Kleist and Reuter

• 40 pages
• Series »16pages«
• Hand-stitched

978-3-86638-171-1

9.00 €           

The present booklet with poems is standing in the immediate context of Olaf Velte's occupation with those authors, whom he also dedicated narratives to. In these poems he is approaching them in even tighter, further condensed situations of their life and work.

Etchings / Poems

• 28 pages
• Hand-stitched
• Special edition with original etching
• 140 euros

978-3-933974-79-2

10.00 €           

The collaboration of the painter and illustrator Vroni Schwegler and the poet Olaf Velte also exists as special edition, which contains an original etching of the artist and is signed by both of them.