I guess every musician remembers the first band he or she was playing in as being something special. My first band was called Widerstand which is the German term for resistance. The lineup consisted of Rene (guitar), Ferdinand (vocals), Johannes (drums), and me playing bass. We met in high school and it only lasted for two years from 1993 to 1995. At that time we were all just getting started with learning our instruments. I took bass guitar lessons at a local studio owner after watching Duff McKagan on MTV. The music can probably be best described as mix of Grunge, Metal, and German Rock. We've been influenced by bands like Nirvana, Böhse Onkelz, Kyuss, Sepultura, Guns'n'Roses, and AC/DC.

We only played live a couple of times, at school festivals and at my birthday party. On June 5 1995 we played support for A Subtle Plague, a band from San Francisco when they stopped by in Austria on their "No Reprise" tour. What was meant to be an open air show ended up in a former movie theater nearby the high school due to bad weather. The show was taped on VHS and as this year marks the 25h anniversary I've digitized the video. The quality is bad compared to today's standards. The audio was edited in Studio One. It's the original recording picked up by the camera mic but that's okay as our instruments were out of tune anyway.

After watching the footage for the first time in more than 20 years I was surprised how ambitious and well though out the setlist was. I completely forgot about our song "Scheißkerl" (Shithead) which could have become a hit eventually. You can pretty much tell which song was influenced by which band. I wrote most of the lyrics and frankly they are not literarily valuable by any means but that's okay, too.

I also digitized several audio tapes from band rehearsals. It turned out to be mostly guitar and bass with either drums or vocals but not both. It's been a struggle to get everyone together for rehearsal back then.

It's good to have had that phase in my life with playing in bands even though it's been short as I decided for myself early on that I'm a better engineer than musician.