Hello Michael, I'm delighted that you're here today. I'm pleased too. I'll say very briefly who you are. You're a member of the band, also the pronunciation, we say completely unclear, Fax or F-I-X? No, Fax. Fax is a band from Kiel that was active there in the 80s, but in the last five or six years they turned one of their songs into an Ultra Hitter without knowing it. Because you were the originators of the song, which is apparently called “Subways of your mind”. But we all thought it was just the most mysterious song on the internet. How have the last few days been for you? It's just been incredible. Especially how the whole thing unraveled. This one Reddit user, Margin, contacted me and said he was researching old bands that took part in Höhe fest back then and asked if I could send him some old demo tapes. And I had actually tidied up my studio shortly beforehand and thrown away some old stuff, but luckily I had kept these old demo tapes as a memento. So I thought, oh, he's coming, he has a certain value. Then I digitized them and sent them to him. And then he sent them back to me and asked if I didn't realize that this song “Subways of your mind”, which was on one of these demo tapes, was the most mysterious song on the Internet. And I was blown away. So you obviously didn't notice anything about this search all those years? Not at all, because the title wasn't known. Here you're just most mysterious or check it in, check it out or blind the wind. And we didn't notice that at all. And you have to say, the Reddit moderators are really meticulous when it comes to researching how they found out back then. It was a 10 kilo heart signal on the NDR tape, so it must have come from NDR. And then of course I found out about it on Saturday, which was last Saturday. I hadn't yet realized the implications. But when I saw the Rolling Storn articles, the Wikipedia entries, all the websites about it, even in the USA, what kind of hyperbole it was, it was simply overwhelming. Above all, you can assume that. So I want to reveal myself briefly, that over the last few years, not a day has gone by that I haven't been involved with this Rabbit Hole and followed it all, and I've actually gotten on everyone's nerves with these things that have something to do with music because of my own personal connections. I talked to DJs who played in new wave clubs in the 80s and 90s, to musicians. So I talked to all kinds of people in all that time and showed them this song, my parents, who were in this bubble themselves and who were also in this bubble.


And the answer was always the same. It sounds like so much from that time, but I don't know that song. That was always everyone's answer. And the back story is so fascinating, because in 1984 someone apparently recorded a mix tape in which songs from various radio programs were collected. And this mix tape ended up with this person's sister, who then 15, 20 years later decided to catalog these songs and say which song was on which tape and realized that she was stuck with one song. And then she turned to the Internet for help. And then what you said happened, that's when these forensic analyses came about. People have said that they are now doing this kilohertz frequency monitoring, looking at the spectrum, and have found that there are different interference noises depending on which radio program it is from, which brings us to this 10 kilohertz signal that you just mentioned. Do you have the feeling that you can already keep track of this whole search over the last few years yourself? Do you already have a feeling for what has happened or is it just about Hottich? It's overblown, but of course, just looking at the major side, you get a certain feeling for it. The interesting thing is that we dug up a live recording of a concert at the Roxy in Paderborn.
We played the song there too. And I can remember us saying during the breaks, hey, call your friends, because there were probably only 20 people there. But we had a lot of fun. That was actually one of the first professional tours we did. We had a really nice agency management who did the booking and who I remember also paid for the studio where we recorded it. That's an interesting year, there was the discussion about the keyboard. That would have come right after the Dx7. Right, we have a rehearsal room recording, which is already circulating on the Internet, I uploaded it. And that's also the tape I sent to the Margin Reddit user. And I'm still playing on the Pully6 and the Cork MS20. And the keyboard sound from the rehearsal room is practically different. And then I was the lucky owner of one of the first Dx7s that came out. I was a bit late. I was so excited about this device. And then, of course, we incorporated it into the studio recording straight away. And in the live recording, both are combined. So I have the MS20 in the verse lines and chorus lines, as well as this typical Dx7 feedback at the end. I want to explain this very briefly for those who haven't quite understood it yet, this keyboard. So one of the strongest clues in this search was that someone discovered that the sound on this recording that was circulating was a so-called Yamaha Dx7. A synthesizer that came onto the market in 1983 and was extremely expensive at the time. And a Japanese device, meaning a device that you couldn't just buy. But the main thing that ruled out was that the song could have come from the Eastern Bloc at the time. Because there were a lot of indications that it was a recording from the GDR, which would explain many things, why so little archive material about this song existed until today. But how were you able to afford this very, very expensive device in 1983? Well, I actually did a lot of tutoring. I also worked on parallels at the youth theater and was the musical director at the youth theater. Ture, the guitarist and singer, still works at the theater today and is also the musical director there, right from the theater. I was only at the youth theater for, I think, two or three seasons back then, when I was still in Kiel. Well, that was really saved from the miracle. That was quite clear. I remember the delivery times were enormous and I just wanted it. And I then used it extensively. It was such an innovative thing at the time.
And I actually, I don't have the original device from back then, but I have the Dx72 because I just love the sounds. And I still have it in use in my studio. That's nice. But I wanted to come back to the question he asked, because it does concern me. What does your calendar look like right now? Well, you know, you've just been passed from medium to medium and everyone is freaking out, have you already, that's a question, have you already contacted record labels? Are they also saying we're going to release the song properly now? I don't think so at all. But there have been interview requests to mass. Then of course we work through all the Reddit material. Fortunately, I have a daughter who is very active in there, who has also set up an AMA. And she always forwards all Reddit questions to me, then they're dealt with for me. That's really good, because there's not so much processing yet. That's huge. Ture is also doing a lot of interviews at the same time. I think we have a direct interview tomorrow evening, where we might also have a telephone conference with Lydia. That would be great. Lydia is the sister of the person who recorded this cassette back then. How did that actually come about back then?
There is this recording that you presented as proof, which sounds much better than this old 80s cassette wall from the radio, which could lead to the conclusion that you were openly playing a test recording or a demo of you on the radio back then and not the final version. Is that the case? No, it's the other way around. The trial recording is this short version that you hear on the internet. That's actually the one we recorded professionally in the studio. And we assume that it was leaked to NDR by our agency. Because as band members we had no contact with NDR. So we didn't send it to them. This recording, which sounds better, is better because it's not a copy of the cassette of the radio recording, but the one where we rehearsed the study recording. Where we simply recorded the song in the rehearsal room with our mixer, who also mixes us live. But that means you didn't even know that the song was on the radio? Is that right? No, we didn't know that. That's even more absurd. It's even more absurd to you how this song can be so well known today. Okay, wow, that's crazy. There have been a few people over the years like Ronnie Urini or Christian Brandel, the names say you know what. These are all people who have claimed in recent years that they wrote the song, and have even posted handwritten excerpts of the lyrics on the Internet to say, here, this is mine. Have they even registered it with “Der Gema” as the author? How do you deal with it? Have you already contacted Ronnie Urini? We haven't yet. I assume that “Die Gema” will sort it out. Because we have registered it with “Der Gema”. Tourerückwart” is the author, the songwriter of the song. He submitted it. I'm a bit of an anti-co-writer, but the songwriting, the credits, they belong to “Tourerückwart”, who had the idea for the song. And how did the rest of the band react to the whole story? Well, you were the first contact from the Reddit user, right? Well, he has a Reddit user. The target “Tourer” was also contacted by another user in the same week, so to speak, but he had a Czech name and somehow didn't appear any further. He obviously only researched it for himself. Oh well. The big bang came from Maridgen, the Dutch Reddit user, who then really worked it up meticulously. But that means there are two people who came across these horses independently of each other and then contacted you and one of them never shared this result with the world? Yes, I don't know the name of this Czech. Tourin just told me that we would discuss everything tomorrow when it was on fire. I've now traveled from Munich to Kiel and am currently in Kiel. I'm staying with my mother, who lives here in Kiel, so it's an unusual environment. But no, we'll discuss everything tomorrow when we meet up with the band. Okay, and what happens now? What are you going to do with this fame? You can now, so to speak, the thing is a hit. Everyone who's heard it says it's a good song. Unfortunately, I have to cut it short. No problem, let's cut everything. So, no, of course it's because it didn't grow organically, this fame, but came with a bang, you're dazzled and pampered at first. But fame is also fleeting. You can't allow yourself to be dazzled. What we want to do, of course, is to live up to the responsibility that people are interested in it and that we re-record it, that we add new tracks. And let's just say that we had a lot of fun together back then. We didn't break up because we had a falling out, but I just moved to Munich and everyone did their own projects. And now we meet up as friends and are really excited to make plans. That's fantastic.
Of course, you have to bear in mind that this was also speculation on the internet. These are all old people who have no idea about technology. Well, you don't have to speculate much if it was already published in 1983. It's probably not 20 now, of course. Yes, I'm 68, but I'm still actively involved in music. I publish my projects in Munich and have received an incredible amount of feedback. People say it's great. Someone from the 80s is still making music. Yes, absolutely. So you're probably the longest-serving band after the Rolling Stones and the Flippers. Dear Michael, thank you very much for taking the time. Yes, thank you very much. I think it's fantastic that you've told us all this. I hope you will... I'm going to bring this... Bring it back together a bit, because you're not at odds all of a sudden. That was a theory for a long time. But you're now back as a band, so to speak, you've got the big comeback and you've got the best starting opportunities. And I think you can take a closer look at these social media internet phenomena. You're basically the... You became an influencer overnight. Thank you very much. Yes, thank you very much, Gavin.