HAMMILL,PETER & THE K GROUP - Live At Rockpalast Hamburg 1981 (DVD)

When the K-GROUP went on the stage of the Hamburg Markthalle, they were very well rehearsed anyway; after all, they had been on tour for a while now. It is a stroke of good fortune that the gig was recorded for TV by ROCKPALAST because there is only comparatively few official live material of PETER HAMMILL, either as frontman of VDGG or solo artist. “We took the whole as a normal show. We were in the middle of the tour. Upfront, we had quite rearranged the songs so they were playable by a rock quartet. When I am asked about my thoughts on this specific event there lays a veil over my memory somehow. There are only two things that I remember exactly: First, I recollect the unbelievable professionality of the ROCKPALAST team what in those could not be taken for granted. Second, in a bar next to our hotel I wrote the song ‘Happy Hour’ which was to be put on the first K-GROUP studio album.” Actually, the band played in Hamburg exclusively that re-arranged material from HAMMILLS latest albums. Only one solo classic – ‘Modern’ from the year 1973 – as well as two newer VDGG songs, ‘The Sphinx In The Face’ und ‘My Room’ made their way on the set list. That from these concerts a real band would arise was according to HAMMILL today, never planned at that time. But in the years 1982 and 1983, the K-GROUP recorded two albums, “Enter K” and “Patience”, and a live album titled “The Margin” followed. Then the K-GROUP was history, too – and not because HAMMILL did not think of it as good enough: “The band was like a falling star. I would have loved for it to go on but honestly: I could no longer afford it.” Today, many fans see the K-GROUP as the best phase in the solo career of PETER HAMMILL, and the ROCKPALAST performance, at last being released as DVD and CD is seen as one of its magic moments.