The Pink Mice is a German band of the early 70’s clearly Symphonic and often accused of being clones of ELP, something that is not accurate, they were close to being clones of TRIUMVIRAT (Triumvirat is also known as The Rat, so the connection between Mice and Rat is easy to understand) in other words they were almost clones of a so called clone of ELP.
Some people may ask how they could follow TRIUMVIRAT if THE PINK MICE released their debut album in 1971 and The Rat in 1972, the reason is simple, TRIUMVIRAT was formed in 1969 and already had a following in Germany by the time of the release of THE PINK MICE 1971 debut album “In Action”.
But THE PINK MICE history gets more peculiar, their original lineup consisted of The keyboardist Peter Hetch, Peter Hesslein (Guitar & Vocals), Dieter Horns (Bass & Vocals) and the drummer Joachim Rietenbach is the exact same lineup of an already popular Hard Prog band called LUCIFER’S FRIEND but without the British vocalist John Lawton, seems that the members of LUCIFER’S FRIEND wanted to go for the Symphonic sounds with exclusively German members instead of the aggressive rock music created with Lawton as a member.
Their albums are clearly influenced by Classical Music and they don’t hide this fact, the titles of the songs include among others “Capriccio Italien op.45”, “Brandenburgisches Konzert Nr.3,1.Satz”, “For Elise”, Sonata for Klavier, etc.
During their short career they released two excellent albums “In Action” (1971) and “In Synthesizer Sound” (1973) both are highly recommended and a must have for any Symphonic proghead that loves Synth based albums, if you need more historical info about the band, check the page of LUCIFER’S FRIEND in Prog Archives.(Iván Melgar Morey)
Lucifer’s Friend live at the Beat-Club, Germany
:
And here´s their second album:
And indeed: the guys really put their backs into it and worked their asses off … and the result was a terrific classic rock album in the sound of the time … and it still sounds damn good today.
And by the way, they demonstrated that hard rockers can also interpret classical music, whereby Peter Hecht deserves special praise. And of course he was inspired by Emerson, Lake & Palmer or Ekseption (a criminally underrated band from the Netherlands).
But these were not bad addresses either!
Personnel:
Peter Hecht (keyboards)
Peter Hesslein (guitar)
Dieter Horns (bass)
„Addi“ Rietenbach (drums)
Tracklist:
01. Brandenburgisches Konzert Nr. 3, 1. Satz (Bach) 4.16
02. Capriccio Italien Op. 45 (Tschaikowsky) 2.24
03. Träumerei aus „Kinderszenen“ op. 15 (Schumann) 3.04
04. Marsch aus „Der Nußknacker“ (Tschaikowsky) 3.05
05. Badinerie aus Suite Nr. 2, H-moll (Bach) 4.33
06. Sonate Facile, KV 545, 1. Satz (Mozart) 2.06
07. Overtüre „Dichter Und Bauer“ (v.Suppé) 4.00
08. Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen, Arie des Papageno aus „Die Zauberflöte“ (Mozart) 2.40
09. Die Wut über den verlorenen Groschen, Rondo a capriccio, op. 129 (Beethoven) 4.47
10. Türkischer Marsch aus der Sonate A-Dur, KV 331 (Mozart) 4.03