We talked about it and found out that Florian had actually had some drumming lessons as his dad used to be a drummer in a jazz band so Florian became our drummer. Alexander got himself a guitar and an amplifier (after we decided that the CASIO guitar his dad had sounded like anything but a punk-rock-guitar and thus would not be of any use to us). This made him our guitarist. I had had some guitar lessons when I was 7 or 8, and although there was little left of what I had learnt, I wanted to be guitar player. Unfortunately I did not manage to get hold of an electric guitar but since I had enjoyed a bilingual upbringing it was decided that I would be the singer for the moment.

We needed a bass player so we asked Oliver, who I had been one of my best friends in primary school, and probably the most talented skater out of us. He had never touched a bass before in his life but he got a bass guitar (which he still uses) together with a 4x12 cabinet and an Orange-Amp which died on us very quickly but ended up years later as the bass-amp of the Florian ‘s other Band Phillippé.

So we had a drummer, a bass guitarist, a guitarist and a singer. A friend of ours heard we were planning a band and wanted to join so he got himself a guitar he borrowed from school and joined the Band. His name was Frank. So in 1992 we had our first rehearsal, the very first bandrehearsal anyone of us ever attended, in Florian’s cellar in Hamm a small village near Konz (which itself is not a metropolis).

We had Florian’s dad’s drum kit, Olivers Bass system and one dreadfull H&K Attack 50 (70,80?) guitar amplifier. I was singing through an old shitty Phillips mic which was amplified through Florians HiFi-system (Dangerous for HiFi-Systems!). I guess there might have been a second guitar amp but then again the guitarist might have taken it in turns…it is quite some time ago.

Our fist rehearsal featured Bad Religions Anasthesia and Nirvanas smells like teen spirit. We actually videoed our second or third rehearsal and if I had realized how dreadful I was singing at the time I probably would have never tried again. Ah, blessed are the innocent and unknowing.

Anyway we chose the name "BAD INFLUENCE", rehearsed once a week and made our first public appearance on my 17th birthday in my garage performing for about 20 minutes. From there on we played at parties and at our school (giving people the idea we were some kind of school band). We recorded a dreadful demo for free with a teacher to get us into a contest. Winning this contest got us another (better but still no good, well perhaps we weren’t the most talented band at this point in time) demo and started me on my job as a sound technician.

Nothing much happend. We played a few shows, wrote a few songs, fell in love and got drunk once or twice.

There were tensions in the band and without going into great details Frank our guitar player left the band. I started playing guitar as well as singing after we had reworked our set and dropped quite a few songs that I wasn’t able to play and sing at the same time. We decided that this line-up change was a good excuse for a new band name and somehow we came up with LEWD PRANK,
I really do not know why or how, all I remember is that it took me almost two weeks to memorize it. So we had a new start and everything improved we played a few shows and I recorded our first LEWD PRANK demo.

Soldierboy, Blame, Wednesday afternoon, Laces and Wrong were the songs on the demo and I think we sold quite a few and I remember having to sign some of them at a show we played with the band WIZO in a Circus tent. We wrote more songs and recorded them in Saarbrücken with Thomas Hoheisel and Stoffel (both 2 BAD, Steakknife) and made a 7 track CD in 1995 called "BUTT FUCK HAIR CUT" which we put out ourselves as a 500 copies edition (we have about 40 left if anyone wants one). We were more of a melodie-core Band back then but we were never a mere NOFX or Bad Religion clone we had our owe style often compared to Dag Nasty or Moving Targets but who cares about names anyway...

After noticing that the world was not waiting for four boys from Konz to be rock stars we went back to our rehearsal room, which together with our drummer had moved from Hamm to Zemmer now nearer to Trier than to Konz. We wrote more songs a played more shows and then did another recording, at the same studio, which was released as the LEWD PRANK s/t CD (although some people refer to it as the Bad motherfucker CD, check out the cover somewhere on this site). The CD was released on Tropical Records, which was run buy Christian Kohl, a guy who put on shows in Trier, had a record mailorder and had been in school with us. Cristian took care of distributing the CDs and got us a few shows further away from Trier, which is, to put it mildly, a bit provincial. We played some shows in the south and in the north, everybody told us we were a great band (well almost everybody) but nothing much beside that happend. A big thank you to Christian for his great support!!

This went on for a while and we put out the "as long as the kids are happy..." (...they won't notice the difference) 10" which was recorded by me in a friends basement on a 8 Track and again appeared on Tropical Records.

We continued to play shows one with Samiam which sucked (the show sucked) 'cause the PA arrived late and we only got about 18 min to play as Samiam's tour manager could not wait to get to Amsterdam (to get stoned I expect). In 1999 Florian decided to go to Hamburg to start a job so we did some final recordings with him the best we have done so far.

The recordings took place in Florian's old home Haus Königseifen near Zemmer which was unoccupied at the time and we recorded 14 songs to a 16 Track and I later redid most of the vocals again at lost highway studio, Nattenheim, because I was not happy with the originals performances.
The recordings have been mastered and a few of the Tracks have appeared on various samplers. The full-length album was released in 2000 via TROPICAL RECORDS, once again (TROP011). There are still some copies left, so if anyone is interested, please contact us. With Florian gone and me mixing the last album it took us a few months to look for a new drummer (actually once we made an effort to think about who we thought might fit into the band it only took about a week). Then in September 1999 we had a first rehearsal with Jan Scholtes who used to play in the regionally famous ALKASA (who sadly quit after their guitarist died in a car accident) and although it was a bit different with someone new behind the drums after nine years it was good and it was LEWD PRANK. We played a few Gigs and Jan seems to fit in perfect, he´s a good drummer, maybe a little bit lazy and crazy (actually it´s far more than a little bit, but that´s a different story).

Love, Robert

Then I think it was in the year 2000 when Robert decided to move to Liverpool. Good for him, because there are not that much possibilities for a producer/sound-engineer in a city like Trier, bad for us as a band. It doesn´t make things easier when you have to travel from England to Germany just to rehearse or play a gig. So we tried to do have rehearsal-weeks at least twice a year and play 3 or 4 gigs a year. As you can see, we are not really a busy live-band at the moment.

On our 10th anniversary we put up a two-day festival (26.-27.07.2002) in our hometown Trier. The first day we played a set with our old drummer Florian, the second day it was up to Jan to play the drums. Other bands that played were: The Rejects, Trio 2000, LAX, Myein, LCN, Dissoap (Crustcore, with Alexander on guitar), Hot Buddah, Rest in Question, Marv and the Alabama murders, Phillippe, Jan feat. UdSSR, Nervous Chillin, Seven of nine, Sondaschule, Die Vögel, Penny dreadful and The Universal Indicator.

Then in the summer of the year 2005 we all traveled to England to record some new songs. Well, actually it was in Wales in a beautiful Studio called “the Windings”, a place where Bands like “James” recorded in the eighties. We recorded the drums and the bass for 6 songs (we wrote about 15 songs since Jan joined our band, but only these 6 songs were good enough to record, we thought!) in 3 days I think. Robert did, once again, a wonderful job.
A few weeks later I returnd to Robert´s place to record the guitar tracks. We recorded in another studio in Wales, which was run by this great guy called Andy, a friend of Robert. We did all the guitar tracks and some percussion and organ in 3 days. We even wrote a new song and recorded it but Robert “lost” one song during the sessions, so we still have 6 new songs. Now it´s up to Robert to do the vocal tracks. But he´s busy as always, so I think it will take a while.
We still need a label to release the new songs because Christian quit Tropical Records, so the label doesn´t exist anymore which is kind of sad. It was easy for us to release our records via Tropical because Christian is a friend and we could trust him. Thanks again to him!

OK, here we are in the year 2006, let´s see what will happen.

Cheers, Alexander