Well, look at that! (Jö, schau!)
He was one of Austria’s best songwriters and is consequently a worthy choice to be the first featured in the new “Austropop” series with its embossed embellishment: Georg Danzer would have turned 80 this year.
Georg Danzer was born in 1946 in Vienna. After completing school, his application to study at the Vienna University of Music and Performing Arts was unsuccessful, so he started writing songs, including ones for Wolfgang Ambros and Marianne Mendt. He released his first single in 1968, followed in 1972 by the cult hit “Tschik” in the Viennese dialect, which increasingly gained in popularity in the up-and-coming Austrian pop scene. His real breakthrough came in 1975 with the song “Jö schau”, in which he sang about a streaker in the Café Hawelka, followed by humorous songs like “Hupf in Gatsch” and also more profound ones like “Lass mi amoi no d’Sunn aufgeh’ segn”. He also increasingly gained acclaim as a poet and serious composer, with numerous tours and more than thirty albums following. In 1997 he performed for the first time with Wolfgang Ambros and Rainhard Fendrich as “Austria 3”, a group that was originally formed solely for a fund-raising concert. On top of his concerts and albums with other artists and his solo projects, Danzer also worked as an actor, wrote books, translated novels from Spanish into German and championed various social causes. He died of cancer in 2007.
Georg Danzer is still considered one of the pioneers of Austrian music history. Numerous concerts with star guests are being held to celebrate his 80th birthday, with a portion of the proceeds, as is traditional, going to St. Anna Children’s Cancer Research Institute.
