Song of the Day 10/10: FEX, “Subways of Your Mind”
Back in March, Song of the Day featured a tune dubbed the Most Mysterious Song on the Internet. Known only from a tape made from a radio broadcast back in 1984, both its title and the band who recorded it were lost, even to internet sleuths, who spent 17 years looking for the answers.
Last week they found them.
Many of the clues investigators had amassed turned out to be right. As many guessed, FEX were Europeans singing in English, and the Yamaha DX7 synthesizer used on the song was correctly identified. The band, formed in Kiel, West Germany, in 1983, was part of the Neue Deutsche Welle, the German equivalent of New Wave. They recorded a cassette EP with the song, titled “Subways of Your Mind,” in 1984, but broke up when keyboardist Michael Hädrich moved to Munich the next year.
Hädrich, bassist Norbert Ziermann and guitarist and front man Ture Rückwart, who wrote the song, knew nothing about the internet phenomenon until a Reddit sleuth contacted Hädrich, who provided a clean copy of the original and a live recording from 1985, establishing the band’s authorship. All three are still active in music, but nobody connected them to the song, possibly because “Subways of Your Mind” was never one of the proposed titles. (Various listeners, deciphering muddied vocals, guessed the title might be “Like the Wind” or “Check It In, Check It Out.”)
Was the prize worth the search? The DJ who played it on German radio 40 years ago didn’t think so. When the song was played for Paul Baskerville, he said he didn’t remember it because it wasn’t memorable. As one wag noted in the comments, “Most bands spend years trying to find their audience, this audience spent years finding their band.”
Once the mystery was solved, it was only days before the three former bandmates got together for the first time in years (they don’t know what happened to their drummer, Hans Seiver). They recorded an acoustic version of “Subways of Your Mind.”
For you completists, here’s the live version that Hädrich dug up.
Some additions and minor corrections:
1) The band was not actually part of the Neue Deutsche Welle. NDW is specifically characterized by the lyrics being in German. All of Fex’s songs have English lyrics, their ESL nature notwithstanding.
2) Their drummer was located alive and well this past Friday. He read about the story in his local news and called the radio station, which established contact with his old bandamtes. He was also able to provide some old photos of the band performing at a festival.
“Subways of Your Mind” was in fact among the many proposed titles for the mysterious song, just not one that got as much support as “Like the Wind” or “Check It In, Check It Out”.
You don’t get this on ANY other Delaware political blog.
There is nothing of this quality on any other blog that I am aware of. I read Alby’s posts and only commented on his Johnny Neel post. I am always impressed with the depth and breadth of knowledge of music of all genre.
Thank you for intellectual reprieve from political conversation. As a political junky I sometimes need a break.
Thanks for the updates and corrections. Have you seen anything about what clued in the Redditor who made the connection with FEX?
When I was telling people about the story and asked them to guess which band member couldn’t be found, they all said, “the drummer.”
Amy Rigby:
“What do you call a woman on the arm of the drummer?
A tattoo.”
I heard the drummer died in a bizarre gardening accident.