Peter Finger, Werner Lämmerhirt, Martin Kolbe & Ralf Illenberger - Rockpalast Acoustic 1979 (2021)

Some people believe that Eric Clapton introduced the acoustic guitar to pop and rock music with his ''Unplugged'' album in 1992. Others think it was MTV who started their legendary concert series of the same name in 1989. The truth is the acoustic guitar, beyond baroque and classical music, has always been there. But in the 1960s the instrument gained an enormous boost in popularity as the instrument of choice favored by folk legends such as Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Joan Baez and Bob Dylan to accompany their songs..

The decade would see more and more pure instrumentalists placing the acoustic guitar completely at the center of their music. When the makers of the WDR Rockpalast decided to give this a forum in 1979, they could rely on four great musicians from their own country Germany who had made fingerstyle guitar enormously popular.

And so, with Peter Finger, Werner Laemmerhirt and the duo Kolbe and Illenberger, the Rockpalast producers invited the entire German spearhead of the finger-picking fraternity to their Cologne-based studio from 29th August to 3rd September 1979. Now these three masterly performances are being released together in a CD/DVD box set, carefully edited acoustically by Hans-Joerg Maucksch of Pauler Acoustic and liner notes written by Lothar Trampert. A pure listening and viewing pleasure.