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The Internet appears to be the most appropriate forum for Lustfaust. Indeed, the activities of their fans in the late seventies seemed to anticipate the filesharing that was one of the Webs� earliest applications; it later went on to become one of the most fiercely contested Internet legal issues. Over twenty years ago, the devotees of Lustfaust exchanged tapes by mail and opinions through the Lustfaust fanzine Falke Tr�nen, and today those same devotees have been reunited with the band and each other through the Web.


If the Internet is the logical home to the story of Lustfaust, then perhaps New York is the most fitting location

adverts that they placed in music weeklies such as the NME and Sounds. Offering their music for the cost of return postage, the band extended a more generous invitation by asking fans to design covers for the cassettes they would receive. They never charted and never sought to chart - Lustfaust was a band you had to be informed about, not a band you could inadvertently stumble across, such was their community cohesion.


Jamie Shovlin, Lustfaust
Collection of Dave Bower (Hemel Hempstead, UK)
Ink and watercolor on paper (8 covers)
4� x 4� / 4� x 6.5� / 6.5� x 4� / 7� x 8� each


Jamie Shovlin, Lustfaust
Collection of Dave Bower (Hemel Hempstead, UK)
Ink and watercolor on paper (8 covers)
4� x 4� / 4� x 6.5� / 6.5� x 4� / 7� x 8� each


Jamie Shovlin, Lustfaust
Collection of Dave O�Hara (St. Albans, UK)
Collage on cassettes (5 cassettes)
3� x 4.5� each

for a display of items relating to the obscure band. After all, the most urgent of Lustfaust�s many ambitions was to play in New York, a city they considered their �spiritual home�, the home of punk and new wave, and a breeding ground for Lustfaust�s closest transatlantic analogues, the Velvet Underground and Sonic Youth. Sadly, despite myriad opportunities, the band never succeeded in fulfilling their ambition to bring their special type of performance to the Big Apple. We hope that in revealing this underdog, under-represented and long-forgotten folk history at Freight + Volume, we are able to bring the world of Lustfaust to an audience that, performance-wise at least, evaded the band during their short history.


Lustfaust�s internal dynamic reflected that of their home city, Berlin, during the late seventies; independent, communal, segregated, schizoid � a band and a city in perpetual flux. Stories of the band�s infighting veer, as every good band�s should, dangerously close to Spinal Tap-isms. Without a record label and anyone to market their releases and performances, Lustfaust relied heavily on the word-of-mouth recommendations of fans and on the small adverts that they placed in music weeklies such as the NME and Sounds.