It appears as if Conrad Schnitzler is th greatest footnote in music history. As co-founder of the Zodiak Free Arts Lab in Kreuzberg, he laid the foundation for the West Berlin underground scene; he was a member of the early formations of Kluster and Tangerine Dream; got a young Düsseldorf band called Kraftwerk their first synthesizer and another called Ton Steine Scherben amplifiers for their first gigs; and was besieged by a disheveled Norwegian in the 1990s - he wanted to use a piece of Schnitzler's for his band's debut release. Schnitzler sent it to him one New Year's Eve and it ended up with it on a milestone of the Norwegian black metal scene, the EP "Deathcrush" by Mayhem.
Some of these facts dominate the very brief German Wikipedia entry on Schnitzler which comes with an incredibly brief discography that cannot even begin to document his comprehensive oeuvre - Discogs counts more than 230 releases, but the actual figure will be much higher, because countless releases are still locked away in his archives managed by Ton Steine Scherben drummer Wolfgang Seidel. Looking at the quickly available information, it almost seems as if Schnitzler's own musical contribution is negligible, his helping hand for others the most important feature of his long career. He may even have liked that, however, in a perverse way: Conrad Schnitzler felt most at ease at the margins, after all.
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