Leverkusen

When Jean-Michel Bourdon (keyboardist for the critically-acclaimed French progressive rock outfit Oui!) died unexpectedly at 34 in a bizarre giardiniera accident, the family was surprised that he had bequeathed his beloved 3 Series Moog analog synthesizer (as well as six hours of prepaid studio time) to his Swiss cousin, metallurgist Hans “Henk” Schleim.  Henk was not known for being musical, but he did appreciate Kraftwerk and had a curious (and perhaps related) hobby held over from childhood:  he was obsessed with banging on anything he could find in the kitchen.  Henk further confounded the family when he loaded the enormous electronic instrument (and his burlap bag of pots and pans) into his van and headed to the Basel studio, inspired to carry on the family tradition by creating an artistic masterpiece under the pseudonym Leverkusen (his favorite Bundesliga club).  Unfortunately, Henk’s ambitions were greater than his execution; the resulting album, Kakophonie (so named simply because that’s what the recording engineer wrote on the master tape) was a commercial flop.   Henk thereafter abandoned his musical aspirations, channeling his creative efforts into designing the perfect portable fondue vessel, a goal he never achieved.

Postscript.  1,000 copies of Kakophonie were pressed; 994 cutouts were returned to the manufacturer unsold, resulting in only six units (of which this is one) in circulation.  Despite the content essentially being unlistenable, the rarity of these albums has made them highly collectible.

Post Postscript.  Henk’s musical “legacy” took a curious twist in the early ‘90s when hip-hop producers began sampling the percussion tracks from Kakophonie, contributing to several major hits.  (Henk did not see any royalties.)