In the organizer's words:

Rock'n'Blues with history
and looking ahead...

It was back then: In January 1975, five young men took to the stage of a pub in Blankenfelde near Berlin. They were called Engerling, said the pub owner and added: "Well, they won't get far with that name ..." He was around 50 - I wonder if he lived to be 100? Engerling turns 50 and is fortunately still not a cockchafer, because as we all know, they don't live very long!

Somehow, Engerling haven't really fitted in anywhere over the years and yet have managed to remain true to themselves and their audience. For the GDR cultural functionaries, the band around pianist and songwriter Wolfram Bodag seemed too far removed from the ideal image of song-like rock "as an independent GDR contribution to international music culture" to really make it big. Blues purists, on the other hand, criticized the lack of authenticity of a blues band that cared little about adhering to the original twelve-bar pattern and instead mixed blues elements with rock and soul elements at will or even got carried away with long improvisations that would have fit much better in the psychedelic flower power camp.

For 50 years, the East German formation has been persistently honing its own style with intelligent lyrics in the border area between German rock and blues and has thus earned itself a loyal, but not at all "Ostalgic" audience.