During 1980, Inner City Unit played a month long residency at London's Marquee Club, Robert Calvert was the support act for each show, members of ICU would don masks and become "Krankschaft".

In 1985 Robert would perform during the ICU set itself so for a while the band had 2 front men. When Robert was offered the chance to present a showcase of his solo works at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall it was therefore obvious that he would use members of Inner City Unit as "Krankschaft".

Dead Fred and Steve Pond following the collapse of Inner City Unit had been working with Inner City Unit drummer Mick Stupp as a power trio called "The Maximum Effect". Sadly Mick Stupp left the band just before they were called upon by Robert to once again be Krankschaft, Robert also drafted in Mary Cason Inner City Unit's late period sleeve designer to play synthesiser.

The QEH show was a critical and commercial success spawning a tour of the UK which stretched into 1987. On the tour the name of the band was The Maximum Effect, nobody knows why they used their other name on the tour.

To mark the 20th anniversary of Roberts passing a show was organised by Nik Turner in Herne Bay featuring many people who had played with Robert over the years, Krankschaft felt it was only right they should donate their time and effort to once more perform his sonnets and poems using their original DNA.

The Herne Bay tribute, was a success, and following the show Krankschaft had the idea to use the live midi files as the basis for an album of Roberts songs.. but once they got into the studio rock egos and bad taste took over midi files went out the window and the genteel approach was quickly discarded for a suite of Rock ideals not seen since 1974.

Krankschaft released their first studio album "The Flame Red Superstar" on October 14 2009 Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.