Tag: punk

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One Track or Album per Week, Number 12: Sampler/Kill all the Hippies.

One Track or Album per Week, Number 12: Kill all the Hippies. Punk-Sampler.

I bought this CD in London in 2002. At that time I attended an English course for professors in Saffron Walden – a small village in the south of London near Cambridge. This course ran for a total of 4 weeks. The weeks themselves went by relatively quickly, but on the third weekend, on Saturday I went stir-crazy and just wanted to go home.

I sat in my room at my host family’s house in the morning and cultivated my frustration.Not feeling like having a frustration weekend, I decided to go to London, visit the British Museum, and then just walk around the city.

The museum visit was a special experience as usual and shortly after I ended up in a cheap CD store. And there I found, among others, this CD for £1. I discovered on it many favorites out of my punk phase. At that price I didn’t have to think long, I just bought it.

Back in Saffron Walden I grabbed the CD player of the host family, put in this CD and felt really young again. The frustration was gone, I looked forward to the last week with excitement and everything was good again. Have fun listening:

New York Dolls/Give Her Great Big Kiss: https://youtu.be/jH-1VGoOZfg
The Damned/Neat Neat Neat: https://youtu.be/lyt5FNDx9IY
The Adverts/Gary Gilmore’s Eyes: https://youtu.be/ZA58GjoTmes

Stay tuned

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30 records in 30 days from 2 collections from one household, day 21: PIL, This is not a Love Song.

A Challenge: 30 Platten in 30 Tagen / 30 records in 30 days PIL, This is not a love song

30 records in 30 days goes into the 21st round: no more love songs….

This song is a very nice example of what can happen when you get pulled onto the commercial side of the force. Or in other words: what happens when the hard core punks start making money.The Sex Pistols singer Jonny Lydon founded PIL (Public Image Limited), his personal successor band to the Sex Pistols. The pure punks will have despised him for it, I celebrated him. And by the way: this is not a white sheet of paper, this is the original record cover.

This is not a love song: https://youtu.be/Az_GCJnXAI0

Stay tuned

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30 records in 30 days from 2 collections from one household, day 15: Fehlfarben, Glut und Asche.

A Challenge: 30 Platten in 30 Tagen / 30 records in 30 days Fehlfarben, Glut und Asche

30 Records in 30 Days enters its fifteenth round. Beyond the door, agents are waiting in cinemas.

I thought long and hard about whether I should include this record in the 30 days. As I listened to the various songs, it occurred to me why I’ve been repressing it all these years. In contrast to the first two albums, „33 Tage in Ketten“ and „Monarchie und Alltag“, this album falls well short.

This was the turning point of Fehlfarben and from then on I didn’t really loved them anymore. I just liked them. In this respect, this LP is a mourning milestone, a swan song to the former musical genius of the band.

There is an nice story about Fehlfarben I would like to share. When I was at the love Island Festival in Bad Abbach in 2017, I met Tigerskin (a DJ), he is not much younger than I am. We had a great chat from the beginning and of course after a short time we dived into our musical past. During that conversation, a very magical moment arose. At the keyword Fehlfarben came – as if shot out of a pistol – “Paul ist tot” and I added “kein Freispiel drin”. I then threw a sentence from another song into the round “es liegt ein Grauschleier über der Stadt”, which Tigerskin supplemented with the following words: “den meine Mutter noch nicht weggewaschen hat”. We both still knew the lyrics by heart after so many years.

Wow, we both stood there – like little children in front of the Christmas tree – with shining eyes and dived deep into our youth after these four sentences and rejoiced in our common enthusiasm for Fehlfarben. I will never forget this moment, 2:00 in the night in Bad Abbach.

Back to “Glut und Asche”. It is not bad, but just a farewell to the old Fehlfarben.

Stay tuned

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30 records in 30 days from 2 collections from one household, day 14: Nichts, First Album.

A Challenge: 30 Platten in 30 Tagen/30 records in 30 days, Nichts Debütalbum

30 records in 30 days goes into the fourteenth round. “Lieber Gott ich wünsch mir so. Meine Stimme im Radio. In den Charts Nummer Vier. Alle sind so nett zu mir.”

These first lines from the first song on the A-side of this LP have accompanied me not only through my youth, but also into the present time. O. k., wicked people will say it’s punky Tralala, simply Neue Deutsche Welle. Some of the lyrics are hilarious, some even show some depth. In contrast to Alien Sex Fiend it’s easy-going German punk with a bit of infantile nonsense.

Probably that’s why I love this LP. Not only because it appeals to my childish mind, but also because there are so many memories associated with the songs. I’ve been searching for it for the last decade and a half, but it’s not available on CD or as a legal electronic download. In 2020 I bought it again, a real vinyl record after more than 30 years. Digitized at a friend’s house and cherished ever since.

Stay tuned

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30 records in 30 days from 2 collections from one household, day 13: Alien Sex Fiend, Acid Bath.

30 Platten in 30 Tagen / 30 records in 30 days. Alien Sex Fiend, Acid Bath

30 records in 30 days goes into the thirteenth round. A trip to the moon or goodbye and smoke your bones?

From the beginning ASF was a pretty weird band with a distinct morbid humor. But maybe they were just creative? Or simply crazy? In any case, they combined several different worlds: Punk, experimental electronic music styles, visual art (the album covers were usually designed by Nik Fiend himself) and a bizarre stage performance. And that’s exactly what impressed me from the beginning. The band was just so completely different and so creative-surreal, so anti-mainstream and the music so good, for me it is a milestone in music history, almost artistic avant-garde.

A commercial success on a broad scale was denied to them from the beginning, they were simply too extreme, too eccentric and also too destructive. How? Here is a typical example from the track “breakdown and cry”: “Breakdown is on it’s way. Breakdown in the month of May. Breakdown and cry, lay down and die. Goodbye, goodbye.” Not everyone’s sense of humor, but whatever. Perhaps it is not humor, perhaps it is a hidden message? A misunderstood poem?

I still celebrate ASF and have therefore successively acquired some CDs and many electronic downloads.

Stay tuned

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30 records in 30 days from 2 collections from one household, day 10: The Damned, the debut album.

A Challenge: 30 Platten in 30 Tagen/30 records in 30 days: Damned, Debut Album

30 records in 30 days goes into the tenth round. My fan club is waiting for new roses.

I can still remember very well the moment when I suddenly came across this wacky record cover in our tedious supermarket in the tedious record corner. After the exact study of the back side it was clear to me that I must have this great piece of music. Although with each record about 1/5 of my pocket money was gone, I took the risk and bought it without having listened to it.

Threw it on the record player at home, listened, marveled, and heralded a radical musical change. Before the purchase I my hair was long (dare not to laugh) and my favorite music genre was reggae. After that, pretty much everything changed: cut my hair short, unpacked my dad’s 50s shoes (pointy and ugly), and stole all my mom’s safety pins. Hooray, I was a punk! I was simply fascinated at that time by the possibility of producing something resembling music despite complete lack of musical skills.

Unfortunately, some of my records also fell victim to this radical turn, for example Bob Marley’s “Babylon by Bus”, Frank Zappa’s “Joe’s Garage” and “Live in New York”. As a real punk, of course, you didn’t have such records in your collection. A decade later I was deeply sorry, but in the meantime I own them again as CD or as download.

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30 records in 30 days from 2 collections from one household, day 9: Simple Minds, Sister Feelings Call.

30 Platten in 30 Tagen/30 records in 30 days: Simple Minds, Sister Feelings Call

30 Records in 30 Days enters its ninth round. Let’s cover big promises, big cities and big nations with a carpet of sound.

Let’s make it short, sweet and to the point again. After Klaus Schulze ignited the first spark with his spherical synthesizer sounds, I really caught fire with two bands, one of them being Simple Minds. I was thinking for a long time if I shouldn’t include “Sons and Fascination” in the 30 days, but decided to go for “Sister Feelings Call” after all. Why? This record, for some inexplicable reason, is inextricably linked to one of my favorite movies, Alien. In my opinion, the following two songs would have fit the atmosphere of the movie perfectly: “Theme for great cities” and “20th century promised land”.

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30 records in 30 days from 2 collections from one household.

30 records in 30 days. A Challenge

Normally I am very sensitive to such challenges, but about this nomination I was really happy. First, it has something to do with music and second, I can rummage through my musical past again. At the beginning I thought that this will be a relatively simple task. Go to the basement, briefly check the collection and present the most interesting pieces in the next 30 days. On Saturday – after the nomination – I disappeared into the basement and was only spotted again last night. Starved and close to dying of thirst. Was not so easy after all. Because some records I now simply find horrible, other records I once liked, but now I classify them under the category of irrelevant, musical blah blah blah.

It was interesting for me what I found again, because my records are since the move from Forchheim to Deggendorf (2000) in the basement. Last year in October I took 2 of my favorite pieces to a friend to digitize them with the help of his equipment. Of course they are also included. It was also interesting that I completely forgot about some artists over the years and when listening to them on iTunes (I don’t have a turntable anymore) I realized that they are still really good. So Apple will make some money again. Enough of the introduction. Tomorrow it starts with one of my oldest records.

Stay tuned.

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Alien Sex Fiend – linking punk and electronic music.

After Human League there was no electronic milestone for a long time. O.k., there were some Neue Deutsche Welle/New Wave bands that inspired me, but in retrospect I had a musical AHA effect only with the British band Alien Sex Fiend again. A very adventurous combination of punk, synthesizer sounds and drum computer. Especially the dark lyrics appealed to me, here is an excerpt:

*Breakdown is on it’s way* 
*Breakdown in a month or a day* 
*Breakdown and cry, lay down and die* 
* Goodbye, goodbye. *

Somehow it was really cool at that time to learn these destructive lyrics by heart with enthusiasm and to set it as a counterpoint to the whole perfect Popper world. I still remember the lyrics and the song (“Breakdown and Cry”) is still one of my absolute favorites. But the absolute highlight on the LP was “E.S.T. Trip to the Moon”. In 1984 this track was in the British Independent Charts for quite some time and I celebrate it until today. Have fun listening to it.

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