23/09/2011

Germany


Previous columns have looked at stereotyping of other countries in pop music. One might think that Germany might suffer particularly here from a British perspective. At the time that pop music was coming of age, popular British culture was still full of an endless re-telling of World War 2. Films like The Dam-busters, or Reach For the Sky, or The Great Escape, packed the cinemas and were routinely shown on TV (In a 2006 UK poll regarding the family film that TV viewers would most want to see on Christmas Day, The Great Escape was  the first choice of male viewers). Children’s comics had strip cartoons of British pilots saying things like “Take that, you square-headed  sausage nosher" as they shot down another Messerschmitt.

This  constant re-run of the past was kept going for decades , satirised by Sparks in their 1972 song  Girl from Germany:Oh, no! Bring her home and the folks look ill. My word, they can't forget, they never will. They can hear the storm-troops on our lawn when I show her in and the Fuehrer is alive and well  in our panelled den “. In such a vein , I once had an elderly relative who would not allow two particular  words to be said in his presence: ‘German’ and ‘pregnant’.  It can still suddenly crop up in unlikely contexts. In a recent discussion about Eurovision between music critic Charles Shaar Murray and Cheryl Baker of Bucks Fizz, Murray made the curious remark that ‘If the Nazis had won, all popular music would sound like this (ie Eurovision).’  Oompah music   = a totalitarian and racist ideology. Hmm.

Yet this perspective didn’t seem to figure much  in pop songs , outside of football chants. In fact, in the early days of pop music Germany hardly figured at all, odd given the significance of Hamburg for the Beatles and the British beat boom and the continued popularity in Germany of artists that vanished from popular consciousness here years ago. (Even now in somewhere like Stuttgart or Munster you might see a poster for a concert by Stan Webb’s Chicken Shack or Alvin Lee). There seemed plenty there  to inspire songs -  castles with towers and battlements perched above the Rhine like  pictures  in a children’ fairy story,  outdoor markets on cobbled streets and the  Gothic Cathedral of a city like Cologne. Yet there seemed few equivalents for Germany of songs like Mary Chapin Carpenter’s What If  We Went to Italy, or Bonnie Tyler’s Lost in France, or even Sylvia’s Viva Espana. Horst Jankowski’s  jaunty piano hit  from 1965 A Walk in the Black Forest, didn’t really count – and unfortunately was a decade too early to be the musical  accompaniment to the classic 70’s English  (with a Germanic tone)  dinner party of cheese fondue, Black Forest gateau and Blue Nun wine. Mmm

 As time passed, this did change. As mentioned before, Berlin as a city has inspired plenty of musical tributes -  from Lou Reed and Bowie to Japan and Rufus Wainwright -  but other towns have attracted less musical attention. Regina Spektor did a song called Dusseldorf, but it wasn't really about the place, any more than Ben Folds’ Cologne gives the listener any sense of that city. A much more evocative piece was Randy Newman’s In Germany Before the War, also set in Dusseldorf and based on a serial killer of the 1930’s. The song has been covered by others, including Katie Melua, but Newman’s version best conveys the underlying creepiness.


The song here from 2006- Germany -  by American duo Ghost Mice gives a rather different perspective, a kind of Bill Bryson-type travelogue with an infectious hoe-down backing. The words, tumbling out before the music finishes, cover a quick backpackers’ tour, taking in a cathedral city bombed in World War 2 - maybe Cologne-, fairy tale castles, the Rhine and a passing mention of Slaughterhouse 5, Kurt Vonnegut’s novel on the fire bombing of Dresden. The song comes from their album Europe, a musical chronicle of the pair’s travels across several countries, apparently done on $10 dollars a day. It sounds an interesting, if hard-going, trip.

It also gives a reminder that reality and stereotypes can be a long way apart. During a  time in Cologne,I stayed with a family who were not sausage-noshers at all but vegetarians, who told a joke about Helmut Kohl and kohlrabi (the punch-line of which I have forgotten). In the column , Let’s Get Out of This Country, I mentioned the ease when in the streets and markets of some English cathedral towns of imagining you were in parts of Germany. A shared history, despite what the films say.


38 comments:

  1. For many years, Randy Newman meant very little to me although he had always been in my peripheral vision. I remembered Alan Price’s version of ‘Simon Smith and His Amazing Dancing Bear‘ from when I was a kid and I was aware of ‘Small People’ but he was someone on the horizon; a writer of novelty songs. Of no interest to someone who grew up on glam rock and punk, then.



    However, at some point in the eighties, during my longest period of unemployment, I borrowed Nina Simone’s ‘Baltimore’ from the public library. It was a ragged and occasionally brilliant album but the (Newman penned) song ‘Baltimore’ impressed. 



    Some time after that, I visited the town's premier second hand record shop ‘The Other Record Shop’ where Newman’s ‘Little Criminals’ was always in the fifty pence section. The cover didn’t appeal but I bought it anyway.



    A classic album, of course, but the strongest impact was from this one song. Lush strings, plaintive piano an aching nostalgic feeling. I loved it. I played it without really listening. So, I played it again. And listened.



    ‘In Germany Before The War

    There was a man who owned a store

    In nineteen hundred thirty-four

    In Dusseldorf ...'

    Lovely sepia images. Snapshots and memories of somewhere that you’ve never been.



    And more:

    ‘I'm looking at the river
    But I'm thinking of the sea

    Thinking of the sea ..’

    A sad, sense of yearning. But then something changes:

    ‘A little girl has lost her way 

    With hair of gold and eyes of gray

    Reflected in his glasses

    As he watches her...'

    The nostalgic melody starts to seem sinister. The lovely strings are like malignant clouds spreading across the sky. The river seems dark and dangerous. The plaintive piano seems to be stalking.


    No, you think. It can’t be.



    But then:



    ‘We lie beneath the autumn sky

    My little golden girl and I

    And she lies very still ‘

    And you know it IS.

    It chilled me more than any song had before. And maybe even since.

    In Germany Before The War, it turns out, was inspired by the classic 1931 Fritz Lang film M, which featured Peter Lorre as a serial child killer. This in turn was inspired by Peter Kürten who was known as the Düsseldorf Ripper, the Vampire of Düsseldorf or the Monster of Düsseldorf and was executed in July 1931 after confessing to nine murders. 


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  2. Wow, the Randy Newman song is haunting and genius, truly sad and creepy.

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  3. Newman has written some great songs, deceptively simple. His album 12 songs contains some early gems.
    Great stuff Geoff Thank you.

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  4. Ha ha, it's a funny thought that Hitler would have loved oompah music and the likes of Bucks Fizz and Abba:)

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  5. Here are the Newman lyrics, very eerie:

    In Germany Before The War
    There was a man who owned a store
    In nineteen hundred thirty-four
    In Dusseldorf

    And every night at fine-o-nine
    He'd cross the park down to the Rhine
    And he'd sit there by the shore

    I'm looking at the river
    But I'm thinking of the sea
    Thinking of the sea
    Thinking of the sea
    I'm looking at the river
    But I'm thinking of the sea

    A little girl has lost her way
    With hair of gold and eyes of gray
    Reflected in his glasses
    As he watches her
    A little girl has lost her way
    With hair of gold and eyes of grayI

    I'm looking at the river
    But I'm thinking of the sea
    Thinking of the sea
    Thinking of the sea

    We lie beneath the autumn sky
    My little golden girl and I
    And she lies very still

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  6. Here is the Sparks song Girl from Germany: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U059iUwXqdw

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  7. I love Regina Spektor's song Dusseldorf (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UIeooHNvPo)

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  8. Here is my version of In Germany Before the War, cheers! - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qM8hIawoHtY

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  9. I like Esther Ofarim's version better than Newman's.....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLx7SiuJCdA

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  10. Here's Ben Folds’ Cologne: www.youtube.com/watch?v=laq1TrnGQyw

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  11. Here is that discussion about Eurovision between music critic Charles Shaar Murray and Cheryl Baker of Bucks Fizz that Geoff mentions:
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/may/14/conversation-eurovision

    It actually makes a lot of sense, what Murray is saying - that the Eurovision is so white in its musical influences (where are the Algerian influences in the French entries, the Indian/Pakistani influences in the British entries, etc) that it's like we only think of Europe as Anglo-Saxon. Hence the Bavarian marching band sound of oom-pah-pah, oom-pah, hence the reference to Hitler winning the war.

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  12. A musicologist has studied Eurovision for 30 years or something, and says it all comes down to having a moustache and an 'enjoy life' theme in order to win. Sounds like he's devoted a large portion of his life to this, and that's what he's concluded!

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  13. I found this article at Deutsche Welle helpful.

    http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,15051777,00.html

    It's all about the work of the Eurovision Research Network, a group of academics who seek a more profound understanding of the competition.

    It's a must-read for anyone wishing to intellectualise about the Eurovision Song Contest.

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  14. Geoff, was this really the standard menu for British dinner parties in the 1970s???

    cheese fondue, Black Forest gateau and Blue Nun wine

    And if so, I think I was serving the wrong thing for that decade!!!

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  15. And don't forget that there was always instant coffee as well, Geoff, to be enjoyed after the Black Forest Gateau
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9Za2zKddkw

    Although I guess that was more the 1980s/1990s than the 70s.

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  16. I'm pretty sure it was always acceptable to serve Vienetta instead of black forest gateau..... At least that's what my memory of adverts tells me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mirsm5U3OJk

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  17. When celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal saw fit to include Black Forest Gâteau as one of his prized dishes on the BBC series In Search of Perfection, in 2006, the Telegraph announced that the 1970s were back:
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/3336216/Prawn-again-return-of-the-1970s.html

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  18. Apparently at British dinner parties in the 1970s, some 59 per cent went for prawn cocktail as a starter, 13 per cent chose a roast dinner for main course and nearly one fifth served black forest gateau.

    The theme for starters and desserts didn’t change in the 1980s.

    See: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/food/article-1261474/Tex-Mex-takes-spot-dinner-parties-Sorry-Abigail-fajitas-prawn-cocktails-todays-pick.html

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  19. Geoff, what is that photo you used - is it from the 1970s? (Or is it just that Germany still looks like the 1970s:)

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  20. It is Cologne in the late 80's!
    I understand the argument about Eurovision being about a particular type of Euro-centric music, Laura but I am not convinced about making a link with the Nazis-it could just as plausibly be said that if the Nazis had won the war we would all be listening to Wagner and Beethoven

    I am also not convinced about needing a moustache in order to win Eurovision! The only UK winner with such I can think of is the bloke in Brotherhood of Man...

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  21. I want to know the punchline to the joke about Helmut Kohl and kohlrabi!!

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  22. I think we are still a bit obsessed with WW2 and the Nazis in England, aren't we? I really liked your last line for that reason. As far I could tell from my kids, most pupils studying history in schools now opt for one of three subjects: early modern British history (the Tudors and Stuarts), the history of Soviet Russia and the history of Nazi Germany. Of those, Nazi Germany dominates. It is the only subject that pupils can study for the national curriculum, GCSE and A-level, and many pupils take that option, because it makes passing exams easier. But the consequence is a generation of children for whom history is populated exclusively by European dictators with funny moustaches.

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  23. Yes, and in fact successive German ambassadors to London have criticised Britain’s “unbalanced” obsession with Nazi stereotypes at the expense of any aspect of the nation’s history beyond 1945

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  24. In some comics, the main character would actually battle Hitler himself: http://stlcomics.com/columns/tftlof/1/gallery/daredevilcomics1.jpg

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  25. Although I do still want to read the one where the pilots say "Take that, you square-headed sausage nosher" :)

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  26. I remember reading a war comic called Commando in the early 1960s, where the Germans would say things like “schnell, British schweinhund”.

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  27. Yes, but it seems the men got outvoted on that Christmas Day vote, as the final results were:
    It’s A Wonderful Life (19%)
    The Wizard of Oz (16%)
    The Great Escape (14%)
    Mary Poppins (12%).

    See:
    http://www.freeview.co.uk/freeview/Press/2006/TV-classics-are-recipe-for-Christmas-Day-delight

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  28. Hey I am really impressed that you know about Ghost Mice, I didn't know anyone knew about them!

    They do wonderful, hearty, acoustic country-folk-punk. Their songs are about life on the road, painful love or politics. Their sound combines the best elements of punk and folk - it mixes fun with rebellion. And according to their anarchist attitude, they want to play everywhere: on the streets, in the backyards, in the living rooms, in the rain, in the clubs - even if the electricity fails - or at the lost and found at the railway station - where the noise of the trains complete the sound...

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  29. Hey thank you for talking about us in this column, this is a great thing for the DIY community. The album Europe came from a 3 month trip we did, without much money or planning. non-committal travel. hope it will inspire some wanderlust in your readers. we camped and hitchhiked. ate a lot of soy ice cream. It was fun and very liberating.

    thanks for making the world a better place, Geoff.

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  30. Never heard them before, but on first listen, they sound a bit like Jonathan Richman to me. Very anti-folk.

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  31. My favorite song from them has to be "The Devil and My Family". So much fun

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  32. There are not many bands that have such a huge impact on me within the first few seconds of the first song I've heard, but Ghost Mice did it for me, thanks Geoff!

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  33. Punk is better when it's simple and lo-fi. It's better in basements and tiny clubs. And it's better when it has something new to say, something genuine and heartfelt. This is good punk. Thanks!

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  34. ghost mice are pretty good, sort of prefer chris's solo/captain chaos stuff though

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  35. I love the way they sing every lyric without one note of apathy, they sing with so much energy and passion that it seems like every song is a matter or life and death.

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  36. The reason why I love Chris Clavin is because, despite having a pretty consistent canon, he never, ever fails to surprise me. Since moving from Bloomington Indiana around the country, settling in Cairo, IL and back again, Mr. Clavin has not slowed down a bit when it comes to releasing new music. Whether it was with his punk band Imperial Can or the many split cassette releases he issued on his label, Plan-It-X, Chris has been a busy man writing his endearing songs. Sometimes he’s been filled with bubbling positivity, sometimes the songs are overwrought with pessimism and sometimes they burn with the ire against the ills of our society. But no matter what Chris is singing about, it’s always coming from his heart.

    You should check out the new album Inky Skulls - http://inkyskulls.bandcamp.com/ - a new endeavor from Chris and his friend Emily Rose. The duo has chosen the ukulele, an instrument whose face is changing, as the center piece for their songs. And, not surprisingly Rose and Clavin make music that brings these instruments to life, pushing them beyond the toy box stigma and kitsch labels the ukulele is often tagged with. This is not irony music, the instrument essential to the songs breath.

    Instead it is a rather robust presentation, which is even more surprising considering it is the culmination of only two weeks of writing and recording. The seven songs, six originals and a fun cover of “Mommy Can I Go Out and Kill Tonight?” are dense and complex, despite the relatively sparse sounds. Further, we find the lo-fi loving Clavin capturing his songs with some of the clearest presentations to date.

    The topics range from wanting to rule in a world enslaved by capitalism, good friends standing by you and loving life. There are odes to a hot dog shop and wishing someone would get repossessed by a demon. The simplicity of the whole recording makes it both touching and endearing. This is Clavin at the best he’s been in years. Rose’s vocals match Clavin’s strong voice that has been honed after years on community center floors, small DIY spaces and the oddest of venues.

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  37. Thanks for writing in Chris.
    Re comments on comics having Germans saying Schweinehund and Donner und Blitzen, there is a book called Achtung Schweinehund!
    http://i43.tower.com/images/mm107752988/achtung-schweinehund-harry-pearson-paperback-cover-art.jpg

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  38. Achtung Schweinehund is a really good book. Harry Pearson is a columnist for the Guardian and the book is an autobiography about the British love of wargames:

    "This is a book about men and battle. It is not about real battle (and since most of it is about me, it’s not always about real men either), but about the make-believe battle that has filled my leisure time ever since I was given a Davy Crockett hat on my fourth birthday. It is about models and games, Action Man and cap guns, Rat Patrol, the War Picture Library and playing with toy soldiers. It is about growing up in the 1960s and not growing up thereafter. It is about how war is turned into a game (and how sometimes games are turned into war), the urge to play and the need to hide.

    ‘A man,’ Montaigne counselled, ‘should keep for himself a little back shop, all his own, quite unadulterated, in which he established his true freedom and chief place of seclusion and solitude.’

    What follows is a journey into what the French philosopher would have called a shop, but what most of us would recognise as a shed" - from page 6.

    The England of his childhood was obsessed with war he tells us – full of war stories, Commando comics, Action Man and movies like Dam Busters. Pearson doesn’t just tell us that England was obsessed with war, he looks at why this might be so. He also asks what it is about gaming and collecting that gives people – and men in particular –such pleasure.

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