German media goes english

April 25, 2005 8:42 AM

"The main thing was that in West Berlin, we really thought it would've been great to witness the end of the world." A great interview with Einstürzende Neubauten co-founder Alexander Hacke from signandsight.com, a website that translates German arts and letters writing into English. Just part of what seems a larger trend of German outlets wading into the English market.
posted by jasonsmall (12 comments total)

Thanks for the post! Einstürzende Neubauten is an awesome band.. Truly industrial rock!
Complete with angle grinders, power packers, banging on scrap metal and shopping carts, They even epoxied microphones to rocks and would bang them together.

Those guys were out there when being out there wasn't cool...
posted by Balisong at 9:15 AM on April 25, 2005

Though apparently it still got you girls.
posted by kenko at 9:23 AM on April 25, 2005

Yeah, I like how he admits to it all being about getting girls to like you. Because it is.

His description of the bleak attitudes in West Berlin brought me back, too. I was a teenager in the 80s, and I didn't live in West Berlin, but I could still listen to the music that was made there, and the music like it. It punctuated my nihlism nicely.

It seems like people's fears were just sharper back then, as though now the world is on Soma or something.
posted by dammitjim at 9:45 AM on April 25, 2005

Well, I can definitely say that Einstürzende Neubauten is one of the best concerts I've ever seen. For free too.
posted by Relay at 11:00 AM on April 25, 2005

When did you see them, Relay?
posted by kenko at 11:08 AM on April 25, 2005

I saw them in London over 20 years ago, and we all had to leave early because the angle-grinder-on-sheet-metal percussion set the stage curtains alight. They were truly, the best noise I've ever seen.
posted by punilux at 11:15 AM on April 25, 2005

I saw them in LA around 1990. At one point, they brought out gasoline cans and started dousing the stage with fluid. The crowd quickly surged backwards. Shortly thereafter, Blixa taunted us with "it's water".
posted by Slothrup at 12:11 PM on April 25, 2005

Circa 1986, I was a wide-eyed teenager visiting Berlin for the first time. An older cousin-of-a-friend took us into the backroom of a shady bar. We had a drink, and when we left, I remarked how much the guy who'd been doing vodka shots next to us looked like Blixa Bargeld. Says the cousin (and you already know what's coming): "That's because it was Blixa Bargeld." My little mind was blown. TEH END.
posted by muckster at 12:12 PM on April 25, 2005

Reading all of these stories, I feel like I've missed out on so much by not getting into Einstürzende Neubauten until I was a teenager in the late 90s.
posted by Kellydamnit at 12:23 PM on April 25, 2005

"We will push the boundaries of music till there's no music left."

The world needs more Neubauten.
posted by Jairus at 1:23 PM on April 25, 2005

Sometime in the eighties, while I was just a wee lass, my much older and cooler brother explained to me that Einstürzende had been invited to play at a highschool - and had torn down the school. I knew right then I would always be a fan.
posted by dabitch at 11:48 PM on April 25, 2005

West Berlin in the 80's felt like nowhere else. Alexander Hacke describes it well, but understates the intensity badly.
posted by QIbHom at 8:39 AM on April 26, 2005