Chaos and other days - early German punks
January 21, 2007 9:41 AM   Subscribe

Als die Welt noch echt in Ordnung war... Large and growing collection of photos of German punks, most from the late 70s and early 80s, including pics from the infamously violent Chaos Days, along with the first German punk photo love story. [via Paperholic]
posted by mediareport (26 comments total) 5 users marked this as a favorite
 
They're too good not to link individually, but it resizes your browser window so right-click and open in a new one:

punk love
punk fury
classic punk action
more classic punk action
punk history
posted by mediareport at 9:54 AM on January 21, 2007


Ah, but were they real punkers? Or were they just posers? Following the commercialized punk movement?
posted by jouke at 9:54 AM on January 21, 2007


what is a real punker? Please explain it to me.....

The only thing I hate more than a "poser" are people who run around calling others "POSER."

Where were you in 1980?
posted by peewinkle at 10:01 AM on January 21, 2007


sorry, I am still drunk.......

Looks real enough to me.... awesome pics....

It's damned good thing my clippers are broken, after looking through these, I might have shown up tomarrow at the job with a nice double-fin.....
posted by peewinkle at 10:03 AM on January 21, 2007


Lovely!
posted by Drexen at 10:04 AM on January 21, 2007


Oh, bitter-sweet nostalgia...
but no nostalgia for cheap beer. I've got fonder memories of the police confrontations than the cheap beer.
posted by lekvar at 10:09 AM on January 21, 2007


And now I'm flashing back to mental images of my highschool classmate Mohawk Scott, who was officially uninvited from all parties after lighting someone's couch on fire while performing a blue flamer. (I'm dying to know if he's some near-bald family man who goes to work in a suit & tie nowadays. I so want to imagine him as an accountant in a cubicle for some reason.)

Funny, when I was growing up, you were supposed to call them "punks," not "punkers." Anyone who used the term "punker" was called out as totally uncool or a grown-up...
posted by miss lynnster at 10:41 AM on January 21, 2007


The Chaostage were most violent in 95, I remember the press coverage from then. I had trouble too because people in my small bavarian village associated me with "those rockers up in Hanover" because of my blue hair...
posted by kolophon at 11:11 AM on January 21, 2007


oh miss lynster thank you for that - both the cubicle-image AND for sayin' that about "punkers".

(i see you are - like me - from california. i think the "punker" disdain could be a cali thing.)
posted by lapolla at 11:13 AM on January 21, 2007


damn, I should have watched the first youtube clip till the end before posting it. Sorry about that.
posted by kolophon at 11:15 AM on January 21, 2007


kolophon, that Hitler clip at the end of the first video isn't an endorsement; Slime were militant leftists who liked to compare cops to the SS, "Bullenschweine" just continues that tradition.
posted by mediareport at 11:34 AM on January 21, 2007


(perhaps you knew that but I wasn't sure why you apologized)
posted by mediareport at 11:37 AM on January 21, 2007


hey, i remember the 1990s era chaos days and old deutsche punk bands like slime and the stage bottles.

I always thought it was amazing how early '80s-style spiked hair and doc marten punk rock was so strong in germany. kreuzberg pre-gentrification... it was amazing.

anyway, this is a real blast from the past. danke.
posted by huskerdont at 11:39 AM on January 21, 2007


I know that they were no fascists, but I still think it's a stupid Idea to put there for whatever reason.
But hey, it's punk.
posted by kolophon at 12:33 PM on January 21, 2007




Go to Berlin today, and you'll find the English phrase "Punk Not Dead" scrawled across U-Bahn walls and bathroom stalls.

Hanging with the teen punks at a Berlin "Angels and Airwaves" concert is one of my favorite memories. It was a shitty show, sure, but how those Germans love Tom DeLonge!
posted by Sfving at 1:00 PM on January 21, 2007


Muckester, Ich Kenn HYC nicht, aber Ich finde Barcelona die heisseste Stadt .

alles ist relative

Chacque Homme pour Soi

etc., etc.,
posted by Wilder at 1:03 PM on January 21, 2007


Related (and fabulous): Berlin Super 80.
posted by mykescipark at 1:06 PM on January 21, 2007


But lapolla? I'm confused. Are you from SF? 'Cuz Californians never call it "Cali"... do they?

I loved Nina Hagen. She scared my mother.
posted by miss lynnster at 2:50 PM on January 21, 2007 [1 favorite]


Oh, Nina Hagen... she actually left some pretty crazy comments on my old blog because she felt misinterpreted by our coverage of her appearance at a television talk show, where she stormed out after Jutta Ditfurth called her crazy.
Check out her blog.

Anyway, what I find even more interesting is the former east german punk scene. One member of Feeling B got pretty famous afterwards with his new band "Rammstein"
posted by kolophon at 4:25 PM on January 21, 2007


my favourite east german punk band is "Die Skeptiker", they played on the first punk show I saw. Some of their songs are on youtube: "Strassenkampf" (street fight, or riot) with a bit of 1. Mai in Berlin footage and a concert in legendary Kreuzberg punk club so36: "Deutschland Halt's Maul" (Germany shut up)
posted by kolophon at 4:35 PM on January 21, 2007


Damn fandango matt - what did jonmc do to you? Yeah he's opinionated and frequently wrong, but who the fuck around here isn't?

Didn't you used to be funny.
posted by vronsky at 5:21 PM on January 21, 2007


As a hippie living in the late 70's on the Indo-Tibetan border in a small log and stone cabin with no phone or electricity, I had little idea what was going on in the West for about six years and rarely heard any Western music. When German kids turned up in Manali wearing fluorescent pink and green accents in their hair or clothing, I thought they were grooving on the Moravian Missionary knitted socks from over the next mountain in Lahaul, where they used the same colors.

I was oblivious about the punk movement until the day I heard a cassette of The Police in 1979. Well, that blew my little Lahauli socks off right there.

In 1993 an intense punk kid from Karlsruhe came to stay with me in NYC on and off over a few months. He was a psychobilly bass player, who now has a piercing-tattoo studio in Germany, Artcore, and I tried to get a handle on the punk drift.

I'm still kind of mystified by the punk scene.
posted by nickyskye at 7:09 PM on January 21, 2007


yeah miss lynnster i am from SF, via san diego, born in LA. and yeah - this native calls it cali. sometimes. so there ya go.

as a teen in the '80's so-cal scene, "punk" was the word. "punk rocker" was not great, but acceptable. the term "punker" was uncool and pretty much only used by newcasters with puffy hair, PTA members, cops, and the occasional mystified parent.

my mom though nina hagen was awesome, and said her music reminded her of yma sumac.
posted by lapolla at 8:36 PM on January 21, 2007


Uh.. yeah, a NSFW warning would have been nice (on the love-story link at least).

I guess I'll have to come back for another look when I get home.
posted by robcorr at 9:11 PM on January 21, 2007


Huh!!! I thought only people from the East Coast called it that, because of that whole "Going Back to Cali" thing. I'm from San Diego, then lived in LA, and now I'm in SF. Are you sure I don't know you? :)
(1984-87 I worked at 91X & KROQ so I went to like 4 concerts a week... I'll bet we probably went to some of the same shows!)

Anyhow, my parents were older, so my mom preferred Benny Goodman & Bing Crosby. I used to torture her with The Violent Femmes, Oingo Boingo, X & stuff. In time she grew fond of Madness, the Police, Elvis Costello & the English Beat, though.

Y'know, we had some awfully good music...
posted by miss lynnster at 9:56 PM on January 21, 2007


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