The Change

This is fun… Our Nina believes in reincarnation, among other interesting things. She is Christian, Jewish and Hare Krishna. I also think she might be a believer in the theory that HIV is a product of big pharma designed to sicken and enslave the populace – she wrote a song about it, anyhow. She looks about the same way she sounds and thinks and lives her life that way too. That is, very colorfully and eccentrically, and very happy about it all.

Born In Xixax

Every once in while I hear a piece of music that impresses me so much the moment is permantly burned into my brain. Doesn’ t happen very often. I usually come to music via a gradual build-up of awareness. I’ll always remember the earth-shattering moment I first heard Nina Hagen. I don’t exactly recall the date, not even what year it was. I’m guessing in the vicinity of me being between the ages of 10 and 15. It was a family vacation. It was night. I was in the back of the family vehicle pretending to be asleep so as to avoid being drawn into any kind of conversation. And then I heard that voice. “This is Radio Yerevan”. Life changed forever. After the vacation, I found the tape, copied it, and listened to it on my little walkman ad nauseum for the next 5 years. I surely have to thank Nina Hagen for helping me maintain my sanity throughout my torturous years in high school. As it happens, Born In Xixax is not the opening song on the album Nunsexmonkrock. The opening song is Antiworld. The tape was set on side B, as if the previous listener had been unable to proceed after experiencing the unmitigated weirdness of side A. Since my first experience was so deeply imressive, I’ve continually insisted on playing side B before side A. I think the songs hang together better and it was the artist’s own mistake to sequence them any other way. The narrative makes more sense, if you will. Such is the magic of vinyl and cassette. When I finally bought it on cd, I had no choice but to play it in the sequence I consider to be wrong. Now I’ve moved past cd and keep all my music on my harddrive. The beauty of playing music through the computer is complete freedom of sequencing. I’ve given up on the old series of mixtapes and switched to compiling the perfect playlist. With all this digital freedom, it seems that the album inself will soon cease to be considered an artistic statement in and of itself and be seen more as a kind of mix and match set of individual songs. Wether or not this is the tradegy of our times, as some critics would have it, I don’t know. All I know is, Born In Xixax is the fucking first song. Ok?

Antiworld

Antiworld, Nina Hagen, Nunsexmonkrock, 1982

This is not a real video, nor is it even the full song, but it’s enough to give you some idea. This song is from Nina Hagen’s most greatest album, Nunsexmonkrock, which is like nothing else in the known universe. I first heard the album on tape, and it was on side B, opening with Born In Xixax, while side A opens with Antiworld. I’ve been listening to it backwards ever since. It’s annoying now that I have the cd that the songs run in the original order.

Alabama Song

We have a real classic for you today!

‘Alabama Song/Whiskey’ by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht. In career spanning decades, Weill composed a wide variety of music including chamber, and orchestral pieces. But he is best known for the musicals he composed (especially with Brecht). Brecht also wrote famously life-affirming plays, such as “Mother Courage and Her Children” and “Baal”. But his influence is also best felt in the songs he wrote with Weill. Songs from ‘The Threepenny Opera’ and ‘Mahagonny’ have come to define the Cabaret style. Brecht/Weill songs are the very soundrack of Weimar Berlin, the years between the wars, of decadence, nightclubs, poverty, hard living, glamour and violence and all the mystique of that time and place.  It originally appeared in the 1927 songspiel ‘Mahagonny’. Since then it has become a cabaret standard and has been performed by every kind of singer imaginable, from Lotte Lenya to Marilyn Manson.

My top favorite cover is by The Doors. They included it on their 1967 debut album. I love The Doors, I love Jim Morrison. Today the tide of opinion has swung away from Morrison. It is now the fashion to dismiss him as pretentious. I don’t think he was pretentious – he was a genuinely intellectual person. Because he read Rimbaud and Nietzsche and enjoyed, understood and related to their works he’s pretentious? Than just shows how dumbed down our culture is.

This is a shortened live version, dated from Before Jim Got Fat.

David Bowie has made ‘Alabama Song’ part of his onstage repertoire since the 70s. No version of the song exists on any of his studio albums, but he did release it as a single in 1980 and it can be heard on ‘Stage’ (1991 reissue) and on compilations. This live performance is from the 2004 ‘Reality’ tour. I was very, very lucky to see Bowie play that year. It was a 21st birthday present for me. It was, needless to say, absolutely amazing. The concert DVD from the tour doesn’t even do it justice. The DVD focusses on the more dour songs, while the songs choices were in reality (ha ha) more upbeat and the atmosphere was very bright.  Bowie was in great voice, and looked great, very chipper, as you can see in this video. Doesn’t he look happy?

This video is of my own making! This is Marianne Faithfull, from her Weill cover album “20th Century Blues” (1997). If anyone is overqualified to tackle the Brecht/Weill songbook, it’s Faithfull. She’s blossomed from the ‘angel with big tits’ you see so much of in the video, to one of our greatest interpretive vocalists. Thank you heroin!

For many people, the definitive version is Lotte Lenya’s. Lenya was, of course, Weill wife and leading lady.

This is a more traditional take, by Ute Lemper. Lemper is a performer who specializes  in the cabaret style. I think she’s great, although she does sometimes push the German schtick too hard. This material doesn’ t need a dramatic German accent, it’s got all the drama it needs.

 

Here’s a 1986 performance by Nina Hagen. Surprisingly, she’s reigned in the weirdness and plays it more or less straight (except for her appearance).

 

Out of morbid curiousity, I’ve included Marilyn Manson’s cover (vomit). I fucking hate Marilyn Manson. I didn’t like Alice Cooper the first time around, and I don’t have any use for an Alice Cooper ripoff with even less talent than the original. But the magic of really great songwriting is you can be the most godawful singer in the world and still come off tolerablely well.

African Reggae

See, German people can play Reggae! Nina Hagen is so great she can play Reggae, yodel and look bizarre all in the same video!

Nina Hagen defies all description. Her style is so outlandish nobody knows what she actually looks or sounds like. I don’t even know what to say.

When I was in high school, repeated listening to Nina on my Walkman really helped preserve my sanity.

‘African Reggae’ is the single from “Unbehagen”, 1980.