A Musical Tour Of Berlin: From Wagners Epic Opera To Techno Raves
Music is the soundtrack of our travels, fun and entertainment. With over 300 train stations and panoramic views of everything from the S-Bahn in Berlin, a well-charged smartphone or MP3 player turns the trip into a movie with scores.
I have more documents about Berlin than any other city. I can't help but think that the city must have a hub or mother hall that cuts across all currents: the musical equivalent of the mighty Berlin Hauptbahnhof, which opened in 2006 and is a powerful symbol of unification.
What artists will perform there?
For a child of the 1970s, it would be easy to start and end with David Bowie. But Berlin is more interesting than just an artist. The city was part of the old German classical music network. Weber's Freilauf is considered the first German romantic opera and premiered in 1821 at the Schauspielhaus, now the Konzerthaus Berlin.
The Berlin Philharmonic was founded in 1882 and is housed in the unusual asymmetrical Berlin Philharmonic Tent. The orchestra's first recording , Wagner's Parsifal, was conducted by Alfred Hertz in 1913. Runners and cyclists teach basic techniques; The musicians crowded into a small room to sit as close as possible to the huge recording horn.
The Weimar Republic was based in the Reichstag, but preferred to spread its mythological stories in local cabarets and bars. Tourists look for Weimar decline in vain, quickly and greatly exaggerated. When exploring the vaguely named locations in Christopher Isherwood's novels Mr. Norris Changes Train (1935) and Goodbye Berlin (1939), Isherwood told Bowie: “People forget that I'm a very good fiction writer. »
In the late 1930s, after several moves, Isherwood settled in an apartment at Nollendorfstrasse 17 in the Schönberg district, which he shared with British war correspondent Jean Ross and model Sally Bowles in his fiction - and eventually musicals. - Cabaret.
In the early 1920s, there were 38 cabarets in Berlin. Isherwood may have been in a play called Tingel-Tangel at the Theater des Westens (Kantstrasse 12). Marlene Dietrich and Josephine Baker performed there. Berlin's variety of cabarets is huge and unpredictable. The most famous entry is "I'm ready for love from head to toe" by Dietrich. this is the english version) It was filmed in 1930 for the film "Blue Angel", which was filmed in both languages. Babelsberg film studio in the nearby city of Potsdam . Danish tenor Max Hansen, creator of Cabaret the Comedians, is Meineliebe Lola from the show and Did you ever fall in love with me when Hitler was mocked as a homosexual ?
The Nazis degenerated many arts and cultures in the Middle Ages . Jewish music was banned. In the 1930s, the Lithuanian Hirsch Levin ran a "Hebrew bookstore" at Grenaderstrasse 28 (today Almstadtstrasse 10) - the building still stands today - and devoted all his time to writing klezmer songs and publishing them on the Sower label. The Nazis ransacked his shop and destroyed most of the shellac and original glassware, but in 2016, an international band picked songs on the Berlin Piranha label. Sholem Beit is a delightful call-and-response phone number as powerful as any of Dietrich's words.
Hitler loved Wagner and hated jazz, experimental music and the Romanian people. A song often mentioned in studies of Nazi propaganda is a song written in 1942 by the Swedish singer Zara Leander. I know, one day a miracle will happen ( now I know , one day a miracle will happen ), recorded at Lindström Studios (Schlesische Straße 26) .
During the Soviet era, East Berlin musicians tried to avoid censorship or worse. German easy listening, or Schlager, was a safe zone, and the state-sanctioned East German label Amiga released hundreds of albums with titles like Ilya Glusgal's Nein Nein Nein (1950), which could be imagined as the soundtrack to a Stasi raid. Comedy. The GDR Museum has an extensive collection of old albums. As the influence of jazz and big bands waned, the hit became more honest, filled with crooners, country and western bands; sometimes Eurovision seems like a precursor to camp kitsch. The German public idolizes him; Last year, the 25th Schlagernacht was held at the Mercedes-Benz Arena in Berlin. This year, the Happy Music Festival will be held on November 16.
The careers of Lou Reed, David Bowie and Iggy Pop often overlapped. Reed was the first to mentally travel to Berlin. Released in 1973, the Berlin album tells the story of a couple separated by drug addiction and violence. The title track evokes a beer cellar and cabaret vibe. Reed said he believed the city was the "home of noir and German expressionism," but he also said he saw the Berlin Wall — now a popular museum and art gallery — as a metaphor for "broken relationships."
Did the concept albums of David Bowie and Iggy Pop inspire you to try something real? First, he said he went there to escape Los Angeles and the cocaine-induced psychosis. The story of how he wrote the three groundbreaking albums that would later form the Berlin trilogy is long and complicated, and many of the songs on Low (1977), Heroes (1977) and Lodger (1979) evoke the city. and the Cold War. The title track from Heroes ( also released in German as " Heroes "), featuring lovers leaning against a wall and shooting over it, became one of Bowie's most popular songs. Lowe's song "Subterraneans" was first recorded in Los Angeles for The Man Who Fell to Earth (he ultimately did not use the material). He told the Record Mirror in 1977 that the song was "about what remained in East Berlin after the split, and so the faint jazz saxophones represent the memory of those who disappeared".
Iggy Pop's song "Passenger" (from the 1977 album Lust for Life) may be an ironic comment on working with Bowie. You can also hear it as a driving song "during a drive along the ocean". But Esther Friedman, a former partner of the German photographer and singer, told Zeit magazine that it was "the anthem of the Berlin S-Bahn." The pope "took the S-Bahn almost every day," he said. "I was inspired to write this song by traveling, especially the Wannsee road." Bowie and Pop recorded at the Hansa Tonstudio at Köthenerstraße 38, a few doors south of the Berlin Wall, as shown on this map showing the route of the wall. can see Many other artists followed, including Depeche Mode, U2 and Boney M.
Also in 1977, the Sex Pistols made a brief trip to Berlin, which inspired the wild single "Holidays in the Sun" . Johnny Rotten (John Lydon) had no kissing lovers by the Berlin Wall; The song begins with the sound of hiking boots and the phrase, "A cheap vacation to the suffering of others." Lydon later said: “I loved Berlin. I loved the wall and the weirdness of the place. Communists watched the atmosphere of the West Berlin circus, it never slept.
Nico, who worked with Reed on the first Velvet Underground album, gave his last concert in June 1988 at the Planetarium in West Berlin. Christa Päffgen was born in Cologne, grew up in Berlin and sold socks at KaDeWe department stores. Niko is buried there Grunewald Forest Cemetery.
Self-made scenes of 1970s and 1980s Berlin subway heroin users gathering at Bahnhof Zoo (as seen in the 1981 Christian F. cult film "Bowie Soundtrack") were about squatter activism and drug culture. Tangerine Dream was one of the most consistent bands to hit the scene (despite frequent lineup changes). They played huge concerts in West Berlin and were one of the first big names to play in East Berlin. Their concert on January 31, 1980 at the Palace of the Republic, the seat of the GDR parliament (after its demolition), attracted a large audience.
Radical music like Berlin Wasteland came from West Berlin industrial-experimental rockers Einsthurzende Neuhäusern and screamer Blixa Cash, a key member of the Bad Seeds and Birthday Party. Get up Berlin (Wake Up Berlin) from Collapse's debut album is a classic thrash track made of scrap metal and construction tools.
The synthpop punk of Neue Deutsche Welle (NDW) was much more enjoyable. Her highlight was Nena's international success in English , 99 Luftballons . I remember a friend pointing me to a Dutch collection in 1982 called Die Neue Deutsche Welle Ist Da Da Da, which for me was the epitome of imported transgressive cool. Most of the tracks on the album were speeded up by Kraftwerk and turned into a pogo theme, or at least a dance with Andy McCluskey. Some of Berlin's best NDW, punk and metal bands are mixed by Harris Jones at the Music Lab Berlin studio behind Tempelhofer Ufer 10.
Many places have come and gone, Kreuzberg's SO36, where Einfallende rocked, as well as Die Toten Hosen, Throbling Gristle and Dead Kennedys are still standing, although I didn't see Cash again on Monday discos. Club Gayhane, the QueerOriental Dancefloor's monthly night, is legendary.
Opened in 1991, Tresor was one of the first clubs to bring Detroit techno to the city and continues to host top DJs. Another great club, Berghain, is located in a former power station next to the monumental socialist Karl-Marx-Allen. The former Templehof airport, built in a monumental modernist style inspired by the Third Reich, housed the Reich. With its roots in West Berlin's nightlife liberalism, Berlin's zero-restriction rule makes it a magnet for tech tourists. Detroit native DJ Rolando defends transatlantic pact; The Expo 2000 remix is a tribute to Kraftwerk, a Düsseldorf band whose influence on many of the aforementioned artists is well-documented. Berghain resident Ben Klock's Subzero looks like a retro-futuristic train on icy tracks and is the perfect end to our light rail odyssey.
