A Musical Tour Of Berlin: From Wagners Epic Opera To Techno Raves
Music accompanies our journey, kills time and distracts, entertains. With more than 300 stations in Berlin and everything visible from the elevated railway from a panoramic view of the city, a well-equipped smartphone or MP3 player turns the journey into a movie with music.
I have more posts related to Berlin than any other city. I can't help but feel that a city should have a connecting link or mother place where all the streams meet each other. In the year Opened in 2006, the musical equivalent of Berlin's mighty Hauptbahnhof train station, a powerful symbol of reunification.
But which artists work?
1970's Boy would be easy to start and end with David Bowie. But Berlin is more interesting than any other artist. The city was the center of classical music in Germany. Weber's Free Shooter , considered the first German romantic opera, was performed in 1821 at the Schauspielhaus, now known as the Berlin Concert Hall.
The Berlin Philharmonic was founded in 1882 and is based on the unusual, asymmetrical Berlin Philharmonic. The first orchestral recording of Wagner's Parsifal was conducted by Alfred Herz in 1913. The musicians were gathered in a small room and sat as close as possible to the huge trumpet recorder.
The headquarters of the Weimar Republic was in the Reichstag, although legend has it that it was run by cabarets and refugees. Tourists search in vain for the short-lived and highly exaggerated Weimar Fall. In Christopher Isherwood's novels Mr. Norris's Changing Trains (1935) and Goodbye Berlin (1939), Isherwood said to Bowie, "People forget that I'm a very good novelist."
In the year In the late 1930s, after several moves, Isherwood settled in an apartment at Knollenderstrasse 17 in the Schöneberg district, which he shared with the British war correspondent Gene Ross, who was the model for Sally Bowles in his paintings and eventually in his museum. - Cabaret.
In the early 1920s, there were 38 cabarets in Berlin. Perhaps Isherwood attended a performance of Tingle-Tangle at the Théâtre des Westens (Countstrasse 12). Marlene Dietrich and Josephine Baker played there. Not surprisingly, the repertoire of Berlin cabarets is vast. The most famous recording is Dietrich's "Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuss auf Liebe eingestelt" ("Falling in Love Again"). (This is the English version.) The 1930 film Blue Angel was recorded in two languages Babelsberg Film Studio In nearby Potsdam . Danish tenor Max Hansen, founder of Cabaret der Komiker, recorded several daring songs for the show, including Meinilibe Lola and War'n Sie schon mal in mich verliebt?, in which Hitler was mocked for homosexuality .
The Nazis considered much of Antarctic art and culture to be corrupt. Jewish music was banned. In the year In the 1930s, the Lithuanian Hirsch Levin spent the rest of his time in the "Hebrew Bookstore" (now Almstadtshtasse 10) (where the building still stands today) recording Klezmer songs and releasing them on his own label. The Nazis ransacked their store and destroyed many of the original albums and CDs, but in In 2016, the international group released a collection of songs on Berlin's Piranha label. Sholem Bet is a bold call-and-response number with as much energy as a Dietrich song.
Hitler loved Wagner and hated jazz, experimental music and gypsies. In the year A 1942 song by the Swedish Zera Linder has been cited several times in studies of Nazi propaganda. " Ich weiss, es wird einmal ein Wunder gescheh'n", was recorded in Linstrom Studio (Schlesische Strasse , 26 ) .
During the Soviet years, musicians in East Berlin tried to avoid censorship or worse. Germany was safe territory for Easy Listening or Schlager, and the GDR's state-sanctioned Amiga label released hundreds of albums filled with tunes like Ilya Glusgall's 1950 Niin Niin , which you can imagine was the soundtrack to the attack. Stasi in black. . The GDR Museum has a large collection of albums from that period. As the influence of jazz and big bands waned, the lives became more fun, filled with pop artists, ersatz country and western; It is sometimes considered the forerunner of Eurovision kitsch. The German people love it. Last year, the 25th "Shit Night" took place at Berlin's Mercedes-Benz Arena. This year the "Good Mood Music" festival will be celebrated on November 16.
The careers of Lou Reed, David Bowie and Iggy Pop have intersected many times. Mentally speaking, Reid was the first to go to Berlin. In the year On their 1973 album Berlin , they chronicled a couple torn apart by drug addiction and violence. The title track creates a Brickler and Cabaret vibe. Reid called the city "the birthplace of film noir and German expressionism," but the Berlin Wall, now immortalized in a museum and art gallery, is an example of broken relationships.
Did David Bowie and Iggy Pop's concept album inspire you to try a real album? The former said that he went to Los Angeles and cocaine to escape the psychosis. The story of how he went on to record three famous albums, the 'Berlin Trilogy', which included many songs commemorating the city and the war in Lowe (1977), Heroes (1977) and Lodger (1979), is a long and complicated one. Cold. The title track, " Heroes " (also released in German as " Helden "), featuring lovers holding wall-mounted guns pointed at their heads, became one of Bowie's most popular songs. Lowe's song "Subterraneans" was first recorded for The Man Who Fell to Earth in Los Angeles (he ultimately did not use his material). In the year In 1977, the song was about what was left of East Berlin, he told the Record Mirror: "After the split, so the faint jazzy saxophones embrace the memory of things."
Iggy Pop's song "Passenger" (from the 1977 album Lust for Life) may be a humorous comment on working with Bowie. In the car, you can listen to the song "Swirling Journey on the Ocean" as a song. But the German photographer and former partner of the singer, Esther Friedmann, told Zeit magazine that "it's the anthem of the city of Berlin." "He rode the commuter train almost every day," Pope said. "He was inspired to write the song during the journey, especially on the way to Wanzi." Bowie and Pop recorded at the Hansa Ton Studio at Kötner Strasse 38, just south of the Berlin Wall, as shown in this map of the direction of the Wall. Many other artists followed, including Depeche Mode, U2 and Boney M.
Also In 1977, the Sex Pistols made a short trip to Berlin, which inspired them to create the crazy single "Parties in the Sun" . There were no wall-kissing lovers in Berlin's Johnny Rotten (played by John Lydon). The song begins with the sound of marching shoes and the line "cheap vacation with other people's pain". Lyden later said: “I loved Berlin. I loved the wall and the craziness of the place. Communists saw the circus atmosphere of West Berlin."
Nico, who worked with Reed on the first Velvet Underground album, performed his last concert in 1988 at the West Berlin Planetarium. In June. Christa Pafgen was born in Cologne, grew up in Berlin and sells underwear at the KaDeWe department store. Nico was buried Grunewald-Forst Cemetery.
In the year ) Tangerine Dream is one of the most enduring bands to come out of the scene (despite regular lineup changes). They performed large concerts in West Berlin and became one of the most popular acts in East Berlin. On January 31, 1980, their concert at the Palace of the Republic, the seat of the GDR parliament (after its dissolution), was hijacked and taken undercover.
Radical music that echoes Berlin's destructive earth comes from Insturzende Neubauten, an industrial-experimental rock band from West Berlin whose lead singer and screamer Blixa Bargeld is a key member of Bad Seeds and Birthday Party. Steh auf Berlin (Wake Up Berlin) from their debut album 'Collapse' is classic collapse noise made with counter instruments made from scrap metal and construction equipment.
German new wave punk-synth-pop from Neue Deutsche Welle (NDW) was readily accepted. Her rise to fame was Nena's 99 Luftballons, an international hit in English. I remember in 1982 a friend of mine introduced me to a Dutch group called De Neue Deutsche Vele East Da Da Da, which I thought was the pinnacle of aggressively imported cool. Most of the album's music sounds like Kraftwerk has made it fast and portable, or at least suitable for Andy McCluskey to dance to. Berlin's best NDW, punk and metal bands are joined by Harris Jones at the Music Lab Berlin studio in the Tempelhofer Ufer 10 premises.
Many places have come and gone, where Kreuzberg's SO36, Einstürzende, Die Toten Hosen, ThroBBing Gristle and Dead Kennedys were wild, it still stands, although I don't see Bargeld performing in the roller clubs on Mondays. Gaihan Club Night, the monthly Queer East dance floor night has become legendary.
In the year Opened in 1991, Tresor was one of the first clubs to bring Detroit techno to the city and still hosts big name DJs to this day. Berghain, another large club, occupies a former power station just off the Socialist Boulevard from the Karl Marx Alley monument. Built in the modernist style favored by the Third Reich, the former Templehof airport hosts revelers. Berlin's zero curfew, which is said to have its roots in West Berlin's liberal attitude towards nightlife, makes it attractive to techno tourists. A native of Detroit, Rolando supports the Transatlantic Alliance. Their exhibition 2000 remix celebrates Düsseldorf-based Kraftwerk, whose influence on many of the aforementioned bands is well-documented. Berghain resident Ben Klock's Sub- Zero looks like a futuristic retro train on snowy tracks and is the perfect way to end our city's train odyssey.
