TripleX

21 Sep 2015

20 September 2015

Show 253: All German in honour of Gay Pride at Oktoberfest! And John Degenkolb won the sprint into Madrid at the Vuelta

Big in Japan by Alphaville – 1984 #1 hit in Germany, Switzerland and Sweden – did well on US dance charts but didn’t seem to touch the charts at all here. Song is a mockery of western artists who are either has-beens there or never-beens but who make it ‘big in Japan.’

Carpe Diem by BiGod 20. 1991 tribute song to the 1989 film Dead Poets’ Society by this German industrial band.

99 Luftballon by Nena: “99 Luftballons” reached #1 in West Germany in 1983. In 1984, the original German version also peaked at #2 on the American Billboard Hot 100 chart and the English-language version topped the UK Singles Chart. The German version topped the Australian charts for five weeks and the New Zealand charts for one week. The 2 versions of the song are not exactly the same, with the German one more of a protest of the cold war and the Eng one more satirical…perhaps explaining why the German one did better in the US – we didn’t know what she was talking about!

The Murder of Love by Propaganda. German synthpop group, formed in 1982. This is from A Secret Wish, their 1985 debut album.

Heirate Mich by Rammstein. Request

Moskau by Dschingis Khan: was a West German pop band, created in 1979 to compete in the Eurovision Song Contest. The Eng version of this song was a big hit here in 1980, staying at #1 for five weeks. The song had been used as the theme music for the Channel 7 coverage of the Olympic games held in Moscow in the same year.

Winds of Change by Scorpions. Request.

Faster Harder Scooter by Scooter. They are a German techno hard dance group founded in Hamburg; they are considered the most successful German single-record act with 23 top ten hits. This is from their first album …And the Beat Goes On!, from 1995…it’s also a great track at the gym.

Major Tom by Peter Schilling. Peter Schilling (born Pierre Michael Schilling, Stuttgart, Germany) is a German synthpop musician whose songs often feature science-fiction themes (aliens, astronauts, nuclear holocausts, etc.). His 1983 album, Error in the System, generated this song, his only international hit single, a retelling of David Bowie’s classic 1969 song “Space Oddity”. Although the song was originally recorded in German, the international hit version was sung in English.

Axel F by Harold Faltermeyer. the theme from the 1984 film Beverly Hills Cop. The title comes from the main character’s name, Axel Foley (played by Eddie Murphy), in the film. It topped musical charts in 1985. German musician, producer, keyboardist Faltermeyer also wrote and performed the theme to Top Gun – he won grammies for both songs.

Aussies with German connections:

*I’m with You by Ed Kuepper. 1994 from album Character Assassin. German-born Australian guitarist and singer who co-founded the seminal punk band The Saints, the experimental post-punk group Laughing Clowns and later the grunge-like The Aints.

*Wild World by The Birthday Party. Nick Cave as well as his other band mates lived in West Berlin from 1982; Cave himself stayed nearly a decade. The Bad Seed EP was recorded when they lived there and this is from that, released in 1982.

*Avalanche by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. It was also in Berlin where The Birthday Party broke up and The Bad Seeds formed and recorded their first four albums. This is a cover of a Leonard Cohen song and appeared on their first album, From Her to Eternity, released in 1984.

*We are what we are by The Other Ones. Their self-titled debut album was released in late 1986 and this, their first single, peaked at #53 on May 30, 1987. After traveling throughout the world in the late 1970’s as a puppeteer and then a singer, Alf Klimek came home to Melbourne to collaborate with his younger brother Johnny in a more musical direction. Together they returned to Berlin, West Germany in late 1983 and along with Johnny’s twin sister Jayney (who had been in a band back in Australia as well) created the musical group “The Other Ones,” enlisting three local Berlin musicians, guitarist Andreas Schwarz-Ruszczynski, keyboardist Stephan Gottwald and drummer Uwe Hoffmann.

*Six Bells Chime by Crime and the City Solution. Following the breakup of Nick Cave’s The Birthday Party, Rowland S Howard took a bit of time off. Crime & the City Solution drew Howard from his sabbatical and back into the Berlin music scene. They were led by London-based Sydneyite Simon Bonney, who moved to Berlin to work with Rowland and his brother Harry Howard, as well as former Birthday Party member Mick Harvey. The Room of Lights LP was written in Berlin with Howard and Harvey playing backstage roles – inasmuch as Howard’s distinctive guitar sound permitted. This track is from that album, as well as the soundtrack to Wim Wenders’ film, Der Himmel über Berlin” (“Wings of desire”).

*69 Erotic Year by Mick Harvey and Anita Lane. They were both with Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds but in 1995 Harvey put out this semi-solo album (Lane was on a number of tracks), a tribute to French musician Serge Gainsbourg. This was an English language version of Gainsbourg’s album, Intoxicated Man. They were both still back and forth between Melbourne and Berlin at the time so I’m counting it…

King of the jungle by Peter Baumann. Request.

Schrei Nach Liebe by die Artze. Request.

The Great Commandment by Camouflage. 1987 debut single from this German band named after a Yellow Magic Orchestra song of the same name…I owned it on a cassette backed by Alphaville’s Forever Young album.

Should I love You by Cee Farrow. Gay German singer whose real name was Christian Kruzinski. He died of an Aids-related illness in 1993. This is his debut single released from his 1983 debut album Red and Blue.

The Model by Kraftwerk. German for power plant or power station, is an electronic music band from Düsseldorf, Germany. The group was formed by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider in 1970, and was fronted by them until Schneider’s departure in 2008. This 1978 single featured on the album, Die Mensch-Maschine; English version title: The Man-Machine. It is one of the band’s most accessible songs.