Music - Berlin - page 572

Hochschule, respectively. Schönberg's atonal compositions found a following here, as did
his experimentation with noise and sound effects. Hindemith explored the new medium of
radio and taught a seminar on film music.
Pop, Punk & Rock before 1990
Since the end of WWII, Berlin has spearheaded many of Germany's popular music innova-
tions. Riding the New Age wave of the late 1960s, Tangerine Dream helped to propagate the
psychedelic sound, while a decade later Kreuzberg's subculture launched the punk move-
ment at SO36 and other famous clubs. Regulars included David Bowie and Iggy Pop, who
were Berlin flat buddies on Hauptstrasse in Schöneberg in the 1970s. Trying to kick a drug
addiction and greatly inspired by Berlin's brooding mood, Bowie partly wrote and recorded
his Berlin Trilogy ( Low, Heroes, Lodger ) at the famous Hansa Studios( Click here ) , which
he dubbed the 'Hall by the Wall'. Check out Thomas Jerome Seabrook's Bowie in Berlin: a
New Career in a New Town (2008) for a cool insight into those heady days.
In East Germany, access to Western rock and other popular music was restricted and few
Western stars were invited to perform live. Eastern artists' own artistic freedom was greatly
compromised as all lyrics had to be approved and performances were routinely monitored.
Nevertheless, a slew of home-grown Ostrock (eastern rock) bands emerged. Some major
ones like The Puhdys, Karat, Silly and City managed to get around the censors by disguising
criticism in seemingly innocuous metaphors or by deliberately inserting provocative lyrics
they fully expected to be deleted. All built up huge followings on both sides of the Wall.
Many nonconformists were placed under an occupational ban and prohibited from per-
forming. Singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann became a cause célèbre when, in 1976, he was
not allowed to return to the GDR from a concert series in the West despite being an avid -
albeit regime-critical - socialist. When other artists rallied to his support, they too were ex-
patriated, including Biermann's stepdaughter Nina Hagen, an East Berlin pop singer who
later became a West Berlin punk pioneer. The small but vital East Berlin punk scene pro-
duced Sandow and Feeling B, members of whom went on to form the industrial metal band
Rammstein in 1994, still Germany's top musical export.
Once in West Berlin, Hagen helped chart the course for Neue Deutsche Welle (German
New Wave). This early '80s sound produced such Berlin bands as D.A.F, Trio, Neonbabies,
Ideal and UKW, as well as Rockhaus in East Berlin. The '80s also saw the birth of Die
Ärzte, whose last (and 26th) album, auch, was released in 2012. Einstürzende Neubauten pi-
oneered a proto-industrial sound that transformed oil drums, electric drills and chainsaws in-
to musical instruments. Its founder Blixa Bargeld joined Bad Seeds, helmed by Nick Cave,
who spent some heroin-addled time in Berlin in the early 1980s.