How German Is It

Gary Lucas — Wed, 11 Sep 2024 13:04:11 +0000

How German Is It Gary Lucas September 11, 2024 - 09:04

Topics

Tags

A SAUCERFUL OF SECRETS: Nicked saucer from a TEE train on a journey from Paris to Amsterdam in 1978

KRAFTWERKEN: I first heard the industrial strength anthem "Trans-Europe Express" wafting over the PA before Iggy Pop went on (with David Bowie on piano) at the Berkeley Community Theater on April 17th, 1977. What a revolutionary year that was for new music—esp. Punk and Reggae—but this was SOMETHING ELSE: an earworm-doomy, Germanic, hypnotic; what WAS that?? The clickety-clack propulsive percussion drives it along like a stagecoach to Valhalla, and the Wagnerian arpeggiated stacked minor key chords give it an iconic, endless feel (like announcing a—gulp—Neu Thousand Year Reich). These guys are volk-artist Pioneers of Ingolstadt—pace Fassbinder—harbinger heralds of a Brave New Welt. "And looking very relaxed, Arthur Schopenhauer and Friederich Nietzsche on vibes":

A few months later, my first wife, Ling Ling Kee, and I had relocated from SF to the greener pastures of NYC, specifically the West Village, and were up in Central Park grazing in the grass.

Suddenly, a squadron of young black kids on bicycles came tearing down the drive that snakes through the park, BLASTING this track on boomboxes slung over their bikes' handlebars. There was that song again!!

Later that afternoon, I visited the cool Discorama Record Store on Bleecker Street between 6th and 7th Ave. down the road from where we were sub-letting and scored a vinyl copy of Kraftwerk's Trans-Europe Express album on Capitol as a cut-out for a mere $1.97! I was in heaven--and that album quickly became part of our soundtrack of Summer '77 (along with the first Clash album on import, the first Modern Lovers album, the first two Ramones albums, the Live at CBGB's double album with Mink Deville, Talking Heads '77, Jonathan Richman's first two solo albums, etc).

Flash forward to 1989, and I'm on tour in Germany, culminating right around Xmas with three nights solo at East Berlin industrial concrete squat the Tacheles (freezing! They had to heat it with hoses that spewed pre-heated plumes of air). The audience looked like the zombies from Night of the Living Dead, all bundled up from the cold but comatose, and they seemingly did not move a muscle while I played.

Finishing my engagement, I took the Deutsche Bahnhof train from Berlin to the Central Station in Amsterdam to play a concert at the Patronaat Haarlem—a journey of about 8 hours across Germany into the Netherlands. I whiled away the time reading and playing chess on a magnetic board with a young German while the scenic landscape rolled by. Arriving in Amsterdam, I took a cab directly to the club, set up, and waited to go on.

When I finally hit the stage at about 11 pm, I opened with a solo guitar version of "TEE," which I'd figured out in the dressing room—and segued into my version of "Autobahn."

I was exhausted but played my heart out for the Dutch fans.

Sheer bliss…

Kraftwerk

How German Is It

Add new comment