Monthly Archives: February 2019

My tweets

Posted on by
Posted in Uncategorised

My tweets

Posted on by

Posted in Uncategorised

My tweets

Posted on by

  • Wed, 17:52: RT @mrjamesob: Donald Tusk calls out liars who wilfully misled people. Liars respond by wilfully misleading people about what Tusk said.
  • Wed, 19:07: RT @garvanwalshe: I’m surprised no Brexiteer has appeared on my timeline quoting Paradise Lost to the effect of better to be free in Hell t…
  • Wed, 19:39: RT @AdamBienkov: Conservative MPs: Donald Tusk’s comments are a completely outrageous insult. Also Tory MPs: https://t.co/ITci2XrAuA
  • Wed, 20:48: Theresa May is making impossible promises in Northern Ireland https://t.co/ShwewsuyZ3 Well put.
  • Wed, 21:09: RT @newsthump: The genius of the Donald Tusk insult is that to be offended by it, you have to admit to having no plan for delivering Brexit…
  • Wed, 21:18: RT @Channel4News: “I didn’t know… that he was in any sense a delicate flower.” Speaker John Bercow responds to Brexiteer Peter Bone after…
  • Thu, 08:39: The Donald Tusk affair shows that Britain is in an abusive relationship with the EU – and we’re the abuser https://t.co/IxUFlEe3Qm
  • Thu, 09:16: RT @damonwake: PM will not ask for a specific unicorn but seek acceptance that the carrot on the donkey’s head needs to be glued on, not at…
  • Thu, 10:45: RT @mrjamesob: Fair enough. Because it’s Brussels that said they need us more than we need them, weaponised free movement, stuck lies on th…
  • Thu, 11:30: For those in Brussels interested in Hungary: “The European elections in Hungary and the EU”, 19 Feb evening event,… https://t.co/z0PhlryqBy

Posted in Uncategorised

My tweets

Posted on by
Posted in Uncategorised

Tuesday books

Posted on by

Current
ε1

Last books finished
Fanny Hill, by John Cleland
Candide, by Voltaire
Molten Heart, by Una McCormack

Next books
The World of Poo, by Terry Pratchett
Bitter Angels, by C. L. Anderson

Posted in Uncategorised

My tweets

Posted on by
Posted in Uncategorised

My tweets

Posted on by
Posted in Uncategorised

My tweets

Posted on by
Posted in Uncategorised

My tweets

Posted on by
Posted in Uncategorised

Berlin Calling: A Story of Anarchy, Music, The Wall, & the Birth of the New Berlin, by Paul Hockenos

Posted on by

Second paragraph of third chapter:

You don’t have to look very far in Berlin today to find traces of the gifted dilettantes and their creations; they’re everywhere in the old stomping grounds, and beyond Berlin too. The protagonists of the post-Wall techno scene, for example, were embedded among them, experimenting with electronic music more than a decade before its global boom. And there’s not an industrial offshoot worth its salt, from Marilyn Manson to Rammstein and Nine Inch Nails, that doesn’t pay homage to Einstürzende Neubauten, the most renowned Berlin brand of the ’80s. The Brilliant Dilettantes even managed to alter Germanness a shade too.

It’s always good when someone you like writes a book you like about a subject you like. Paul Hockenos and I were friends in Bosnia in 1997, where I worked for a democratisation agency and he was a spokesperson for one of the big international NGOs, and we’ve stayed in touch ever since. (Oddly enough, this review is set to post as I return to Banja Luka for the first time since 2003.)

In fact that Balkan interlude was a rather brief phase of his life, which as an adult has been mainly spent in Berlin, far from his upstate New York origins. I too love Berlin, though I don’t know it as well as he does. My own first visit was to a divided city in 1986; and I went back again after the Fall of the Wall, in 1992. I was last there in June, where I attended a reception on the top floor of the Reichstag building; in 1986 it was dilapidated and still partly burnt out, but now it is the democratic heart of Europe’s most important country.

The book divides roughly into thirds. The first part tells the story of how the growth of the alternative music scene in West Berlin, from the 1970s to 1989, was facilitated by the peculiarities of West Berlin’s governance; if you had a salary, the government boosted it by 11% to encourage you to stay (a rare example of a negative income tax) and the absence of the draft meant that the sorts of young men who didn’t want to do military service clustered there. David Bowie was deeply inspired by his three years there from 1976 to 1979, where he collaborated with Brian Eno and Iggy Pop, and loved Romy Haag. People experimented with new ways of living and loving; it was an energetic city living, as it turned out, on borrowed time.

The second part tells the story of the links between the alternative music scene in East Berlin, the connection with dilapidated church buildings and the decaying regime’s inability to prevent young people from getting together to overthrow it. The vision here is a rather Berlin-centric one (indeed, a rather Friedrichshain-centric one), but that’s fair enough given the theme of the book. One point I found striking: John Peel was a hero of the Eastern kids, who taped his shows and acquired his musical tastes. They weren’t alone. The wonderful film Good Vibrations chronicles Peel’s effect on divided Belfast at the same time. A couple of hundred kilometres to the south, a friend of mine who grew up outside Limerick has written of how liberating Peel’s shows were for a teenage girl in early 80s Ireland. When the cultural history of Europe in the late twentieth century is written, I hope that Peel is given his due.

And the third part tells the story of the Fall of the Wall, and the disruption to the alternative lifestyles that had grown up on both sides as Germany reunified into a bourgeois bloc, Easterners voting for stability and rapid integration under Helmut Kohl rather than for any more risky alternative. At the same time, the influx of international interest and the very light touch of the last months of East Germany’s existence opened up more space for discourse and experimentation. Disturbingly, neo-Nazis grew in numbers, and actually killed one of Paul’s friends, the activist Silvio Meier. But time passed. The old hip neighbourhoods became gentrified. People settled down. Berlin is still edgy, vibrant, exciting in a way that no other German city is, but it’s not what it was. Well, it’s a city that has a lot of past to wear.

Even if you don’t know much about Berlin or music, it’s still a great book, and you can get it here.

Posted in Uncategorised

My tweets

Posted on by
Posted in Uncategorised