brainsplotch

  Mark’s book review time: Burning Down the Haus : Punk Rock, Revolution, and the Fall of the Berlin Wall by Tim Mohr (2018) Five months ago, I wouldn’t have guessed I’d read a book about punk rock in East Germany. Ten days in December absorbing Radebeul, Dresden, and Leipzig led me, upon our return home, to the Radio GDR podcast. The Radio GDR podcast led me to this book, and it opened a door to a hidden history of which I was completely unaware. In the late ‘70s, punk rock magazines smuggled into East Berlin from West Berlin sparked what eventually became a movement. East German youth (not all of them, but enough of them) were stifled by the oppressive Erich Honecker dictatorship. As author Tim Mohr writes, unlike the British punk slogan of “No Future” under the Thatcher regime, the problem facing East German youth was “too much future.” Everything, including educational opportunities and employment, was already mapped out for them. Burning Down the Haus: Punk Rock, Revolu...

The last few months have been fruitful for excellent "aging Gen Xer" music, with a plethora of albums that I have been enjoying recently. You may or may not have heard of the band Wet Leg. They have created a sensation in the last few months with their song "Cha is  Longue." Wet Leg is comprised of two 20-something women from the Isle of Wight (Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers--could names get more "British Isles-sounding" than that?). I first heard "Chaise Longue" at the Suburbs Fest back in October 2021, when one of the attendees played the song for a few of us on his phone. At the time, the spare post-punkish tune with the double entendre lyrics seemed like simply a fun novelty tune. I thought it was a catchy song, but didn't give it much thought beyond that. But Wet Leg continued to release new songs, and they were all pretty good--and now, in April 2022, a full-length album. It's full of short, catchy, pop-punky songs about boredom...