Pankow Langeweile

A little way into the Simpson article, I stumbled upon this song and decided to give it a listen on youtube. The song overall is very slow compared to the punk music I had and I started getting bored of the Boredom song; I kept waiting for the song to really "kick in," but it never came. Even wannabe punk bands were faster than that (no offense). And since the song was about boredom, it reminded me of that Green Day song called "Longview." It was very mellow for a punk song, maybe they're considered more folk punk? Or maybe it just happen to be one of their slower songs, a lot of punk bands probably have one slower song. I did see a candy corn figure materialize and start dancing in the video... strange Guild Wars. I clicked on another song by Pankow and found a completely different song. The political implications were still there, but the music was electronic. I searched around a bit and couldn't find anything to indicate whether or not it was a different band, or they had simply changed their sound.

pommes are also punk...

Anne Tanke, contemporary Pommes-punk Band <http://www.myspace.com/annetankeband>.

Passage for Analysis

"The performance of this song in the western media unleashed a debilitating debate within the SED and FDJ. As a result, the band was boycotted in the GDR media. In an attempt to break the silence, Pankow wrote an exculpatory letter to Erich Honecker (without response), and insisted that they were misquoted in the interview with Radio Bremen. But it was not the fine points of the dialog (regarding official GDR permissions, for example) that disturbed certain functionaries so mucht that the performance of that song was discussed at the meeting of the Central Committee in December 1988. The old men apparently knew who they were, even while the band foregrounded the polyvalence of its text." (245)

Simpson

In the article by Simpson, she focuses on the retronationalism that begins after the fall of the Berlin Wall and after the GDR dissolves. Punk music began to form and rock groups would look back at the GDR in n/ostalgia. Punk music was seen as an expression and the musical aspect was not so much an art form as the punk culture was. People who attend these concerts (either on underground or by permission of the government) would dress and dance a certain way. I found this interesting because that is a reflection of the punk/rock music scene of today. Most people who listen to the punk music of today know little about some of the early instances in East Germany. Punk music originated, according to Simpson, as a sort of "fantasy" or sense of belonging in a socialist society. While today, "punks" can still be seen moshing at concerts or jumping up and down, most of the music of today does not have the exact same meaning as that of the GDR punks. The punk culture still lives on, with other types of punk/rock music developing, and the idea of anarchy is still present in the minds of punk youth today.

Opposing Insincerity

Sharing the same frustration with the previous posters, I thought it was hard to focus, since it seemed like every other sentence forced countless replays of glances from the book, and to the laptop’s Google search engine, just to define terms. However, I managed to find Simpson’s thesis: “GDR rock and punk rock’s critical relationship to German history reconstruct a positive identity based on a citizenship that was erased after unification. The emergence of a national identity only after the erasure of nation goes beyond a conventional, emotional N/Ostalgie” (240) interesting and relevant to the “art/action” theme. In discussion, we talked about the “N/Ostalgie” as being the longing for Germany, but a totally false emotion. An insincere sentiment can’t produce something that is genuine. To oppose this insincerity, the rock and punk rock musicians, with the motive of countering empty apathy, were able to change the views of the German public. Their lyrics either addressed important issues or at least went against the state, by stating their dissatisfaction with the current situation. By not simply going along with that fake unity, the musicians were able to draw up a “counter-public” by simply resisting that conformity. Also, there can also be an ironic connection between the content and the context of the article. To elaborate, the former consists of the author’s confusingly overwhelming terms and the latter consists of a time where the country’s “terms” or conditions and rules became too overwhelming for the German public. Although an extended comparison, I think that when ether government or author try too hard to incorporate sometimes superfluous details and terms, the outcome is often confusion and dissatisfaction.

GDR Rock Music

This article in the reader was particularly long and confusing. The only thing that I got out of it was a faint idea of how rock and punk rock music moved through the restrictions of the GDR and came out representing some sort of German nationalism. I really liked one particular quote though, "But when it came to sound waves, the border was permeable." I liked it because it is so true about music in general. Music transcends boundaries that are otherwise impermeable. Music is powerful. I guess I could take out of this confusion why it was confusing. I feel like every time I have to look up every other word in a sentence, the flow is broken up and I get involved in definition rather than the original meaning. That is what Simpson did. There were too many words that needed defining or had a few definitions and needed interpretation. Thats what made it so hard to read