German filter

In his column, a music journalist and a musician with great experience, Andrei Bukharin (Rolling Stone) is reviewing the established opinions about famous musicians and musical cults.

What is good to the Russian, the death of death is a well -known proverb - and, as often happens with folk wisdom, lies. In any case, if you read it in the reverse order and apply it to the musical tastes of our public, as you know, very different from English and American. Of course, the Anglophiles, praying for everything that happens in London, always had, being a small but united group-they have always been a nutritious base of such a strange phenomenon as Russian British Pop. But lovers of purely American music, be it the great Bob Dylan, Southern Rock or Country, could be counted on the fingers. The point is not only in the natural national characteristics of the ear, but also that in the case of Western music, our audience in Soviet times was formed under the strong influence of the German taste.

East Germany, the GDR, was devoted to the satellite of the Soviet Union, the string forces of the Western group of Soviet troops were based there, and our officers exported not only the scarce “Madonna” and furniture sets, but also the records, and the impressions of watching the musical programs there. Moreover, the famous program “Melodies and rhythms of a foreign pop”, which was piled by the Soviet viewer on holidays like a New Year or Easter (to distract young people from campaigns to procession, where, however, it went mainly to swell and fight), was compiled just from German television programs. From there, the persistent love of our people for German groups went: the best example is Boney M. , who became a Russian folk team along with Deep Purple . Even from English music, a lot leaked to us through a German filter, for example, the most popular Smokie group in the USSR, the existence of which no one at their homeland was suspected.

So, the Disco New York music was heard in our purely German head- Boney M. , Supermax , Chilly , DSchinghis Khan ; The latter, in turn, also kept Russia in the mind, sparing "Moskau, Moskau, Ho-Ho-Ho-Ho . " It should be noted here that, unlike this prohibitive vulgarity, at least two teams - Boney M. and Supermax - were really magnificent and become better and better over time.

The British neuromantic New Veiv was embodied in us through the popular love of the German group Alphaville , which cloned its ideals with a delay of several years, and from the British themselves the people chose Ultravox , a team that was looking for inspiration in Germany, in the Cologne studio of the electronic producer of Connie Planck. New Wave of British Heavy Metal also brought its thundering waves to our borders across Germany-in the form of the Teutonic Accept Group, reciprocating Russians (which are only Cossack papas on the cover of the “Russian Roulette” disc “Slavic march” Tchaikovsky from the album from the album with the album "Metal Heart" ).

There are many examples of examples, but everything is not enough to explain everything with practical reasons like the above. Russians with the Germans, although they were terribly fought with each other twice in one century, always connected a special relationship, most like love-adavism. Without even going deep into this serious topic, it is enough to recall Peter the Great and Lefort, the Demoneman blood of the Romanov dynasty, Prussophile Paul I, Marx with Engels, for many 70 years of the pagan gods of the Russian people, the sealous carriage of Vladimir Ilyich or, finally, the current “father of the nation”, in the youth of the “school of life, in the youth,” School of Captains ”precisely in Germany.

Germany brought to the logical limit almost all the large styles born of Anglo-American symbiosis developed them to the line behind which completely Nietzschean nothing came.

But back to our rams, that is, to popular music. Of course, in our musical tastes, other factors exist in addition to the German filter, such as: the popularity of the Finnish scene (by the way, 90 percent monstrously provincial), fashion for Japan (how did we live without land?), Always live love for Paris and French culture, the eternal adventures of Italians in Russia and, of course, Londong, where all the roads of hipster lead. But the fundamental I still see German influence. The Germans always managed to do something that translated the Anglo-Saxon rock and pop, in many respects based on black music, into something accessible and understandable to the Russian listener-without black peg or, say, English subtle nuances. And this straightforward, convincing simplicity causes me not very correct associations with German porn-how else to name the popcity that Germany supplies for decades to our music market, whether it is the Eurodisco of the 80s ( Modern Talking , Blue System , CC Catch and so on) or, let's say, the Euro-Erodenes of the 90s, which translated into an elementary gopanic language Ecstasy-recruitment of the British rave.

I will say more: Germany, if you think about it, brought to the logical limit almost all the large styles born from the Anglo-American symbiosis, developed them to the line behind which completely Nietzschean nothing came. Take, for example, the industrial rock-after Rammst Ein, it is already possible to talk about him seriously, and in this sense my industrial friends are very amused by me, who to this day are trying to make “serious cabbage soup”. And it is characteristic that Rammstein has become a truly folk group with us (where there is Ministry C Nine Inch Nails before him). I remember the case from my, so to speak, private practice. I had a very good, nonsense plumber, and then one day he corrected me some kind of trifle and to the question of how much I owe him, waved his hand: “Yes, nonsense, give me better the Rammstein disc.”

See further: the whole hard rock with Hevi-Metal and their Power-ballads brought Scorpions , one of the most popular groups in this genre in the world. And the whole New Western romantic of the glossy 80s found its luxurious grave in Modern Talking , a team, the wildest popular in Russia.

All these styles came from England and adapted by the Germans late at several years. What did Germany give the popular music of its original? In fairness, I must say that they have something to be proud of. Firstly, this is the so-called kraut-Cro, uniting under this mocking label ( kraut -cabbage, tops, herbs, in a figurative meaning-rustican), who had not understood the British who had not understood anything then, who played in the 70s not similar, experimental, psychedelic rock ( can , neu!, Amon dül , Faust ). In the 90s, he was opened again, and to this day Kraut affects the minds of young musicians. And secondly-of course, electronic music, an obvious product of high-tech Germany with its powerful industry and science. Here, the Germans did not adopt the new from the Anglo -Saxons, but, on the contrary, they themselves acted on all Western music. This is the Kraftwerk Dusseldorfs, the cornerstone of all modern electronic music, and the Berlin school of avant-garde artists and the first space synthesizers of the 70s: Cluster , Tangerine Dream , Klaus Schulz, as well as the Munich Popol Vuh and the unfortunate, early and ridiculous genius Rihman. But all this is already a separate story.