It’s simple.
It’s noisy.
It’s fucking beautiful.
Jesus…this is why I could never get into punk. Like you said…NOISY. But worse, it’s unintelligible. I like noisy rock, but this is insane.
Steve Albini can really do no wrong by me, whether Big Black, Rapeman, or Shellac. (Or, of course, the gazillions of albums he produced.)
“So what?” By ministry. 9ish min of a groovy simple bass line with intermittent screaming. Love it.
Oops. My mistake was only scanning links.
Their song Just One Fix is so, so, so simple and relentless: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYYGKCanqfA
The Ramones, “I Wanna Be Sedated” (ad before video, sorry). Which does include a key change, but the one-note guitar riff makes up for that.
[quote=“FoieGrasIsEvil, post:40, topic:790916”]
Calling Porno For Pyros a one hit wonder isn’t fair. They only put out two albums, but the first has some GREAT songs on it…like “Cursed Female”:
[/QUOTE]I was going to say something similar. The definition of “one hit wonder” is debatable. There’s an argument for it but to me it would be like calling Radiohead a 1-hit wonder based on “Creep.” “Pets” was the only Porno for Pyros song to really breakthrough on the pop charts but they had 5 singles on the rock or modern rock/alternative airplay charts, including “Cursed Female” at number 3. Their 2nd album was considered somewhat of a commercial disappointment but I remember the buzz for the release and “Tahitian Moon” got a lot of play as the first single. 2nd album charted at #20 and sold around 300,000 which isn’t that bad.
Really? I love it. The lyrics are easy to understand. It just a big, balls-out blast of anger at W’s presidency.
I always wish the drums were a bit less militaristic with Albini, but damn has he left his mark.
Okay, let’s broaden this a bit:
Plenty of songs of the NDW, Neue Deutsche Welle [New German Wave], in the early 1980s were musically simple but their attitude and their sometimes delightfully ironic sometimes defiant lyrics struck a nerve among the 12 to 16 year old German kids, myself included:
Everyone was singing along with Extrabreit’s anarchic: “Hurra, hurra, die Schula brennt” (a song about a school burned down by its pupils was bound to make us happy),
Grauzone’s moody: “Eisbaer” (what do you expect? teenagers = moody),
Joachim Witt’s depressing “Goldener Reiter” (about a schizophrenic who is taken to a mental hospital),
Fehlfarben’s defiant “Ein Jahr: Es geht voran!” (which reflected a new political awakening during that time) or
the highly ironic “Rosemary” by Hubert Kah (that song made fun of the German “Schlagertexte” [the lyrics of the hit songs popular among the older generation] by imitating yet also breaking them),
and many, many more.
I think I listened to Ideal’s debut album in 1980 after my first trip to Berlin till my parents screamed.
Of course, not all the music of the NDW was (post-)punk or new wave oriented; but those songs were usually more complex, so they don’t fit.
Great post, wintertime, and great examples of NRW songs (I was also a teenager in Germany in the early eighties), but you forgot the quintessential minimalistic song of the time: Trio - Da da da - YouTube
Ja, you’re right. And while not at all NDW, I don’t remember a party without Eisgekuehlter Bommerlunder, another minimalistic song.
And let’s not forget Westerland.
My youngest digitized all of my old LPs with plenty of songs hard to find nowadays - I think, we all go through a NDW-stage at some time.
Curse you, 5-minute-rule! I found an English translation to Ideal’s song Berlin. I still think it captures the city before the fall of the Wall like no other song.
Yeah, my stage was when I was between 12 and 15 :D. But I still got my LP copies of Opelgang (which I got for my 16th birthday) and Ihre größten Erfolge, and Extrabreit in 1982 was my first rock concert. I leaned more to the punkier side of NRW (still do). Oh, and I still own the 45 of Grauzone’s Eisbär.
All great albums, EinsteinsHund, I own them too. But I was also influenced by the Duesseldorf school of electronica (don’t shoot me). So, I could listen to Rheingold as well; and I still like Dreiklangsdimensionen and Fluss - but I would not call those songs simple.
Oh, I remember Dreiklagsdimensionen, great song, it was often played on WDR1 (do you remember “Schlagerrallye”? :)). And I never was much of a purist in music, I could listen to a Slime track followed by Kraftwerk even then.
I completely agree. And their second album was a letdown for me. The songs lost their snarl for the most part. I loved the distorted but melodic guitar work on the first album. Still do, I popped the CD in the car radio and cranked it up to eleven just a couple days ago.
Maybe I didn’t give it a fair shake. I didn’t listen very long before turning it off. I do like some punk: Fugazi, Ramones, Sex Pistols, etc but I have always prized vocal clarity, at least to a degree, so I can understand the lyrics because they help shape the context of the song. This is also why I detest cookie monster vocals, but loved Phil Anselmo’s stuff with Pantera.
My grandma and your grandma sitting by the fire…
done here with just classroom musical instruments. 