Idiot Video Idiom

Allow me to canter about in the saddle of my ex-pat high horse for a bit, ladies & gentlemen. While I'll admit to frequently knowing little about a country before moving there beyond its music, I'm not naive enough to believe that, say, Japan was going to be a land of purely iconoclastic sonic experimentation. I knew that Zeni Geva and Koenjihyakkei would be the exception, not the rule. That being said, I could also rest assured that, by virtue of how much of this manic post-hardcore skronk had drifted across the Pacific, there was enough of a scene/movement/stylistic consensus/Insert Loathesome Buzzword Here that I would remain engaged.

And so it was. Similarly, I thought that Germany's rich history of convention-smashing rock would guarantee a certain ratio of avant-garde mindfuck within its contemporary music. After all, any culture that birthed the major works of Stockhausen, Can, Kraftwerk, and Einstürzende Neubauten within a twenty-five year period would surely have something to offer beyond Rammstein or this guy.

Thus, I came to Deutscheland with grainy dreams of recapturing the spirit of '72, as embodied by the following list of boundary-breaking creations from that year:

Pop


Rock


Dance


Experimental


Some Head-Nod Shit


And it is with a blend of trepidation and disgust that I report that, eight months into my research, contemporary German music doesn't have anything to offer beyond Rammstein and that Technoviking guy. To wit, I present Exhibit 2008:

Pop


Rock


Dance


Experimental


Some Head-Nod Shit


So this is what happens when there is One World, when a country is reunified under the aegis of a single pancultural (rather, acultural) philosophy. This is what happens after twenty years of market economy, ecstasy, midi sequencers, and MTV. Not that I'd advocate for the reconstruction of the Wall, the reignition of old tensions, or a return to an national existential tightrope-walk... but if I may cite a fine film about the friction from which art is sparked:

Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.