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 Nothing to kill or die for - New Musical Express - March 10, 1984
East Berlin in winter is no tropical island. Neither the beautiful broad boulevards running from the Brandenburger Gate through the historical part of town nor its vast modern squares such as Alexanderplatz were built to shelter Berliners from the bitter winds blowing across Central European plains.
But as I was in the German Democratic Republik for its third Rock For Peace Festival I spent most of the weekends indoors, inside the gigantic Palast der Republik. The walls of the palast's four floors were lined with stalls and exhibition stands, selling everything from metal jewelry and rock memorabilia, pottery, painting and wooden doves.
An enormous card addressed to the Pentagon and bearing a "Hands Off Nicaragua" message drew large crowds to sign it. There was no doubting as to who was the villain of the piece!
A very state of the art singer who was hot on the connection between capitalism and fascism flashed up big back projections to illustrate his songs. His images would edit together old and new — Guernica and Nicaragua — intercut with images of Hiroshima and so on. And each time shots of old Nazi leaders or new NATO leaders appeared they would be greeted with loud hooting from the terraces.
The disconcertingly named group Silly were anything but — sharp vocals, good subtle undertow in the drummer's loping wallops. A gent called Diestelmann, apparently the G.D.R.'s very own Taj Mahal, did a nice tribute to the late Alexis Korner. And Puhdys, whose brainchild these festivals were, proved to be immensely popular.drawing hundreds of only just teenagers to their feet. Sparklers were whisked out for the moodily lit numbers, that kind of thing.
Paradoxically Puhdys might attract the youngest fans but they are the oldest band. A very untrendy looking quartet of rock survivors, their all embracing show comes on like Pink Floyd doing an Xmas panto: giant inflatables, searchlights, chunks of heavy metal interspersed with programmatic synthesized minidramas, a John Lennon tribute featuring a pause for an appropriate slice of the original 'Imagine' — "...nothing to kill or die for...and no religion too..."
With so many groups all alien to me, coming in a very efficiently run relay marathon over the three days and all singing in a language I didn't think I would understand, I unsurprisingly got too wrapped up in the event itself to fix exactly who did what at a given moment. But I can't remember a better organized event or one whose message was conveyed with such impact.
That said, one song in particular stands out. called 'No Bomb' it was performed by Berluc, who have obviously been Pistols fans in their time. Despite this unlikely route into the G.D.R. charts they were rewarded with the biggest hit of '83 — this blistering little ditty sung half in English for the benefit of a "Mr. President of America".
All the groups, mostly German, but also Italian, polish, and Russian, incidentally, agreed to do at least one song each to justify the Peace Festival's name. Any worthy-but-dull clouds you might expect to hover over the event didn't materialize however. For all the performances.
The last night's show, when just about every group encored with its "peace song" was particularly impressive. Such a totally focussed sequence of rock theatrics, normally an organizer's nightmare, went without a hitch, drawing steaming performances and a highly charged audience reaction.
Such cooperation was indicative of the event and illustrative of its central theme. None of the dirty tricks marring Western rock festivals was evident. No long drawn out soundchecks or tuning sessions. Groups didn't need to get louder the more famous they got.
The peace theme, too, suffused the city for the weekend. I am told there's a permanent exhibition of anti-warmongering graphics on the walls of Alexanderplatz Underground station.
After hours, in the university students club where upturned plastic buckets served as seats to a tiny stage, you could hear Ian Dury and The Blockheads records filling the intervals between the live acts. Recalling Berlin cabaret the club's acts this weekend were mainly satirical punk artists with assorted puppets who, to drum machine accompaniment, robot danced and jive talked through tight routines.
Ironically, though, the audience here assumed they were bang up to date London style, not realizing the fashion time warp dated them in comparison to some of the button smart,short back and sides establishment types hanging around the fringes of the Palast.
Personally, I refuse to apologize for saying I had a great weekend in East Berlin. The concentrated atmosphere of careful people trying that bit harder was paradoxically a welcome contrast to the lordly self assurance projected across the Atlantic from the vaticans of our mighty pop industry.
In addition I'm certain all those Lennon tribute peace anthems of the weekend indicate a kid of immortality that would have made the great man himself feel good, "...but I'm not the only one..."
No, John, I don't think you are.
 This article was also published in "Wrong Movements - a Robert Wyatt History" by Michael King. |
