Normally, Jan Müller from Tocotronic reports on his podcast encounters here. But this time he is thinking about current events.
I am writing these lines on June 12th and cannot foresee what really happened in detail and to what extent the behavior of the singer is just repugnant or even criminal.
That’s not what it should be about here. Rather, I wonder how it was possible for this product to receive so much recognition over the years. Even in parts of my circle of friends it became more and more popular.
With sparkling eyes, some told me about the “great live shows”, found the special edition box with the alleged penis casts of the band members “funny”, enjoyed the drastic, ironic lyrics, reported that the keyboard player was “insanely nice” and were deeply impressed by the international success of the sextet.
I met this band in the mid-90s on our then joint label Motor Music. The bosses there praised their “controversial new signing”. They lied to us that the tasteless name was just a coincidence. He allegedly has nothing to do with the place where seventy people died in a plane crash in 1988. That’s exactly what the band and their record company wanted from the start: breaking taboos, deceiving, provoking and criticizing the critics as humorless and stuffy. A video with footage of Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl? Art? Provocation? A half-minute trailer for their new video, in which four band members are standing on the gallows in the clothes of concentration camp prisoners? Disgusting? No, because two days later the whole video appears with a text that deals “critically” with patriotism etc. As if that would make the trailer any less unseemly.
Of course, this band isn’t right. But she has no feeling whatsoever for what her tastelessness with a commercial ulterior motive can do to people for whom not everything in life is or was just a joke. The band is nothing more than an advertising agency for themselves; armed with huge amplifiers and pyrotechnics.
Lyrics and shows, which always leave an ironic back door open, make this band a baseless pudding mass for all the muscularity on display. Of course they are hardworking and talented. However, the question arises as to where the band would be if David Lynch hadn’t used two of their songs in his 1997 film “Lost Highway”. As world stars, we would probably have been spared them. I once saw her live at Rock am Ring. Was the giant German flag a joke? Will some flames reinvent the wheel? Didn’t Ernst Busch roll the “R” much more beautifully? Is it pleasant to witness the audience wryly ramping up to the band’s show, becoming a part of this spooky mise-en-scène?
I don’t know where this affection of some of my friends towards this band came from. But she frustrated me deeply. Is success so alluring that it fundamentally makes everything interesting and attractive? Why did the renowned publishing house Kiepenheuer und Witsch publish the singer’s rape poem? Why didn’t drugstore chain Rossmann recommend that the band market their perfume in a sex shop instead? Why didn’t the Universal record company take offense at the sadistic lyrics? Why is what pleases allowed? Were the outpourings of the German rappers published at the same time even more disgusting, so that this was no longer noticed?
Unfortunately, the Musikexpress also became part of the staging of this group. Although the band never appeared on an ME cover, their albums were last reviewed favorably, back in the July issue. Last year, the magazine even went so far as to claim that the band would continue the work of Franz Josef Degenhardt. Father Franz probably vomited in the grave.
Will anything change? Will the band break up? Or will she continue to threaten her lawyers? Will the fans give up their allegiance to the Nibelungen? Will people be ashamed? I recommend you just listen to something else. There’s so much wonderful music out there, by decent people.
Regarding Jan Müller’s “Reflector” podcast: www.steadyhq.com/de/reflektor/about
Jan Müller from Tocotronic meets interesting musicians for his “Reflector” podcast. He reports on these encounters in the Musikexpress and on Musikexpress.de. This column appears in the Musikexpress issue 08/2023.