Jung Wild Grenzenlos (2022) - Paul Landers (with translation)
ARD/MDR documentary from 2022 about the 1990's era with Paul Landers, with an attempt at translation by me 😊.
The 90's to me where the good old days in a sense that things evolved that one didn't know before. Musical directions emerged that didn't exist before. Youth movements that didn't exist. All of a sudden there was Grunge. Cool shit! Nirvana I heard on the radio and thought: Man what kind of good music is that! And one thought it would continue like that forever, and now looking back, one knows that is was a beautiful phase really, of change and of innocence and freshness.
There was this euphoria and i remember that it had a some anarchic traits, because the cops in the East could leave us, they weren't responsible for us anymore and the West cops didn't know us and didn't really know how to deal with the East-people and because of that there was a little Fool's freedom. Was a really lovely time.
<at a clip about the band Think about Mutation> 'Think about Mutation' initially were even ahead of us. They already had the principle of sequencer, machines and guitars. They already discovered that before us. At a concert we were pretty impressed by them in a musical way.
West alcohol i thought was really good, all the various variaties opened a whole new dimension.
Maybe that Paul Landers pretty soon would be on stage with the band Rammstein. Forged from the wild growth of the Post reunification period, they practised at the East Berliner Knaack club and initially only play half full shows. But that changes quickly: German lyric, celebrated teutonics, Stage fire: the media foams of anger.
The claim really was that we only do what we like, without looking in any specific direction, just "Lets go, we want to make trouble and we want to be extreme". We didn't care whether anybody liked it, at all.
Then the flame ignites, soon they fill every stadium all over the world. Six east-guys become the biggest band in the world. With thanks to the 90's.
Rammstein is clearly a 90's band, but visually and musically. Ofcourse we think, we move, we mirror the sign of the time, but we are a 90's band, definitely.
Bobo, alias Christiane Hebold, steers the chorus of Engel
We were friends really. Then the idea was born for me to come in the studio and try out a few things as background. Paul sang the first parts of Engel to me and i thought "Sounds abit like 'Silly'" and he said "'Silly' is cool, sing it like that".
The state-supported bands had a similar experience as the 'Ost-schrippen' 1) for the first time they weren't needed.
In the year 1991 almost a third of East people were unemployed. Especially women and men over 40 could step down.
My father was at the Academy of Science, and in the West there already was an Acadamy of Science, so they threw him out right away, whoop!, with one swipe. My mother too, whoop! Both in the party, for them initially it wasn't that great.
Paul Landers at the time plays with Feeling B, and the band creates a funny little song from the desolate situation. "Ich such' die DDR" (I'm looking for the GDR) becomes a hit in the scene in 1993. Many want to forgive the old regime and crawl back in the warm nest.
'Ich such die DDR' was a joke, because somehow it was funny, Whoop! the GDR, the country i was born in, is gone. Daft at first, but also interesting. A country, Whoop! nothing left. And an ambassador really has to pack his bags because his country is gone. He can go home. Somehow we thought it an interesting theme.
Feeling B didn't find the GDR again, and because of that, are soon history.
Feeling B's motive was to mess around a bit, be a bit cheeky, explore the East limits, those were very narrow, so pretty easy to explore, and when those were gone, at first i felt dumb. The main reason for our musical existance was gone somehow. It was all a bit...it felt stale, like an old beer.
In the east i liked the east, and in the west i like the west. Because of this i don't have 'Ostalgie' 2) in a sense like the others may have because maybe they noticed that is was pretty great looking back, and the West wasn't as gold as they thought it was. For that reason i never went to a 'Ostalgie' party.
1) 'Ost-schrippen' are a kind of breadroll that was very familiar in GDR bakeries, but were quickly replaced by the treats from western bakeries (there are bakeries now that sell them again)
2) 'Ostalgie' is a wordplay that is often used, made of 'Ost' (the East) and 'Nostalgie' (Nostalgia), it describes a longing for East Germany when things in the West didn't turn out as fabulous as the seemed from East perspective before East and West Germany were reunified in 1989
