Putting the Kunst into Country
Posted by Tom on Thursday, 01 Mar 2007
If you've had enough of pretending to be Latin American, The Mighty Mighty now give you an opportunity to pretend to be from a very different part of the world with ten days of The Berlin Bonanza.
Much of this appears to involve a highly traditional Teutonic leisure activity: mass games of ping-pong with a country music accompaniment.
If that doesn't appeal (and why on earth wouldn't it?) there's a bewildering array of other acts and activities on offer. Vodka ice slides! Beer and sausage! Polish/German chansonettes! Krautrock! More photos here and here, excited gossip here, and the urban semiotics of cowboy capitalism here. 
Dude, they're like totally ripping off Country Club. Perhaps you were right about the B&T thing after all. Heh.
awesome. and, at the time of writing this, the photo sidebar is full of even more photos of the event. serendipity now!
Mighty Mighty was B&T months ago.
I'm gonna wait about six more months for it to come full circle.
Well, there was a surprisingly high number of men in suits there last night, drinking shots with lager chasers and looking bemused at the whole thing. And if country music is the new "ironic hip" genre, I'm more than happy to wait a few more months for it to become unfashionable again.
Country music has been ironic hip for the last 5 or so years.
True, but I thought that was more "alt.country" than the sort of stuff they were playing last night. Vaguely OT, I've waited 25 years for eighties synth pop to become hip again, now it has, they've gone and stuffed it up with shouty punky vocals.
fwiw Tom I'm Kapitan Krautrock, and "und Freunde" is my friend DJ Name. Its gonna be really fun.. :)
Ja wohl, mein Kapitan! I'm not so familiar with Can, Faust, etc - more Kraftwerk and Phaedra-era T.D. - so it'll be interesting to hear the wider range of the movement.
True, but I thought that was more "alt.country"
Obviously you've never heard Sindy's Dolly Parton and Juice Newton collection :)
Howdy all. PPC is not a rip-off of anything, really. It comes straight outta Berlin's Wild Wild East, where it's been going for 7 years now. I got involved while living in Berlin, where I got to meet up fellow country music collectors and lovers of fun the Golden Country Boys, who have been kind enough to let me run it here.
All music is my own. By design, it's alte, not alt-country.
Totally original and totally Berlin.
I'd advise folks to take some time out and get a couple of games in next Wed, Thurs and Sat. The rundlauf way is free, relaxed, democratic, and vodka-fuelled, and who can beat that for a good night out?
(Nice to see some links to my flickr photos of the event, too)
Italics are often my way of expressing a lack of seriousness. When we did Germany at the Country Club we just drank lots of beer, thought about playing Deutchlandriser, persecuted gypsies and ate black forest cherry cake. There was no vodka or ping pong. The vodka was saved for Sweden and went nicely with the Swedish porn.
Oh, that sounds perfect (and apologies for mis-reading italics). I supplied the Mighty Mighty folks with the Schulmädchen Report, but have yet to see it. Might be weekend fare.
Country and hip in the SAME sentence??? Language can be so fluid and accomodating at times.
Post new comment