Bernauer Strasse was about 15 minutes to the West of where we were staying in Berlin. In 1961 the Berlin Wall was erected overnight by the East Germans along its length. It was a response to the fact that 3 million East German citizens had chosen to head west since the end of the Second World War. There were so many grotesque and outrageous acts against humanity in the 20th century that the erection of the Wall and the killing of people who tried to escape over it is sadly just one of the more egregious. But it is unquestionably one of the most symbolic.
I was 2 years old when the Wall went up and 30 when it came down. So for a large part of my life it just seemed part of the normal state of affairs. Today it is inconceivable to think that this was seen as the solution to the emigration problem. (And no doubt a lot of other political issues). Inconceivable that that the Wall was ever there. But along Bernauer Strasse you are reminded of how and why and of the human cost. The grounds of what are now a simple open air museum and park were once the no-man’s land between walls. It is a fascinating, rather bleak and humbling place.
Here are a few photos to illustrate that.
Looking West today.
Monument to the front line.
The houses just inside the Wall were scenes of people making desperate escapes. Now they have striking photos on them.
A lot of escape tunnels were dug under no-man’s land. Some are now marked with paths on the surface.
A view of the whole open air museum from nearby watch tower.
A monument to those who died trying to escape.
A remaining piece of the Wall. One thing that struck me was that it wasn’t all that high – though high enough if you are trying to get over it. The TV tower lurking in the background as usual.
I’ve just spent a few days in Berlin with my wife, Kath, and friends Jon and Maggie. For Kath and me it was the first visit; Jon and Maggie hadn’t been since the early nineties. soon after the Wall came down.
I was really looking forward to the trip and it met my expectations big time. An utterly fascinating place. The modern, rebuilt, revitalised Berlin sits alongside the the parts that are still lost in time, while the vibrancy of the here and now, the optimism about the future, is intertwined with the unbelievable and gruesome past. You cannot go to Berlin – at least on your first visit – without experiencing the good and the bad, the exciting, the shocking and the downright bizarre.
I don’t think I’ve been anywhere before that makes you want to sit down with a beer after a day’s sightseeing and talk about history and the meaning of politics, of life, quite so much.
A truly profound experience, Berlin.
I’m not going to write an essay here, which hardly anyone will have time to read. Instead I’m going to run a little series of photos, a bit like my lovelondonscenes, with a few reflections where appropriate.
To start, a few shots from the rooftop of the apartment block where we stayed, courtesy of Circus apartments, in Choriner Strasse, in the Mitte district, just up from Rosenthaler Platz. East Berlin when the city was divided. Now very much the centre of town.
First up, a view of the ubiquitous TV tower, part of the East German legacy, situated just off Alexanderplatz. A reminder of the past, but also a stunning part of the present. It’ll be in a fair few shots. You couldn’t shake it off even if you wanted to.
The dome below is Berlin’s cathedral. Like St Paul’s in London, a survivor of the World War 2 bombings. It was a bit hazy as you looked into the sun. But we were lucky with the weather. Cold, but no rain for four days!
The tower in the background belongs to the Zionskirch, which became a place of resistance in the last days of the DDR regime.
East Berlin refurbished.
And the strikingly new.
So stay with me for more on Berlin. There is so much to see and say….
(And if you ever want to stay in a modern, stylish self-catering apartment, with a good cafe downstairs, within easy reach of all the main Berlin sights, you might want to check out Circus.)
New York, New York. An iconic city, a city that you feel you know even when you’ve never been there. I’ve been once, in 1986, on business trip, for a few days. I’ll never forget the dazzling view of midtown as our helicopter flew in from JFK. (Didn’t fancy that copter, but glad I took it when I saw that view). I did experience that strange sense of familiarity that comes from seeing New York on TV, on film. And also from the music of New York. Music that has been central to my musical journey. Rock, soul, rap, jazz, funk, Latin, new wave, pop. As rich a variety as anywhere in the world.
So how about a Top Ten of New York songs? Could be because the band or singer is from New York, or just that the song conjures up images of the city. Or maybe I’ll go for twelve, just this time, because I just can’t bear to drop any of the tunes below…
12. Blitzkrieg Bop – The Ramones
The band for whom three chords was an extravagance. Dumbhead rock’n’roll. Beach Boys meets Iggy Pop meets Status Quo. Inspired punk. Actually not dumb at all. Pure pop genius.
11. Jet Boy – New York Dolls
I remember first seeing this lot on the Old Grey Whistle Test. Could only have come from New York. Too wild for anywhere else. Four blokes dressed in women’s clothes pumping out cartoon rock’n’roll. Jet Boy is the best thing they did.
10. Black Gold Of The Sun – Nuyorican Soul (ft Jocelyn Brown)
The standout track of a wonderful soulful, funky, latino compilation. The sound of a New York that I’ve never been to, but feel I know through music.
9. Venus – Television
From one of the greatest ever albums, “Marquee Moon”. Tom Verlaine on vocals and guitar. A song from the fragile heart of the city.
8. We Live In Brooklyn Baby – Roy Ayers
The jazz funk master. The title says it all… a languid masterpiece.
7. The Boxer – Simon and Garfunkel
Has any other song conveyed so well what it’s like to be lost in a big, new city?
6. Psycho Killer – Talking Heads
One of my favourite bands. This is from their first album, “Talking Heads 77”. New York’s an edgy city. This is a very edgy song.
5. Fight The Power – Public Enemy
The greatest ever rap band? This was the theme tune to the Spike Lee film “Do The Right Thing”. Elvis was a hero to most, but he never meant **** to me….
4. Spanish Stroll – Mink de Ville
A new wave classic, where punk and Latin soul met in perfect harmony.
3. I’m Waiting For The Man – The Velvet Underground
The place where the New York white boy/girl artists got embroiled with the darkness of the city. The Velvet Underground are the ultimate rock’n’roll sound of New York. It’s seedy, dangerous but exhilarating.
2. You Said Something – PJ Harvey
Polly Jean’s finest moment for me. The girl from the west country who turned rock’n’roll inside out. Here finding a rare moment of love…
On a rooftop in Brooklyn, at one in the morning,
Watching the lights flash,
In Manhattan.
I see five bridges, the Empire State Building,
And you said something
That I’ve never forgotten…..
1. Meeting Across The River – Bruce Springsteen
There are so many Bruce songs I could have chosen, but this short piece, the prelude to the mighty “Jungleland” might be the most poignant. The small time loser, with a deal on the cards that might allow him to break free.
And when I walk through that door, I’m just gonna throw that money on the bed…
The jazzy trumpet in the background reminds me of the time I sat in a cocktail bar, with friends, looking out at Brooklyn Bridge, lit up in the night sky. An unforgettable moment. How many cross that bridge with hope in their hearts?
There are so many songs I could have picked, so many artists I’ve left out. Blondie, Madonna, any number of Bob Dylan songs. Ryan Adams’ “New York, New York” (no relation to the Sinatra wedding party favourite!). So much soul and funk and rap. And one of Bruce’s greatest ever songs, “New York City Serenade”. But the twelve I selected are real favourites, all songs that mean something to me, something about New York City.
What songs remind you of New York?
And hey, let’s leave with a bar room blues from the great man himself, Frank Sinatra. “One For My Baby”.
I guess that makes thirteen.
And er, PS… I plain forgot Jay Z and Alicia Keys’ magnificent tribute to NYC, “Empire State Of Mind”.
Day 2 of the Tube strike. Decided to forgo the buses and just walk, apart from the Ealing Broadway to Paddington leg, which is a nifty 8-10 minutes on the train.
So 25 minutes from home to EB and 45 from Paddington to Victoria, via Hyde Park. A great opportunity to stick the iPod on and enjoy some music as well as the scenes around you. Hyde Park below.
Chose my staple Rockmix playlist, which has more than just rock – a bit of reggae, soul and dance too – put settings on shuffle and started walking!
Made a burden into a pleasure. Here’s what came on….
Boys Don’t Cry – The Cure. Chose this one with a random flick of the wheel. Love the indie-pop-electro combination.
The Faith Healer – Sensational Alex Harvey Band. Awesome riffage from Zal Cleminson.
All Down The Line – Rolling Stones. Keef and Mick Taylor laying down the rhythms on Exile From Main Street.
Old England – The Waterboys. Such a magnificent tune I played it twice.
Star – Primal Scream. Everybody is a star….!
Mary Queen of Arkansas – Bruce Springsteen. This and Primal Scream were all I needed to get from Ealing Broadway to Paddington. Quick.
Black Dog – Led Zeppelin. Put a spring in my step as I set out from Paddington station!
I Follow You – Melody’s Echo Chamber. She’s French.
Oh! No not my Baby. Rod Stewart. Rod at his soulful best
This Wheel’s on Fire. Bob Dylan and the Band. Direct from the Basement Tapes.
Look Wot You Dun – Slade. My early teens!
FM – Steely Dan. This was a great moment. The song worked so well as I strolled through Hyde Park, with the the central London skyline starting to emerge. Urban.
Buzzin’ – Asian Dub Foundation. What a great song! Drum’n’bass, reggae, Bhangra, punk, all in one feisty number.
Tommy Gun – The Clash. Straight after the ADF. What a combination. Absolutely rocking!
Lost in the Flood – Bruce Springsteen. Second track from Asbury Park. Wondrous.
Sun – Two Door Cinema Club. It’s not all nostalgia.
Going to California – Led Zeppelin. Another from Vol 4. Love it!
I Don’t Like Mondays – Boomtown Rats. Big song in its day. Prefer Rat Trap.
The Whisky Makes You Sweeter – Laura Cantrell. A lovely, lovely song. I paused outside the office so I could hear it to the end.
Bob Crow, you cannot defeat us while we have music!
Hyde Park today. An unplanned lake. OK, pond. Not exactly Somerset Levels, but shows how much rain we have had. The ducks – or the seagulls – have settled in.
Can’t beat commuting on a Tube strike day! My alternative arrangements took me to Paddington. Bus to Victoria was the plan…
This was the mayhem on Praed Street. Most buses didn’t even open their doors. Headed down to Edgware Road. Still on Praed Street, this amused me greatly. Hope they were open for business this morning!
Edgware Road buses weren’t much better, so I walked to Victoria. It was fine – very cold and windy, but a good bit of exercise. About half an hour.
(Wrote this on iPad while watching Chelsea beating Man City 1-0 at the Etihad. Impressive multi-tasking, I’m sure you’ll agree!)
Well I said the predictions would probably be wrong! So close though, and agonising for England after coming back brilliantly from 16-3 down. An entertaining battle, which could have gone either way, but it was looking like England’s until the last few minutes.
So what went wrong for England, or right for France? I’ve seen suggestions on Twitter that England weren’t fit enough. I don’t buy that one – early in the second half the commentators were saying France had lost their legs. True, Owen Farrell got cramp with ten minutes to go and that restricted what he could do. But I doubt that was a lack of fitness. Did England lack the experience to close the game down? Again, don’t think so. The backs were certainly youthful, but so were France’s – the game was won by a nineteen year old, Fickou – and the English forwards had plenty of nous and hard experience.
No, I think it was the substitutions that did for England. There are always plenty of them in rugby these days. It’s a brutal game, and the forwards, especially, need refreshing to maintain momentum. But just as England went 21-16 ahead, with a cheeky drop goal from Danny Care, the changes began. And one of the first to go was Danny boy. Coaches often do swap scrum halves at around 60 mins. They play such a pivotal role in the game, and a new man can bring fresh energy and different angles. But Danny was running the game, still showing zip, driving the forwards on. It was a very odd decision, good as the replacement, Lee Dickson, is.
The other change that didn’t work – no surprises – was Dylan Hartley coming off and Tom Youngs coming on. Now the all-action nature of the hooker means a swap is inevitable. It worked brilliantly for France as sub Dimitri Szarzewski made a superb run and pass to Fickou to set up the winning try. But when Youngs replaces Hartley the line out loses its poise, doubts creep in. Youngs made some powerful surges, but some of the control was lost.
And did the awesome Courtney Lawes really need to come off?
I know the coaches are sitting in the stands monitoring the individual performances, making fine judgements about how to strengthen and rebalance the team as the pressure mounts in the final quarter. To this day I don’t really feel I know the half of what’s going on, on the rugby field.
But it looked like England, having powered their way to a lead after a terrible start, had France on the rack, a foot on collective French neck, and then released the pressure. Any game between closely-matched teams is going to ebb and flow. Often when you get on top is when you relax, even if you don’t realise it. Maybe that’s why the subs came on. To keep up the pressure. But another ten minutes or so with Care and Hartley running the show might have made England unassailable.
Maybe.
The great thing about great contests. If, but, maybe, should’ve, could’ve…
England showed a lot of promise (Nowell and Burrell both did well, I thought), France showed they’ve still got the winning mentality. With Ireland and Wales winning as expected, England now have the catch-up challenge. They managed it during the France game and then fell at the last. Can they claw their way back over the five games and make it a four way battle for the Six Nations?
The escape-from-the-gloom-of-winter sportsfest starts tomorrow: the Six Nations rugby. As ever, hope and anticipation runs high before it starts. I offer my predictions below, but frankly, I haven’t got a clue, except to say that Italy and Scotland will battle it out for fifth and sixth.
But here goes:
1. England
2. Ireland
3. Wales
4. France
5. Italy
6. Scotland
Wishful thinking? Maybe. But I think sooner or later England are going to show their true colours and rip it up. This year is possibly too soon as there are still so many places in the team up for grabs, especially in the backs. But there is a conveyor belt of talent which none of the other countries except France can hope for, simply because of rugby playing population size. And there are four Quins in the team for the first game, against France. Robshaw (captain), Care, Marler and Brown. Go for it boys!
Wales have won it for the last two years and have shown you can build a superb national team while having quite weak clubs – or provinces. None have made it into the quarter finals of the Heineken Cup this year. Wales provided the bulk of the victorious Lions in Australia last year. They are the bookies’ favourites, at around 2 to 1. (England and France are next at around 3 to 1). I just wonder though. There’s a lot of strife in Welsh rugby at the moment. Players moving to France, in particular. Will it affect the team?
Every year I think Ireland will translate their power at Heineken level to national performance. Recently they haven’t. But that almost-win against the All Blacks in the Autumn showed what they were capable of. Brian O’Driscoll’s last go. Time to do it?
France, as ever, are the unpredictables. There’s a growing theory that they are suffering from the same syndrome as England in football. Namely that they have recruited so many great foreign players to their domestic league that their own youngsters aren’t breaking through in sufficient numbers. Captain Dusautoir is injured. A major blow. Probably means they’ll win it this year!
Scotland and Italy are doomed to occupy the last two places unless something freakish happens. Small pools of players. Italy getting better each year. Scotland struggling to recapture former glory. But shock results will be sprung somewhere along the line.
So yeah, I’ll put my faith in England, knowing that I’ll probably be wrong. But along the way we’ll see some great games and forget for a while that the southern hemisphere sides are so much better.
Aaah, I’ve been looking forward to this concert for so long, ever since I discovered Lindi’s music last November. I’ve played her three albums – “Cigarettes and Truckstops”, “Little Red Boots” and “Tin Star” – more than anything else recently. Put all three on an iTunes playlist and turned on shuffle. The Lindi Ortega triple album!
I wrote about her music in a recent blog on my Have You Heard? series. It’s country, but it’s soul, rock’n’roll, blues. The great sound of America. Tonight the set naturally featured a lot of the latest album, “Tin Star”, but it was sprinkled with songs from the earlier albums and some wonderful covers. The sound was quite raw and bluesy, with Lindi and “Champagne” James Robertson on guitars, with a drum backing and no more. James Robertson played some amazing guitar, sometimes rocking, sometimes the blues, often eerie, and always complementing the incredible soulful voice of Lindi. I was surprised how often she ditched the guitar and just sang. But then the way she sang…
This is my best effort at the setlist. I knew most of the songs, but there were a couple of new, or unfamiliar ones.
Hard As This – Gypsy Child – Waiting on my Luck to Change – Tin Star – Desperado – Lived and Died Alone – Demons Don’t get me Down – Voodoo Mama – a new song, maybe called Cold Dark Ashes – one I wasn’t sure about – Bluebird – a blues/doo wop thing from a Canadian band – Little Lie – Encore: Ring of Fire – I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry – Cigarettes and Truckstops – The Day You Die.
It seems wrong to pick out highlights, because it was all so good. But of course “Tin Star” was moving, with a lovely, humble preamble from Lindi, dedicating the song to all those singers who haven’t yet been lucky enough to get the break. She has worked hard and long to get where she is today and is clearly so appreciative. It was great to hear the Eagles’ “Desperado” given such a wonderful treatment. “Lived and Died Alone” was weirdly beautiful, with Lindi introducing its macabre lyrics with a touch of knowing humour. Likewise, she managed a self deprecating joke about the general gloominess of her subject matter, before she sang the upbeat “Bluebird”. Except the gist of the song is that she isn’t a bluebird!
The encore was something else. Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” was covered on Lindi’s first album, “Cigarette’s and Truckstops”. Here, live it was a raw blues, with Lindi in full voice and James doing all sorts of weird things on the guitar. Brilliant. Likewise “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry”, written by Hank Williams and performed by so many, including Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley. And then, perhaps the highlight of the whole show for me, “Cigarettes and Truckstops”. Lindi described this as a song about an affair started when on the road. She was back in Toronto, her “date” in LA. She had to get there to see him again. A familiar story, and resonant through its familiarity. And sung so movingly, on the album, and tonight at the Garage, that I can do no more than urge everyone to listen to it. An achingly beautiful love song.
The set finished with the rock’n’roll of “The Day You Die”. Lindi promised to be at the “merch” stall, to sign things and have a hug. That was tempting!. But there was a long queue formed very quickly and I wanted to get home so I could write this while it was fresh in my mind. And I’ve got all the records already. So I didn’t linger.
Still, I felt a bit of regret, because I would have liked to tell her how much I loved the show, how I regard her as just about the best country singer I have ever heard (up there with Lucinda Williams, Gillian Welch, Laura Cantrell). And how, one day, she should do a duet with Bruce Springsteen. They could start with “I’m On Fire” which Lindi has already covered. But maybe they could then sing “Tin Star” together.
Thoughtsfromwestfive 