Sunday, March 13, 2011
Madame JoJo would put up (with) anyone
9th September. We go to see this gig at Madame JoJo’s. The place seems a bit self-important these days, but the comings and goings in Soho are always a sight. The opening band, Still Corners, do an enjoyable revisiting of the Cocteau Twins (they’re trendy again?). A mediocre G&T is 5 pounds, outrageous but still cheaper than in nasty Bar25. Then the headliners come on stage, a girls’ band. I’m a bit put off by how excessively they are done up in this obsessive-compulsive North-American way, where after 3 laborious hours in front of the mirror the aspirants come out looking fully plastinated and put such amounts of effort into looking effortlessly cool that it makes even the most affable observer squirm.
Anyway, these girls look like America’s next top model doing “retro rock” and they attract a coordinated crowd. They also sound like America’s next top model, come to think of it. Re-heated vintage R&B, sterilized into the aseptic chick-rock you get as a free CD with Glamour magazine. The Go-Go’s are probably this band’s ideal, but they sound more like a pompous Bangles cover-band. And then comes the posturing... flicks of the trendy haircut so that the locks fall on your face in that cool way; matching lascivious flicks of the hips that swing your guitar in that equally cool way. The singer keeps repeating in her insufferable sexy drawl: ‘’ So yeah, our new album will be out soon ... and, yeah, you guys should buy it!” A powerful, hypnotising, subliminal advertising technique she’s deploying, this one. The Pill doesn’t bother getting up from her seat, placed in a corner from where she can’t see them, and even eager me gives up before the last song. Remembering this band will give me hope in the dark moments when Primrose tells me we’re too saccharine-pop. They are called The Likes and yeah, you guys should buy their album.
Dildo masks and shameful intoxication in Shoneburg
7th September. I suggest to das Pill that we wear penises on our faces so that she feels less old during the gig. Yeah, a schlock tactic, obsolete since 1977 - I mean, is there any respectable bourgeois offended by S&M gear these days? Not even me mom, I suppose... bourgeois sophistication means edgy experimentation and a sore arse. Of course, I am hiding this facile gimmick behind a popoststructuralist explanation: “It’s a mockery of the phallus, you know, rock stars trying to convince themselves they have it by screaming and posturing and shaking and flaunting and dangling, obvious as a dick in the middle of one’s face”. Of course, das Pill sees right through it and snarls at my intellectual laziness without lifting her eyes from the “Dos & Don’ts” page on the Glamour website.
So, tonight I’m on, solo and ‘unmasked’, in a pub in Schoneburg. Around, as far as the eye can see, fit moms coo over their offspring, compete in buying expensive German arts materials for their exceptionally gifted children and drink fair-trade macchiato with organic rhubarb cake (as part of their daily toil to save the impoverished farmers of the third world and the planet). Sometimes, the keen glances bourgeois moms send passers-by seem to say: “Hey, did you see my offspring, what a marvel, huh? Oh yes, I know, I’m so blessed, it is miraculous really, I’m deliriously happy...” you get the picture... But here in gritty Berlin, these beaming moms, gulping down their social justice-flavoured cakes and rotating their lighthouse eyes, seem to say: “An expert mom, activist and international philanthropist, all in a day’s work. Who can argue now that a housewife is a talented butler with a keen uterus?”
Anywayz, this is a sort of neighbourhood pub, away from the activist moms, and through Florian’s connections with the landlady I am advertised as: “Tonight: La Mordue (The Diagonikals) - Electropop”. Last night they had two ageing long-haired geezers self-defined as “The String Wizards” and tomorrow it’s “Bands from Latin America” night. It’s a laid back corner pub, people with cute fat old dogs; youngsters with crew cuts, golden earrings, and trousers half jeans-half camouflage; and a very friendly young waitress dressed like Nena circa 1983. So I reckon das Pill was right, the penis masks would’ve been a bit inappropriate.
One of the landlady’s mates shares a spliff with me in the back, and I’m downing these mate and vodka drinks they love over here – vodka on top of a sort of Red Bull thing, hyper-caffeinated, hyper-carbonated, hyper-sugary, the strong artificial flavour suggesting it was hard to hide the burned rubber taste ... It’s VERY Berlin though, I’m told, so it’s cool. Soon I’m babbling like an overexcited bunny.
Later I’m trying to stand up but I’m unable to, the world is rippled tunnels, slips from my grip left, right and round-and-round. I seem to be stuck between a car’s front and the wall against which it is parked and there’s a pinkish puddle very near... I lean on both car and wall, like a climber in a crevasse, and get half up, enough to hear Florian calling my name, I even see him, blurry, wavering, and cannot respond. The fear of seeing myself in the frigid light of the act pushed me to obnubilation again. Cold sweats of terrorized self-doubt around 5 a.m. in my bed...
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
‘Derelict’ orientalism in Bar 25
6th September. So, surprise: that Bar 25 that made me agonize a few nights ago just opened a venture, ‘Johannesburg 24’: a mock shanty town plastered with pictures of Africans, where the punters can watch Germany play the World Cup in a ‘fun’, ‘exotic’ decor. All topped up by a massive Adidas logo. Cannot fail to remind one of that pearl of sarcasm in ‘Zoolander’: a fashion show called Derelict, in which the forever-frustrated fashionista obsession with being ‘edgy’ and ‘avant-garde’ meets its liberal-fascista doppelganger. And they charged me 7 euros for a shitty G&T? I’m not going to lose sleep over looking cool in these wankers’ quarters anytime soon (“Of course you won’t, dear” smiles the mommydaddygodmonster). To think that I had a couple of these fucking G&Ts!
frustrated tchuss-tchuss, la mordue.
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Young Americans do Berlin
3rd September. Yup, everyone who thinks they are unique, gifted and rebellious wants to be a Berliner for a bit but few desire Berlin as much as the USA youth. A suffocating parent-offspring relationship this USA-Europe rivalry, each trying to insert their pimped-up ego into the other’s fantasies.Berlin gives the American so much more than European capital credentials – it reflects back on her the golden, righteous light saviours and victors bask in. Shamed, guilty Berlin reminds the world in lurid sycophantic tones that America has freed Germany, Europe and the cosmos of tyranny. At least twice. This infantile version of modern history is enough to fill the heart of any patriotic American with pride but on top of it, in Berlin she can find an American art museum, a JFK museum, a wall museum, the wall itself, and an interminable scattering of commemorative plaques, statues, coats of arms, bars, street names and baby names (probably) praising the greatness of the USA. The young Americans are thus in a privileged position to swallow up Berlin into their fantasies and gyrate around the locations where JFK had a Pilsner enema, Iggy Pop the hiccups and Warhol a currywurst. Berlin is more than up for it. The – unintentional - brilliance of “Lost in Translation” is that it documents the protagonist’ efforts to ‘Americanize’ Tokyo. His difficulty is not in understanding Japan, he is utterly uninterested in that and understanding is dangerous for a rudimentary subject like him. His difficulty is that most of the time Tokyo resists being made consumable. Despite his efforts, this hero cannot become the curator, judge and the star of that place; he is used as a stage prop by the place rather than the either way around, as is habitual. He keeps on trying though, in increasingly pathetic outbursts. Unfortunately, the film is usually misrepresented as yet another proof of how utterly and irreducibly ‘different’ and ‘incomprehensible’ Japan is, a tactic used by the Westerner whenever rejected by her object of desire.
Now, if you're not from the USA don't smile smugly! Consuming people and places is a colonial tactic perfected and systematically used by all travelling Westerners, from backpackers to holiday-packers. As any decent colonial tactic must, it allows over-consumption without risk of indigestion. Did you ever notice how we describe our travels using a term that also signifies sexual possession: "I 'did' South America"?
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