INTO TANYA’S MAILBAG
I get a goodly amount of post, as you might imagine. Much of it centers on a particular question – “What kind of music do you like, then?”. As I believe I have said before, somewhere on this site, I hate music. I do not like any of it. Asking me this is like asking someone with a nut allergy – “so what kind of nuts can you eat, eh?”. The people who wonder about my music tastes are as cretinous as the people who asked in the 1980s “That Boy George – is it a boy or a girl?”. The clue, as with my site and Ryan Adams, is in the name.
Sometimes though further clarification is needed. Here is a missive from “lyz”:
“What kind of music do you like? Building work?”
Well, Lyz, maybe if I had lived thirty years ago the healthy sound of men and machines at work could have been a joy to my ears. Now it fills me with suspicion and dread. Is that Mayor Ken’s boys extending a bus lane…or is it an impromptu gig by Einsturzende Neubaten?
Yes, long before Europe had a single currency it was united in mock-admiration of Einsturzende’s bold pushing of instrumental boundaries. On this record they used a saw! On that a jackhammer! At first I too was intrigued – were they using these machines to destroy musical instruments (with maybe a bit of “collateral damage” to the wielders!)? But no, O horror! They had perverted these honest tools of industry and were using them to make music!
Although something about Einsturzende Neubaten struck me as a little suspect. The builders outside my window are big ugly fellows and any one of them could fit Blixa Bargeld down his bum crack. Were we really expected to believe that his consumptive Goth weed could even lift a pneumatic drill? No, the evidence is compelling: Einsturzende Neubaten are the Milli Vanilli of the industrial avant-garde. Still they can be proud of their legacy: Bob, Wendy, Muck, Roley, Loftey and Dizzy would be nowhere without them.