#19 - The Wall

“I’ll Come Running” – Chica and the Folder

I realized I didn’t really write much in my last post about the music (aside from Barbara Morgenstern) at the Berlin Bedroom Beats festival. Well, it was really good. I liked Isan, especially. And Portable. It wasn't especially well attended, but hey---what do you expect from a bunch of agoraphobic laptop artists and their admirers? Our scene is small but quality.

I do notice that a lot of the artists at the festival sound like Brian Eno. Even if they aren’t covering his songs outright (like Chica & The Folder, above, who didn’t perform), they are unfurling his ambient drones, or his floaty, oddly-percussive, synth –pop (I never really thought of him as a “synth-pop” act, but I guess he is). Actually, Berlin’s highest pop-music profile probably dates back to the work Eno and David Bowie did here back in the ‘80s---the wonderful trilogy of Low, Heroes and Lodger. It’s no wonder local artists would look back to that. In my mind, it’s Bowie’s artistic high point. And “Heroes” has got to be burned into the consciousness of any pop-minded Berliner---that love story of two people meeting at the wall. Which now, of course---at least what remains of it---is a graffiti gallery which I see in the morning from the veranda of the hotel as I drink coffee and eat very good muesli.

German food is under-rated, I should note. At least their baked goods. Speaking to Michael Mark on the phone yesterday, he likened a culture’s bread to its philosophy. Germany’s dense, nourishing; France’s elegant, delicate, rich; America’s airy, cheap, lacking in roughage.