Just because some poor sod searching for the lyrics of CODO reminded me I hand’t put any Neue Deutsche Welle on for a long time. Yes, there was a time during the late seventies and early eighties when alll over Europe new generations of musicians took the punk 2-tone ans ska influences coming from Britain, embraced the d.i.y. spirit infusing the punk movement and made it their own. There had always been a certain cultural cringe in European pop music, but when punk hit the continent a whole generation of bands decided to make music in their own language as a conscious, political choice, because you could make real pop music in Dutch, or French or even German. Hence the Neue Deutsche Welle, which started in the underground but soon broke out and became incredibly popular, not just in Germany, but all over the continent. The video I opened with was one of the more succesful NDW bands, Extrabreit, with their greatest hit.
The Spider Murphy Gang with their greatest hit, Skandal im Sperrbezirk. Once heard, it stays in your head forever.
No. I can’t say I knew Geier Sturzflug either, but they turn out to have been a Bochum band, with this being their sole hit. But you’ll probably know Opus. Not quite NDW, certainly not in this version: