Rock and the Wall

Scan page 10

THE March 9 edition of Channel 4's "The Tube"

reported on the rock scene in the divided city of Berlin.

The "on location" report was of particular interest as it touched several times on the relationship between the music scene and contemporary German politics.

In West Germany the output of many punk groups is geared to the peace movement. Many bands model themselves on the British group "Crass" , with playing on peace themes, complemented by subversion gimmickry.

So successful have some bands been apparently that they have had their records confiscated by the police on the grounds that the material is anti-state. When the government of West Germany takes actions one would have more normally expected to occur in East Germany, it is an indication of the degree of threat politicised punk poses to the Establishment.

In West Berlin punk thrives with groups using deserted cellars and basements as improvised studios. Punk, to many, is expression for the youth subculture, centred around the most organised network of squats in Western Europe.

Alternative lifestylism has for several years extended its Police disperse a rock festival in Czechoslovakia. influence beyond the side of the Wall.

In East Berlin many young people are prepared to bear both the political risks and the financial cost in an attempt to create their own counter culture.

As in West Germany the people seem to take their cue from British bands.

In the Russia of the 1960s Beatles records were the most prized black market items. In contemporary East Berlin it is records by The Clash, UK Subs and Dead Kennedys.

In the GDR there is strict licensing of bands and only DICO whose output meets party approval can perform publicly without harassment and purchase decent instruments.

Unofficial bands play where they can and obtain equipment from the black market. A synthesiser in West Berlin costs around 700 marks but, smuggled across the Wall it soars in price up to 9,000 marks.

A clue to why young East Germans go to all the risk and expense was graphically illustrated when the programme showed clips from "RUND", state television's equivalent of "Top of the Pops"

Two or three mediocre bands with a safe, slushy output performing in an indoor studio as part of a concert for the state-sponsored "Rock for Peace" campaign. If "RUND" is the best entertainment the East German Stalinists can provide for their young people then the growth of music counterculture is hardly surprising.

Despite its limitations, it was good to see Channel 4 prime time television giving lively and politically sympathetic treatment to a youth scene whose backdrop is the Wall that symbolises the artificial division of Europe.