History's Dumpster = GLORIOUS trash! Kitsch, music, fashion, food, history, ephemera, and other memorable and forgotten, famous and infamous pop culture junk and oddities of yesterday and today. Saved from the landfill of time...
Another watch I owned. It was an AM radio on a watch, circa 1979.
It didn't sound very good, coming from a two inch speaker. And in order to see the time, you had to press the lower right button, which the red digital LED display instantly caused a loud screeching noise that overrode the radio signal when the radio was on.
Reception was very limited (Seattle's KJR and KING, then Top 40 stations, which put in strong signals on most radios in the Lynnwood, WA area were barely audible on this radio. But the religious station two miles away in the nearby Edmonds area came in loud and clear.)
It was also heavy and uncomfortable after a few minutes of wearing......
This
was a band from the former German Democratic Republic called Keks
(Cookie). Totally unknown outside the GDR, it's been suggested they
started out as more of a mainstream pop group before going punk in the
early '80s. Didn't last long, they were banned by the East German
government by 1985.
Here's what probably sent the East German
officials over the edge. A track from 1983 called "Hasch mich Madchen"
("Catch Me Girl"), a strange tune that sounds like a bad rehearsal (they
stop and start several times.) Besides, the title (which is repeated
throughout the song), it's hard to figure out what they're talking about
From the guitars, you can also pretty much hear how Rammstein
and every other German industrial metal band got started on this track:
They
later became Knorkator, which was Germany's answer to Ministry. They
broke up in 2008 after one of the members decided to start a new life in
Thailand......
One other act was Nina Hagen. She came to America in the '70s and quickly established herself as one of the STRANGEST acts in the New Wave era of the early '80s.
She existed just outside of the mainstream in New Wave (but never too far away.) She's probably best known for her song "New York New York", which was featured in the bizarre 2003 Macaulay Culkin film Party Monster.
She appeared on Adamski's 1991 hit and video "Get Your Body". But this would be her last US hit. She's still performing today.
BEFORE Joan Jett made it a
rock n' roll national anthem in 1982 (and kept the songwriters set for
life in sheer royalties), here's the 1975 ORIGINAL by the UK band
Arrows.....
