You had to hide it somewhere that no one would find it:  your very first record, tape, CD– whatever medium– that Mom and Dad didn’t approve of.  You had to listen to it through headphones or when they were out of the house.  You had to do this because you knew it was an act of rebellion; your parents did not want you hearing that music performed that way with those lyrics, and you decided that you wouldn’t obey them.  According to the new documentary Rockin’ The Wall, that simple moment of defiance, experienced collectively by the citizens of the Soviet Union, contributed to and may have even defined the fall of the Berlin Wall.

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Co-produced by Big Hollywood contributor Larry Schweikart, who first wrote about this issue in his book 7 Events That Made America America, and narrated by Adam Baldwin, Rockin’ the Wall gives viewers an intimate look into life in East Berlin, where citizens were restricted by a literal concrete wall from the same free enterprise and thought that their neighbors in the Western half of the city enjoyed.  Commentators in the film range from bow tie-wearing historians to shaggy-haired rock musicians, with the most interesting tidbits coming from individuals who had lived under Soviet rule in East Berlin (some of whom escaped before the wall fell).  Noting that this was the first time in history where walls were used to keep citizens in rather than invaders out, the film conveys a palpable feeling of the quiet rebellion simmering against a regime so petty as to restrict women from putting their hair in ponytails.

The film’s thesis, that rock and roll music brought down the wall, seems spurious at first.  After its fast-paced introduction, we’re treated to a montage of aged musicians opining on the nature of rock and roll, how it embodies liberty and rebellion, and we’re thinking, “Okay, but how does this relate to–” right as director Marc Leif unleashes a barrage of information that convincingly portrays rock music as the driving force of anti-Communist subversion.  We learn about Radio Free Europe, whose modern music penetrated the wall and was forbidden by the Soviets.  We learn about the black market for Western records, where demand was so high that a single LP could cost 1/10th of a week’s wages.  We learn about the conferences for young people warning them of the physical and mental dangers of rock and roll.

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So President Obama says he’d like to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki – something no sitting U.S. president has ever done. Of course, there’s a reason they haven’t: it could be seen as criticism of a painful decision that ended the bloodiest war in history.

Now, I don’t mind if Obama wants to go, and it’s probably presumptuous of me to criticize him for what he might say there, since he hasn’t gone yet.

But if I didn’t, then I wouldn’t have a Gregalogue, and that’s not fair to me, or to those delightful unicorn voices in my head.

And besides, I can pretty much go by what I’ve seen of Obama already. Fact is, whenever he’s overseas, he tends to translate American success into past arrogance. Plus, I don’t think he’ll go to Hiroshima and say, “We did it to save lives,” because that undermines his whole point about nuclear weapons being evil. (more…)

I recently attended an event at The Ronald Reagan Presidential Museum celebrating the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The event titled: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of the Wall: Reflections from Yesterday, Lessons for Today, was a conference packed with an impressive list of speakers ranging from world leaders, dignitaries and influential personalities from around the world. 

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The event was comprised of three panel sessions and a luncheon keynote speech. The goal of the conference was to look at specific events that led to the fall of the wall, the people responsible, the impact of that historic event, and the legacy of the man who led the charge to end the Cold War, Ronald Reagan. There were two sessions that stood out at this event.  The first was the keynote speech by former Secretary of State for Ronald Reagan, George P Shultz.  His speech shed light into the unique leadership Ronald Reagan provided that we fail to find in our elected officials today.  Shultz delivered a rare look into the mindset of the Soviets at the time, and the determination and constancy of purpose that Reagan possessed.  He spoke of how Reagan approached the use of force with a subtle pot shot at the Obama administration.  (more…)

For most non-Teutons the idea of German rock is not very appealing. The fatherland of Bach and Beethoven may well have produced many interesting experimental groups (Kraftwerk,  Einstürzende Neubauten etc) but on a global, top 40 level it’s an entirely different matter. Consider: 

1) The Scorpions- hair metal popular in the 80s, approximately as good as Winger.

2) KMFDM- plodding industrial metal from the late 80s/early90s.

3) That Nena chick of ‘99 luftballons’ fame. 

In short, a roster of acts so unnecessary that we could safely consign them to the same dark abyss as Croatian thrash or Russian hip hop and the human race would be none the poorer for it. And yet fortunately for the glory of popular Deustche musik this is not the end of the story- for in the mid 90s what rough beast slouched towards Germany to be born? Breathing flames and reveling in death and all manner of deviancy, its name was Rammstein. 

Formed in the early 1990s by veterans of several crap East German groups, Rammstein consisted of six men in their 30s who had grown up under communism. They took their name from Ramstein, a US military base where a terrible disaster had occurred during an air show in 1988, adding an extra ‘m’ to dislocate it slightly. With the Berlin Wall fallen, the band was now liberated to steal as many sounds and ideas as they desired. These included elements of classic heavy metal, industrial metal and gothic synth pop such as Depeche Mode; not to mention liberal appropriations from Laibach, a Slovenian group fascinated by the links between mass culture, pop music and totalitarianism. (If you have a few minutes I recommend you watch Laibach’s reinterpretations of Queen’s One Vision and Opus’ Life is Life: the originals will never sound the same again.) (more…)

During the Cold War, a slew of movies came out that dealt with the possibility of a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union. This is not surprising since the atom and hydrogen bombs were the most powerful weapons ever devised by man. Well, almost.

I’ll get to that somewhat nervy assertion in a bit, but first a little background.

Among the cinematic slew released during those years of cold, are two of my favorite films, Dr. Strangelove and Fail-Safe. Both dealt with strikingly similar themes, unintentional nuclear holocaust, yet in entirely different tones.  But cold war themes weren’t that varied by their very nature, since inevitably the worst case scenario was the best case plot device and nothing brings down the house like bringing down the house.

With that said, still, there’s so much similarity between the two stories that law suits were indeed filed and production schedules slowed. This worked out to Stanley Kubrick’s advantage as his Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb was released almost a year ahead of Sidney Lumet’s Fail-Safe. In my opinion Kubrick’s is a better film than Lumet’s and not due to slowed schedules, either. But both are magnificent, and because of their approaches to the topic, very different  and essential part of the genre. (more…)

Part 1 of what I half-jokingly called my “Manifesto.”

In a fiscal conservative’s utopian dreamworld, there would be no federal funding for the arts (or so many other government agencies or programs for that matter).  This has been our position since the inception of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in the early 1970’s.  We’ve been saying that if elected, we would abolish these misguided programs and departments and bring our government back to the bare-bones constitutionally described role that it has and leave everything else to the states.

We’ve held the influential bully pulpit of the presidency for twenty of the past twenty-eight years, and what has happened to the NEA?  It has grown.  While we have stood on principle,  we have also stood on the sidelines.  The founding fathers would be outraged that the federal government is funding art with taxpayer money, but because we are on the sidelines standing on our principles, all of that money is going to the people creating art with messages that undermine our very existence. (more…)