Madonna is famous for, among other things, reinventing herself. “Reinventing” is show business talk for falling to a new level of depravity. You never see the Hollywood press praising someone for finding faith or cleaning up their act but if they demean Christian values or morality, they get raves. So I was interested to see if this was some sort of political or religious statement or just the latest fashion craze.

So I watched the performance for a few moments. The woman who was the focus to the number then moved to a piano inside a glass case which later ignited in flames. I started to suspect that this wasn’t Madonna because to the best of my knowledge she doesn’t play the piano and is old enough to remember that the late Michael Jackson set himself on fire awhile back. At the end of the song the woman leaned back with outstretched arms as if to say I have exhausted myself as an artist by dancing and lip syncing for three minutes.

In a few seconds I found this was indeed not Madonna but a woman who goes by the name of Lady Gaga, a reference to a “Queen” song. I was fascinated by this performer but not for the reason you might think. As a comedian I detected a note of farce in the act. The whole thing seemed to me to have a touch of “Borat” included.

With that in mind I did a little research on Ms. Gaga. The title “Lady” is a fake! I found no record of her elevation to that rank by any royal court. Perhaps she wants us to think she is English like Madonna and Kathleen Turner who have started using British accents for no apparent reason. She did however recently meet the Queen of England and wasn’t sure whether to bow or curtsey so she did a little of both. Lady Gaga is also prone to wearing outrageous get-ups which she refers to as “fashion.” She also has a habit of referring to herself in the third person. Just when I was letting all of this pretentiousness get to me I realized I was being had. Like a mark in the middle of a con who suddenly realizes things aren’t what they seem, I caught on.

Lady Gaga, I am a fan! You see, this performance artist isn’t following in the footsteps of Madonna. She is channeling the spirit of Tony Clifton. She is having us all on, the music industry, the fashion industry and the general public. Andy Kaufman lives.

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.)

From Laibach, Rammstein also stole the cross as a symbol, a collectivist ethos, and a fondness for flirting with totalitarian imagery. Most strikingly of all Rammstein’s singer Till Lindemann’s vocal style ‘borrowed’ heavily from Milan Fras’ absurdly deep bass snarl. As Laibach did not believe in ‘originality’ they did not complain; and as Rammstein were a much better band, they did not compete either. 

But Rammstein also introduced elements hitherto absent from hard rock, such as lyrics informed by German romanticism (decadent and otherwise), and elements of martial music. Rammstein thoroughly embraced their national identity and this unabashed ‘Germanness’ became key to their success- disciplined, ultra precise drumming, grinding riffs played by two guitars in perfect synchronicity, futuristic synths, a surprising ear for melody and sturm und drang lyrics sung entirely in German, with every guttural sound emphasized, and every ‘R’ rolled almost to the point of parody. On the last tour two members even wore lederhosen. Rammstein had thus revealed that heavy metal in its ideal form was not Anglo-American but Germanic, and having done so built a massive fan base in Europe, Asia and Latin America.  

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Rammstein’s live shows are legendary. The band loves fire: walls of flame; fire-breathing; self-immolation, you name it. At the center of this grandiose spectacle however stands front-man Till Linemann wearing a look of profound suffering on his face, as if he is being martyred every night. When he’s not in pain he inflicts it, usually upon the keyboard player, Flake, who is as lanky and skinny as Lindemann is huge. On Rammstein’s last tour, Lindemann roasted Flake alive in a giant cauldron while singing an ode to the German cannibal Armen Meiwes. Flake was also Lindemann’s victim in simulated male rapes that took place on a nightly basis during the band’s tours of the late 90s and early 2000s (I shall spare you the link.) And yet however outrageous that sounds, Rammstein’s provocations are always informed by an ultra-dry, ultra-black German humor.  

Unsurprisingly, Rammstein’s love of shock tactics has embroiled the band in numerous scandals. Their first album cover was an outrageous piece of totalitarian homoerotic camp, depicting the band as oiled, muscular Übermenschen stripped to the waist, standing in front of a giant flower (I remember wondering whether I had made a terrible mistake the day I bought it on cassette in Moscow’s Gorbushka market). German music critics accused them of being Nazis. Delighted, the band then used footage from Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia in the video for their cover of Depeche Mode’s Stripped. Later however Rammstein would insist that they were perplexed by all the Nazi hullabaloo- was it not obvious that they were fervent leftists? After all on their 3^rd album ‘Mutter’ (the one with the dead baby on the cover) they had recorded a song entitled Links 234. Now admittedly this is simply the march ‘Left 2, 3, 4’ sung in German and the video showed thousands of ants stamping around in militaristic fashion, even saluting grainy black and white footage of the lead singer. But Rammstein insisted that it was a song of praise for left ideas, and really meant ‘forward with leftism’, or some other such nonsense. Whether the band’s members were being naïve, humorous or archly ironic, none of the other songs on the al