ABSTRACT
We hear glass breaking against the background of a cheap beat and a quirky, repetitive electronic bassline that is somehow theatrical. Farther away, we hear the shouts and sounds of human aggression. Something violent and emotional is happening and, back in the foreground, a smooth and soothing voice – a female news presenter – reports rather unemotionally about this emotional instance behind her: we hear the sound of a world as captured by the administration. It is all quite strange. What are we actually listening to? We are in fact listening to a 7″ single, and we are listening to a political protest. The protest occurred in 1981 in West Berlin, on the Kurfürstendamm, or the ‘Kudamm’ in local argot. The record, on which this boulevard is the main actor in a political performance, is called ‘Berlin Q-Damm 12.4.81’, released by the record label Riskant from Cologne. This label, focusing mostly on industrial and new wave music – and with a fish on chicken legs for its logo – would later include this political protest cum musical composition on the album ‘Der Durchdrungene Mensch/Indianer von Morgen’ (The Permeated Man/Indians of Tomorrow) by Heiner Goebbels and Alfred Harth.
