Berlin's music scene - international, national and local bands. Berlin is the state capital of Germany, but is it also the music capital? It was reported in 2005 that Berlin's music business was booming.
International Success
Ask any non-German to name a German band, the most likely answer is either Rammstein, the Totenhosen, The Scorpions or Die Aertze (from Berlin). Die Aertze's debut album, 'Debil', was released in 1984. Since then, they've grown to international success.
Die Ärtze, international success??? I think you mean only Germany, Austria and maybe parts of Switzerland. I like them, but I would never say they are international.
National Success
The Beatsteaks first shot to national fame with the release of their single 'Let Me In' in 2002.
Corvus Corax - well known in the medieval/gothic circles, this band based in Berlin has been producing records since the 1980s.
Wir sind Helden are from Berlin, or is it Hamburg? According to the Amazon.de spiel and Musicmagnet are from Berlin
There's a big Deutsche Rap scene in Berlin with dodgy characters like Fler on the Aggro Berlin label. The kind of electro-punk pop type thingie with Mia, 2Raumwohnung and I would say one of the most succesful pop outfits in Germany the last
15 years or so... Rosenstolz
The rap scene in Berlin also includes Sido, as famous for the metal skull mask he wears as for his agressive lyrics, e.g. in his first hit 'Mein Block'.
I'm pretty sure the absolutely great neo-jazz band Micatone is from Berlin. They are wonderful - definitely recommend checking them out.
Ich & Ich are from Berlin too. Good sound. You'll know them from a cartoon video on MTV for the song "Dienen" where a little kitten goes to great pains, literally, to befriend a large dog and lift him out of the doldrums of his life. Cool tune.
Also don't forget Sportfreund Stiller (sp?)
Sportfreunder Stiller are from Munich (Germering).
... though I always get confused ...always thought the Beatsteaks were from Nürnberg and Blumfeld were from Berlin ...they're from Hamburg ..
Any road, that Magnetmusic link gives the lowdown on who's from the Hauptstadt ...never heard of the 'Brainless Wankers' before but I'll watch out for them ...as for the most successful internationally, domestically, etc-ally ...hmmm, don't know but I would say internationally Rammstein at the moment but I have no hard facts & figures ...just from their world touring, appearance in the film 'XXX' and what I read in the english-speaking press (US, UK)..
There's a little band out of Berlin called Tanzwut that you may have heard of. Very popular with goths, I'm told. You might want to give them a listen.
According to UA, Tanwut is a reincarnation (or something like that, a couple of the guys play in both bands) of Corvus Corax (mentioned in her post). They had a concert here on May 18, I couldn't make it because I had band practice but they sound really interesting. Oh and one of the guys (Ardor) is really hot.
Classic, long-standing techno label Tresor (Juan Atkins, Joey Beltram, Jeff Mills, Drexciya, etc) is based in Berlin, and organizes a lot of clubnights/parties both in Berlin and worldwide, with artists from the label itself and others.
So is dub/hip-hop/experimental label ~scape (burnt friedman & the nu dub players, pole, jan jelenik, etc)
The rap-reggae-funk group Seeed, who have an extremely popular song out right now called "Ding!", are from Berlin.
If you haven't seen it, the video for "Ding!" is pretty funny.
The song itself is a terrible earworm. If I hear even a snippet of it, I'll be singing "tingalingaling you pretty thing" for the rest of the day. Actually I heard the song for the first time last month and it's pretty much been running through my head on a continual loop ever since.
Yes the band is from Berlin, but only the singer is from there, the others, are from Bremen, Hannover and Karlsruhe. But none of them are from Hamburg.
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