Die Männergeschichten sind ja das Eine, aber eigentlich macht sie ja wunderschöne Musik...in fact eines meiner Lieblingsalben der letzten Jahre

I grew up with punk rock. My first concert ever was The Clash here in the Berner Festhalle my mother took me there. I was way impressed by way Joe Strummer was rocking the stage. Coming home from school my mother used to listen to "the Stranglers" and "PIL".
But when I became a teenager I was more into Nina Hagen and " Neue Deutsche Welle"

It was dub who made me listen to punk rock again. Reading Bass Culture made me realize the close link between dub music and punk rock. But why did all the teds like to go to reggae parties? What made uk working class kids listen to dub?

Don Letts, son of black immigrants has been there right from the beginning. Reading his book Culture Clash gives you insight into the time when punk rock happened.

Letts worked as a DJ in the Roxy, a London nightclub during the original outbreak of punk in England. As few bands of that era had yet recorded, there were limited punk rock records to be played. Instead, Letts included many dub and reggae records in his sets, and is credited with introducing those sounds to the London punk scene, which was to influence The Clash and other bands. As a tribute, he is pictured on the cover of the album Super Black Market Clash.

Culture Clash: Dread Meets Punk Rockers by Don Letts

Don Letts is Grammy Award-winning film-maker, celebrated DJ, co-founder of Big Audio Dynamite, British black icon. As a first-generation British-born black, Don Letts quickly learned to assimilate aspects of Jamaican culture into inner-city urban London life. Leaving school, he gravitated to Chelsea's King's Road, inhabiting the fashion world alongside Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren. As resident DJ at the fledgling punk club The Roxy, Letts pumped a roots-reggae soundtrack to a predominantly white audience that included members of The Clash and the Sex Pistols, forging a link between the two clashing cultures. A chance meeting provided him with a Super-8 movie camera, the result of which was released as "The Punk Movie" and set Letts on a career resulting in over 300 influential promo videos featuring Sex Pistols, Pil, the Slits, The Clash, Bob Marley, and even the platinum-selling "Musical Youth", and most recently Franz Ferdinand. His feature films include "Dancehall Queen", the Grammy Award-winning "Westway to the World" - his documentary on The Clash - and Clash on Broadway. He recently directed feature documentaries for the BBC on Sun Ra and Gil Scott-Heron. Alongside The Clash's Mick Jones in Big Audio Dynamite, Letts pioneered dance culture and sampling techniques, hanging out with Africa Bambaataa, Grandmaster Flash, and the cream of the New York City hip-hop scene. Admired by Fellini, a friend of Bob Marley and John Lydon, and a documentarian of The Clash, Don Letts has never pigeonholed himself. This book is a firsthand account, told in Letts' own words - it's highly visual, revelatory, irreverent, entertaining, and staunchly individual.

once into the London of the 1970 you can also read these two books, both highly recommendable:

Human Punk by John King
Vintage; New Ed edition

The antihero of Human Punk is Joe Martin: poor white trash from the council estates of Slough. In the novel's first third, set at the "arse-end of the 70s", Joe is a teenage no-hoper into cheap booze and cheaper girls. He's also into the new punk music that has finally percolated down to the Middlesex hinterlands.

Stories we could tell by tony parson
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

This is a book about growing up and being young, about sex and love and rock and roll, about the dreams of youth colliding head-on with the grown-up world. Sometimes you can grow up in just one night...It is 16th August 1977 - the day that Elvis dies - and Terry is back from Berlin, basking in the light of his friendship with legendary rock star Dag Wood. But when Dag arrives in London he sets his sights on a mysterious young photographer called Misty, the girl that Terry loves. Will the love of Terry's life survive this hot summer's night? Ray is the only writer on the inky music weekly "The Paper" who refuses to cut his hair and stop wearing flares. On the eve of being sacked, Ray finds comfort in the arms of an older woman called Mrs Brown. But John Lennon is in town for just one night and Ray believes that if he can interview the reclusive Beatle, he can save his job. Can John Lennon and the love of an older woman really save a young man's soul? Leon is on the run from a gang called the Dagenham Dogs who have taken exception to one of his bitchy reviews. Hiding out in a disco called The Goldmine, Leon meets Ruby - the dancing queen of his dreams. But will true love or the Dagenham Dogs find Leon before the night is over? Tony Parsons goes back to his roots for this deeply personal book - the story he has been waiting to tell.

My love for Dub and Dub reggae  music started one sunday morning when I listened for the first time to the Aggrovators and King Tubby's Dub Jackpot LP.
Since then my dub record collection has grown quite a bit.

A brilliant book on jamaican music from the early ska to dub and reggae is Bass Culture.

Bass Culture: When Reggae Was King by Lloyd Bradley
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd

“Jamaican music at last has the book it deserves” PRINCE BUSTER, from his foreword

“The first comprehensive history of every aspect of reggae (and) it could be the last that talked to those who were there at stage one...Bradley leaves no stone unturned in a coruscating rollercoaster ride through murder, major label gripes, ganja paranoia and racism, ending with Luciano hoping for a return to good songs and good singers. And if UB 40 get a mention, I missed it. Isn`t that recommendation enough for you ? “ MOJO

“Switches between informed analysis and intoxicating aural history...With epic contributions from major players such as PrinceBuster, Horace Andy, Bunny Lee and Dennis Bovell” GQ

“Fascinating...written with passion, style and gusto. This is a book many musicians would benefit from reading” JAH WOBBLE, Independent on Sunday

“A compelling social and musical history running from Fifties soundsystem roots to contemporary dancehall...filled to the brim with anecdotes to keep the most hardened music-head happy” FACE

“A classic...Hilarious in places, peppered with social and historical comment in others, this is a fascinating account detailing how reggae evolved in Jamaica and became a global phenomenon” NEW NATION

Funny enough Lloyd Bradly Lloyd Bradley is also classically trained chef, which links this reccomendation to the last one ;-)

So if you are into Jamaican music read this book!

Another book I would like to recommend in this context is :

Collin Macinnes, City of Spades
Penguin Books Ltd

A portrait of black immigrants in the London of the 1950ies.

"...His reputation, although somewhat faded now, rests on his three "London novels" of the 50s, all of which betray a great deal of sympathy for the underdog. Absolute Beginners (1959) suggests the turmoil of a decade that witnessed the rise of the teenager as a cultural force. Mr Love and Justice (1960) examines the glamorisation of crime and criminals and the hypocrisy of the police, especially when dealing with pimps and prostitutes. But it is the first of these novels, City of Spades (1957) that is in many ways the most remarkable, both in its subject-matter and form.

Montgomery Pew, a cautious and shy Englishman, is employed as a welfare officer among London's new black immigrants. He is told to expect trouble from these somewhat excitable and not always trustworthy West Indians and West Africans, but he does not heed his superior's words of warning. He is attracted to the invigorating, vibrant, and above all new world that these newcomers inhabit, and he subsequently loses his job. What he gains is entry into a world altogether different from Jimmy Porter's or Jim Dixon's or Billy Liar's. It is a hidden, bohemian London of nightclubs, shebeens, West African late-night restaurants, squats, brothels, cafés, bent coppers, gay pick-up joints, Indian restaurants on the Thames, all operating with dizzying intensity behind the façade of post-Edwardian respectability that 50s Britain tried desperately to affect.

City of Spades has an ingenious structure, being narrated in short, episodic bursts, first from Montgomery's "white" point of view, and then from that of Johnny Fortune, a genial West African scoundrel who befriends him..."

Read the whole Guardian article "Kingdom of the blind"

City of spades is out of print and has to be bought second hand.

The british neocore group Hadouken brings freshness to the game! Their music is an agressive but amusing mix of punk, UK rap and rave. So next time, when you wanna ride your bike by night while being on ecstasy, be sure to have Hadoukens "Liquid Lives" on your iPod playlist.

Last night I zapped through the TV-program and got stuck on MTV. There was this video/song from a group called Gym Class Hereos. There are rumors that these guys were casted, a product of the US music industry. I don't give a damn, because this song - the chorus seems to be a cover - runs through my brain since I've heard it... (And I would sing it the whole day if I would be a good or at least average singer). Just one thing: Skip the rap/beatboxing part, the only thing that sucks about this song...

The gossip rock our world since we saw them, on the brilliant documentary series Tracks on arte, in 2005.
Beth Ditto the lead singer of the band is one of the most charismatic people in the music business. Here voice is amazing, their sound if fantastic and Beth has a incredible stage presence.

In the last weeks and months The Gossip have become famous in the uk with their single "Standing in the Way of Control" , a response to the US government's decision to deny gays the right to marriage in the U.S.  Ditto has been recently voted by the music magazine NME as the 'coolest person on the planet', but doesn't fit the usual 'female singer superstar' stereotype. For a start she's gay -- perhaps not all that unusual -- but she also weighs over 200 pounds and she's a committed and outspoken feminist.

I admire Beth talent to always look smashing. I'm not the slimmest person myself and find it quit difficult to find cool cloth in my size. Also big up the Beth for canceling in-store appearances at popular UK retail chain Topshop.  Ditto argues that it is because the chain doesn't cater to girls her size. She says she wouldn't mind designing a plus-size range for the chain: "Give me the job. I want to design. I want you to make clothes for big girls - big boys. I want you to make big sizes."

The Gossip webpage
The Gossip on MySpace

Listen to Beth Ditto on Outlook