Is “PR” (Plattenreiter, a literal translation of disc jockey) according to PR Kantate whose alter ego, the bookish football-hating Günter, is stumbling around in the video below. But make no mistake, that guy might be a joker (a less pretentious version of Beck, if you will), but he’s also one helluva performer, as Yuhang and [...]

Kreuzberger via Jamaica P R Kantate reprises his song Futtemuffel song for Germany’s outta control football fever. I still feel guilty for drinking Becks instead of Efes last night—musta jinxed ‘em.

It’s a tough call, but at this point I gotta say I’m partial to Turkey, Cinderella story or not, even though a German win is probable and deserved. But then again, what’s all that surprising about another surprise match this EM, especially from Turkey the biggest late-game surpriser of them all? Plus, I’ve heard they’ve [...]

Oh, he’s good. Real good.

A random wikipedian writes that the aforementioned Wale announced the line-up on his upcoming record in the June issue of Gemany’s big hip-hop magazine, JUICE, which has zero online content. I just dashed to the newstand hoping to find said interview and retro-translate it back to English for y’all… but the July issue has already [...]

As that great artery of America, the Mississippi River, swells and bursts biblical, bringing devastation to the Midwest and turning the heartland into a swamp, this, Led Zep’s apocalyptic version of the 1927 blues song about the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, has been in my head all week.
Led Zeppelin - When the Levee Breaks
Extra [...]

So tonight those pagan Scandinavians celebrate Midsummer (aka summer solstice) by drinking homemade booze, dancing around the may pole and doing the frog dance. In Berlin the Swedes are gathering — fittingly for a pagan ceremony — at the Swedish Church in Berlin at 6pm.
Failing that, there are plenty of other things to get into [...]

Anyone in Germany who went to gmail.com today likely got this (snip):
In Deutschland können wir keine Dienste unter Gmail anbieten. Hier nutzen wir den Namen Google Mail.
Wenn Sie in Deutschland unterwegs sind, können Sie Ihre Mails unter http://mail.google.com abrufen.
Oh, und wir würden gerne die URL oben verlinken, dürfen das aber auch nicht. Schade.
Allgemeine Informationen zu [...]

was printed above an illustration of crossed pistols on a faded brown t-shirt worn by the portly late thirties man whom I just saw at S-bahn Heidelberger Platz. I believe he was looking for his horse.

Not only does the world’s only Ramones Museum exist in Berlin-Kreuzberg, curated by a guy who saw them perform 101 times, but — and apparently I’ve been living under a rock, because I just discovered this — the final song on the Ramones final studio album, 1995’s Adios Amigos!, is about being destined to kick [...]

Coilhouse (the self-described “love letter to alternative culture”) digs up an internet relic from 2004! — a satirical piss-take of techno musicians who move to Berlin “where radical thinkers and doers enjoy the freedom to be uncomfortable and social at the same time” in the words of the Metro Times Detroit article — Losing your [...]

Berlin’s once-strident protesters can’t be bothered to rage against Überimperialist George Bush’s arrival in Germany on his European tour (i.e. summer vacay) this week. Heck, even the German TV news moderator used the untranslatable phrase “lame duck” last night narrating footage of the Air Force One landing at Tegel Airport. NYT’s Berlin bureau chief, Nicholas [...]

It can’t be just happenstance that so many expatriate bands who do a stint in Berlin end up sounding like Nick Cave. Madrugada from Norway, for one, arrived in 2001 and made their best record ever, the boozy street-walking lunatic record Grit and one that could pass for a bunch of Bad Seeds outtakes. There [...]

photo from the English Swedish news site thelocal.se, which recently spawned the English German news site thelocal.de

The 2008 UEFA European Football Championship, this year in Switzerland and Austria (the same place in American popular geography), starts this Saturday and runs all month. There will be plenty of places to see it, a la World Cup 2006, but this might be one of the more unique viewing points. From an email:
EM 2008 [...]

On Saturday a mob of zombies lurched along Unter den Linden from Alexanderplatz to Brandenburg Gate in Berlin’s first ever Zombie Walk. Yuhang shot a few photos, including this pretty undead girl who leapt hissing toward the camera. There are plenty more such photos on flickr and elsewhere, many of them dripping with [...]