“East German punks used to spray-paint the phrase “Stirb nicht im Warteraum der Zukunft – Don’t die in the waiting room of the future” – on walls in Berlin. It wasn’t about self-preservation. It was an indictment of complacency. It was a battle cry: Create your own world, your own reality. DIY. Revolution.” – Tim Mohr (Burning Down the Haus: Punk Rock, Revolution, and the Fall of the Berlin Wall)
Dylan once heard the Chimes of freedom flashing and trolling, as a thunderstorm drowned and shadowed the oppressing sounds of a city – a sound of change, if you will, before the change. His words – long after they were written – weren’t just delivered but belted out in a park to 300000 East Germans by Bruce Springsteen in 1988. In his emotive and soulful voice, he sang about the city’s melted furnace to the faces hidden behind tightened walls, how the chimes of freedom flashed for the warriors whose strength is not to fight, flashed for the refugees on the unarmed road of flight and every underdog soldier in the night; how they tolled for the rebel and tolled for the rake and they tolled for the outcast, burning constantly at stake. The show is not well known now, but a generation remembers it as a life changing moment – how could they forget- a year later the wall came down!
An author once fleetingly quoted: If Music is a Place- then Jazz is the City, Folk is the Wilderness, Rock is the Road, Classical is a Temple. The road that Springsteen dissipated the hopefulness on was paved by the East Berlin Punk scene, not existing simply on the fringes of privilege like elsewhere but in marginalia, on the pavements where the stakes weren’t just high but were burning. The whole Punk scene disappeared once the wall came down – the message and the music were both lost to posterity. While everywhere else punk rebelled with the message of ‘No future’, East Berlin punks resisted the ‘too much future’ being dictated to them by the regime and their only surviving message – To not die in the waiting room of the future.
God must love crazy people – he makes so many of them. Terry Hooley – crazy Irish madman, in the sincerest, most venerable, most punk usage of the word- decided to open up a record store in the most bombed quarter square mile of Europe – Victoria Street, Belfast- during the times known as the troubles or, equally good at hiding the violence, the revolution. Good Vibrations, he called it –in the most bombed street with six months’ rent, free! He thought himself more as a hippie and felt salvation lay in the rhythms of Reggae. Little did he know but the crazy man was a punk before he knew it! The Punks were the first to congregate and made music of their frustrations singing about Suspect Devices and Alternative Ulsters – “Take a look where you’re livin’, You got the Army on the street, And the RUC dog of repression, Is barking at your feet. Is this the kind of place you wanna live? Is this where you wanna be? Is this the only life we’re gonna have? What we need is an Alternative Ulster, Grab it and change it, it’s yours” – Stiff Little Fingers.
“We had all sorts of people in the shop, we had IRA men partying in the shop, we had loyalists, we had weird people, anarchists from Italy and Germany, all sorts of nutters’. Good Vibrations really did bring people together for the first time in a decade, it didn’t matter whether you were Protestant, Catholic, no matter what you were so long as you were a punk”. Suspect Device refers both to the bomb and the man, so angry at the situation that he’s about to explode.
It’s a little punk of a tea, that’ll say what it has to say in under 3 minutes and be done with it – it would be wise not to confuse the length with the depth of its Duende. Not here. Not ever! There’s a tone, all right – tone of urgency with an attitude – urgency to explode and smash something to smithereens. Most definitely small, young leaves from the Old China bushes. Small young leaves – smelling of Roasted wheat and Cornflakes. The brew delivers the point home – Like somebody doused a wooden box full of Caramels and Chocolates in rum, set it ablaze and handed it over in a cup! Only one thing left to do – quench it out quickly…. So, one can revel in the sweet roast of wheat and Vanilla. But there’s no time – It’s over as quickly and intensely as it began. Only a second brew would suffice!
We have some advice – we wish you wouldn’t take it, at least not completely: Measure it by eye, never mind the temperature – boiling oughta do it. You can’t go wrong with this one. Brew it in large quantities – for friends, neighbors, enemies, unwanted guests and unfriendly strangers. Brew it for the caterpillars and the birds. Brew it for the Dogs. Hell, pour some cheap whiskey in it, if you must, or drink it as it is and hear it shadow and drown the sounds of anguish. Life is the one thing that you cannot save by not living it – regardless of how arguable the idea and advice of ‘living it’ may be, it’s better than dying in the waiting room of the future.
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