The Foreign Correspondent Returns - Stories About German Rock Music # 43

Today I like to feature a band that exists since 30 years. I don't know many German bands that exists this long time and being true to their ideas. One is Freiwillige Selbstkontrolle Dirk from Sexy Loser mentioned them weeks ago - the other one are Die Goldenen Zitronen (The Golden Lemons). They started as a punk rock band in Hamburg that are know for their entertaining and politically relevant style. When they formed in 1984 they were just another part of the Fun-Punk movement combined hard rock'n'roll with the 70th annual punk rock and humorous, partly bad, hit-like lyrics. Over the years the band added more experimental musical forms, with which different styles were combined. Their lyrics are political and take a critical view of society from a loft to left-radical perspective.

In 1994 they presented themselves with the album Das bißchen Totschlag (This to a little manslaughter) in a new musical style, to her usual power rock came elements from Garage-Trash, Electro beats, hip-hop and Noise rock pop. In the title song the band refers to the arson attacks in Mölln and Hoyerswerda, the politically motivated murders of blacks in Germany and the following increase of the asylum law as well as the murder of the squatter and anti-fascist Silvio Meier.In the course of the years they changed once more her music style and the instrumentation became more electronic. A certain slope to the avant-garde continued in theirs next works which was completed with Lenin one. There has come out once more, in the end, a collage of modern punk music off pop-cultural commonness. I love this band for being straight and going their very own way and not getting corrupted by the music industry like other nowadays still called punk bands like Die Ärzte or Die Toten Hosen.

Die Goldenen Zitronen - Für immer Punk
Die Goldenen Zitronen - Das bißchen Totschlag
Die Goldenen Zitronen - Lenin
Die Goldenen Zitronen - Der Bürgermeister