Superland

I wish that I could show you, let you hear, how awesome two of the songs I am listening to back to back are. Part of the problem is the technology. I just don't know how to get real player to share MP3 formats on blogger. And the other part is legal: Youtube blocked the fan made videos due to copyright issues.... wait.

Youtube usually blocks the ones I really like. And the last time they did an update I got a Herbert Grönemeyer video back. Let me go look. Ooooooh.

Ok friends. Listen while you can because I am sure once I share it my Karma will give me the nose bugle and take it down.


This one is my favorite. It is the A side of this 45. Look at the video. It documents all the pertinent information. It's not that it is definitive 80s music, which it is. It isn't the awesome poppy beat, which it clearly has that makes me love this song so much. It's that when I plug this into an 80s play list of my favorite songs it fits even better than 99 Luft Balloons.
von Fernen Sternen: from far away stars. And Superland have that space oddity feeling to it. Space was a thing back in the day. The NASA program was at once winding down and trying to revive itself. Star Trek was trying to stay alive and we were all thinking in terms bigger than our small lives.

But I also like these two songs, the ones on my computer are clearer than the YouTube videos so there is much more merit in Superland than the audio quality on YouTube might give you, because you can hear that typical Matthias Reim style fully developed in these songs. I'm not sure why they did not have commercial success or why it took him to get to Verdammt ich Leib dich in the 90s to make his mark on the schlager scene. After all, he'd been writing for some big names before that. So if he can write for someone else he should be able to write for himself. At least that is what I think. I could be wrong. Or it could be that the music business, like art, is just that fickle a friend. Oh an acting. Acting is very subjective too. One day the world loves you and the next you are losing parts because you said something that someone took the wrong way and you are done.

I forget that just because I love things the way that I love them and for the whole of my life that doesn't mean that everyone else does. I hear this music and think "OMG, how could people not have loved this?" Though all things have a time and a place.

In several places I have read that German language music almost died after the short burst of attention in the 80s from the Scorpions and Nena. Six recording artists, Matthias close to the top of the list, are credited with reviving the genre and making Schlager cool again. So perhaps Fate kept Matthias in reserve knowing that one day his country and his passion would need his service. Personally, I wish that his music would have been on that cassette my friend gave me in 1987. But then again, in my life, he did show up exactly when it was that he was needed the most.

So who am I to complain how Fate decides things? I have the music now and my 80s playlists are all the more richer for it.