Tuesday, April 14, 2009

D.A.F. - Der Mussolini



Scary but witty German track that ticks the following boxes:

1. It's got a brilliant title. Scary, but the presence of the definite article provides comforting distance from fascism.

2. It's got brilliant lyrics: "Get up. shake your hips! / Clap your hands and dance the Mussolini! / Dance the Adolf Hitler! / Move your ass and dance the Jesus Christ!" Meaningless (or is it about the tyranny of the dancefloor?) but, again, pretty scary. But no one could possibly take offence ... could they?

3. You can dance to it - indeed you should dance to it. It predicts the future, 80s techno. But its lyrics make it subversive. Dictators (and Jesus) are equated to dance moves.

4. It's post-punk (recommended by the excellent Simon Reynolds). Retains the shock, disposability and instant gratification of punk, but is experimental in instrumentation and genre. Post-Krautrock might be a better description, in that DAF were from Kraftwerk's hometown Dusseldorf.

5. D.A.F. also had one of the best names ever. Deutsch-Amerikanische Freundschaft means German-American friendship. According to Wikipedia its"a satirical reference to the DSF, the East German Deutsch-Sowjetische Freundschaft (German-Soviet Friendship Organisation)".

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