Radio Pareidolia

To reconstruct the early days of punk in The Netherlands, we largely depend on oral history. On interviews with the people who were part of the scene – played in the bands, saw the concerts, made the fanzines. But when looking back on our lives, we always try to make sense of it in retrospect. This means we (unconsciously) fit past experiences into a single coherent life story. Meanwhile, a writer tends to seek out the voices that fit the story s/he wants to tell. How to navigate a history entwined with personal myth making?

Sexism – Shifting perspectives There comes a time when you suddenly realize that almost all your favorite musicians are men or that women in song lyrics tend to be ‘strange little girls’ or ‘wild tiger women’. Why do we never hear songs about strange little boys needing their hands held? Faber-Jonker never really questioned this growing up, listening to the Red Hot Chili Peppers and The Stranglers (although she always preferred the idea of feelin’ alright with the crew to being someone’s New Rose). Now she realizes that we need more female perspectives in our lives.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Berlin was still a divided city, a Mauerstadt. Many musicians – both from Berlin and abroad – attempted to capture its unique atmosphere of reativity and threat, its Kebabträume and Stasi nightmares. How does music by David Bowie, Iggy Pop, DAF and Nina Hagen transport us back to the Berlin from the past? And what happens when we step into a virtual bar in a virtual East-Berlin in a Cold War-themed videogame, only to hear a gloomy song by Fehlfarben, the NDW-band from Düsseldorf?