In the first video, The Cramps tear it up in Germany 1998. This was broadcast on German TV network Viva II. The audio sounds like a half dozen feral cats thrown in a blender. But watching Lux and Ivy in super fine form makes up for the deficiencies in sound quality. It’s amazing footage. Lux destroys the stage like a one man horde of Mongols. And Ivy and her man’s mating dance is bootlicious.

Harry Drumdini on drums and Slim Chance on bass in both videos.
 

 
This second video is The Cramps on Croatian TV also in ‘98.

Imagine being a kid somewhere in Croatia and seeing this on TV. Nothing’s goin’ on in your shitty life, you live in a country the size of West Virginia and just as polluted, heroin is everywhere, jobs are hard to find. So you turn on the TV to escape and bang there’s this band tearin’ things up and going wild and it feels real good and the two members of the band start talking about rock and they make it sound so liberating and beautiful and exciting and you decide maybe to get a guitar and you do end up getting one and you learn to play 3 chords but that’s all you need and suddenly you’re feeling free and you’re not as angry and you’re starting to dig life a little bit more yeah it’s not so bad and you start thinkin’ maybe I could do what The Cramps are doing going on the road traveling making music believing in something doing something real not just talk not just politics not just shooting the shit with your friends who are too fucking afraid to be real because they haven’t received the message from on high the gospel the teachings and that’s when it it hits you that’s when you realize that yes Lux and Ivy were talking to you and everything they said they were saying to you and that just makes you more determined more fucking driven to be a rock and roller, a punk whatever, a revolutionary for love and music and energy because fuck man you’ve been chosen rock and roll has chosen you!

“Rock and roll chose us.” Ivy Rorschach.
 

 
The seemingly borderless nature of our digital age renders bizarre the idea of nationalized walls separating people. Current items like the Israeli West Bank “security” barrier and the demand for a wall on the entire Mexican border just seem absurd and brutal.

Those were walls that kept people out. Today marks the 49th anniversary of a wall that kept people in and fired the imaginations of artists like Pink Floyd, David Bowie and the Sex Pistols.

In an effort to stave off “fascist” influence from the West, German Democratic Republic General Secretary Walter Ulbricht closed the border between the Western and Soviet sectors with barbed wire and fences, on order from Nikita Khrushchev. It soon became the symbol of national alienation.

Below are two of the most fascinating pieces of media about the Berlin Wall that I’ve found. Walter de Hoog’s The Wall was produced by the United States Information Agency, the global propaganda arm started by the Eisenhower administration in 1953. Strangely, the USIA was prohibited to screen their films to the American public, so this stark, immediate and emotive piece wasn’t released here until 1990.
 

 
After the jump: Magnum photographer Thomas Hoepker’s remarkable narrated slide show of his 40 years covering the Wall…
 

 
Documentary with performances by The Dead, Mothers Of Invention, Big Brother, The Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service and lots of hippies dancing and getting stoned. It was directed by Stefan Morawietz for German TV. It’s in German, but you’ll get the idea.

 
part two after the jump

In a stroke of pure Euro genius, France’s Pied La Biche art collective have produced Refait, a complete re-enactment of the 15-minute penalty phase of the 1982 World Cup semifinals between France and Germany in the setting of Villeurbane, just northeast of Lyon.

By mapping the grinding tension of an extended penalty across the wide spaces and casual attitude of a small industrial town, Pied provide an irreverent yet plaintive—and somewhat hypnotizing—perspective on the frailty of human achievement. Horst Hrubesch’s winning shot never seemed so enduring.

Refait from Pied La Biche on Vimeo.

This demented 1992 clip from the German “Peter Alexander Show” features Johnny Cash getting down with Austrian jams while some crazd Austrian stuff happens behind him. White horse behind him says HURRR I’M A HOERS.

Also, check out this file of Mr. Cash singing hits from his back catalog in German.

(Austrian Johnny Cash via Swens Blog)