These sorts of things happen very often, but I find them amusing nonetheless. I think the most recent connection of this sort I had was when I realised at some point around 2000 that Blondie sang “Atomic,” or, rather, when I pieced together that the song “Atomic” on my Best of Blondie CD was the same song, but by the original artist, as my fav. song in Trainspotting. I never bothered downloading all the songs off the soundtrack, so I never used process of elimination to figure out what the song was. In any case…
So here’s the picture: it’s 1996, and I’m in Lithuania. I have one night to spend away from my mom, my last night, which I spend in Vilnius (the whole trip was spent in Kaunas). I meet up with my friend Romas, and he puts together a party posse to go off to Prie Parlamento and have a go of it. But first, Romas busts out a handle of Jack that he got via his friend at the duty-free, and it’s going around in circles. There’s a group assembled, and we’re watching MTV Europe. One fellow, whom I’ve named in my memory Ramūnas, keeps hoping that they’d show the video “su tais briedžiais.” He’s really looking forward to this. Finally, it comes on. There’s cartoon deer dancing, and it’s really cute, and Ramūnas gets up and does the dance in time with the deer; he’s clearly seen this video several times before. It was all very memorable–but maybe the part with Ramūnas more than the music itself. Any information about the video drifted out of my mind instantly. The video over, we go out, where I meet Justas, whom I will later meet again by chance the next time I’m in Vilnius, and then, again my first night in Vilnius my third time there. So maybe this just means Lithuania is magical.
Anyway, because of my taking German last year, I started getting more interested in German music. Somehow I got hung up on Die Toten Hosen. I really like the “they’re like the Pogues, except more punk, and, you know, German” vibe I get (Campino, I think, sounds like McGowan), and I start acquiring tracks. A few stand out: “Kein Alkohol (ist auch keine Lösung),” “Bayern,” and “Zehn kleine Jägermeister.” The last song is maybe the most fun. It’s basically “10 Little Indians” except with jägermeisters instead of indians. But it counts down until there’s only one, etc. Very cute.
Today, trying to find out if there’s any political motivation for the anti-Bayern München song “Bayern,” (there isn’t) I found a Die Toten Hosen video site, and, in addition to having the amusing video for “Kein Alkohol,” which I’d been encouraged to download months ago by Darius, they had the video for “Zehn kleine Jägermeister,” and, well, you can guess where this is going. I shouted, on the inside, “tie briedžiai!”
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