April 12 - Reinbek

Our radio was celebrating the birth of rock ‘n roll this morning because apparently Bill Haley and the Comets recorded “Rock Around the Clock” exactly 50 years ago on this date in 1954. Who knew? Altho the historic songs were mostly in the original American English, the commentary was in German and I was happy to be able to understand about 70% of it, including the call-in personal stories of the listeners. In the 50s the older generation of Germans disparagingly called it “Hottentoten Musick” (Hottentot Music), but the young folks were crazy about it. Two listeners told their story of the first Bill Haley and the Comets concert here in Hamburg. Apparently the concert ended after about 35 minutes because things got out of control and fans started breaking up the furniture, but that may have been due to a police heavy-handed over reaction to fans dancing in the security area according to two of the callers.

The narrator’s commentary traced rock ‘n roll back to its roots in rhythm and blues music, and included a possibly apocryphal story about Ike Turner’s band driving to a recording session in 1951. Apparently the amplifier for the guitar fell over and broke. They had to do a quick repair and the net result was that that it over-amplified the guitar. But, the story goes, Ike and the band like the resulting sound so much that they recorded their new song that way and kept playing like that. Boy am I glad I’m understanding German well enough to get trivia like that! Maybe Kant and Goethe by next month!

It was, surprise, surprise, a cool, cloudy and drizzly morning so we entertained ourselves by mixing up a batch of light purple paint to cover the patched plaster in the dressing room next to our bedroom. Heinke had provided the basic wall paint and some blue and red pigments, and I still had the brushes I had earlier bought at Aldi, so at least I had all the necessary materials at hand. Then I could just sit and type my journal sitting in the kitchen while listening to classic rock ‘n roll oldies wash over me. That turned out to be extremely pleasant, a musical version of walking down memory lane. Some of the German rock ‘n roll songs I had never heard before, and I wondered if any of those had been translated and sung in English. To the best of our combined memory, they had not and I thought that was a shame. There was clearly a flowering of rock ‘n roll music here in Germany that we never even had a chance to hear and understand in the U.S. I liked one called “Motorraeder” (Motorcycle) just because of the theme, and many of the others were beautifully crafted and sung. Of course, some songs they played were also old American hits like the Keystones “Ramel Ramel Ding Dang”, and “Skinny Mini” by Tony Sheridan, I think.

It is possible I like rock ‘n roll simply because it is the music I grew up with, but I prefer to think there is some inherent quality that makes that era of music more palatable than, say, rap (I can hear Martin laughing about the ageism now.). I think what still attracts me to this music is not so much the rhythmic or tonal qualities of the music but rather the thematic content. In particular, the music of the late 50s and early 60s seems to have a high percentage of upbeat, positive themes as the foci.

Speaking of upbeat, we watched a dubbed version of “Mary Poppins” in the afternoon and I enjoyed seeing how they translated the jokes and songs. Translation of songs is quite difficult, in my experience, because you are constrained by the cadence, notes, and rhyming requirements of the original. But translating jokes is even more difficult due to the cultural differences in language and humor. In the English version, “Mary Poppins” has a crucial joke that goes: Two men are walking along and one says, “I know a man with a wooden leg named Smith”, and the other man says, “Really? What is the name of his other leg?” (ta-dum-bum!) What is really curious is that both Monika and I puzzled over the replacement of this joke in the German dubbed version. Monika figured out why the joke would not work in German, and the reason is the masculine, feminine and neutral gender articles. “Mann” requires the masculine article and “leg” requires the neutral article, so in German you would have to use one article or the other and thereby directly imply whether it was the man who was named Smith or the leg that was named Smith. Either, “Ich kenne einen Mann mit einem Holzbein DER heisst Schmidt.”, or “Ich kenne einen Mann mit einem Holzbein DAS heisst Schmidt.” But the wordplay doesn’t work because that confusion could not occur in German since DER clearly refers to the man and DAS clearly refers to the leg.

My subconscious, on the other hand, worked on translating the replacement German joke into English (my subconscious apparently likes to have a good time!). My version: Two men are walking along and one man says, “See that man over there, he’s ‘Curly’.”, and the other “Really? But he’s completely bald!” The first thing is that this is about equally lame as the original joke and therefore fits the story line well. But what really amazed me is that they found something with about the same number of syllables and speaking time, which is critical to dubbing a translation.

Afterward the movie we went for a 2-hour walk down to the Reinbek Schloss, over to Wohltorf and around thru the woods just to get out and keep in some kind of shape—I was looking forward to again taking 15-kilometer walks at Moelln or Eckenfoerde! Monika sure had fun banging out a tune with a wooden xylophone that was just sitting at one edge of the park. She also had to try out the swing someone had left hanging on a tree, which gave us another break. We both studied the pictures of the native birds that were on one of the information signs, hoping we could identify some of the birds that were fluttering all around us. It was gratifying to at least be able to put names to some of our feathered friends.

After supper we watched a nature special on some big vultures on the island of Mallorca, but they were big, ugly birds and not nearly as cute as the Dohlen. While we watched I was picking out the best of my Kunst und Gewerbe museum pictures for Heinke as she had enjoyed the nature exhibits but not had a photo permit when we visited. We rounded out the evening of a very relaxing day by watching another German adaptation of “Love Boat”, which is mindless entertainment in any language but just the thing for emptying my mind before bedtime!