Nina Hagen: Original Album Classics (3 CD Box Set) 2011

 

Nina (Catharina) Hagen was born in East Berlin on March 11th, 1955 as the daughter Hans and Eva

Maria Hagen, he a well-known scriptwriter ("Karbid und Sauerampfer"), she a very popular actress in the GDR. (East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic). Her Jewish grandparents lost their lives in the concentration camp Sachsenhausen. Also her father was maltreated by the Nazis. At the age of two, her parents separated. Wolf Biermann, an ostracized songwriter in the GDR who had become her mother's lifetime companion in Berlin in the sixties, assumed the role of a foster-father to her.
                                              

In 1974, Nina won a special prize at a singing contest in Karl-Marx-Stadt and was elected the best newcomer singer of the year. With her mother's help, she now also managed to get into acting. In this year, she had her first movie performance in "ABC der Liebe", her second one in 1975 in the film in

"Junge, heute ist Freitag". She had become an acknowledged rock singer and a movie star, thus virtually ascending to the status of a cult figure of the GDR's youth. After Wolf Biermann's expulsion from the GDR in November of 1976, Nina and her mother followed the musician to the West. Biermann helped Nina to a contract with the record company CBS. She explored the reggae and the punk scene, went to London and met the women's band "The Slits". At the end of 1977, she presented her own band, the "Nina Hagen Band", that for the main part she had established together with former members of the political rock cabaret "Lokomotive Kreuzberg".
                                     

They performed at the "Quartier Latin" in West Berlin among other locations. When her debut album "Nina Hagen Band" including titles like "TV-Glotzer" and "Auf'm Bahnhof Zoo" appeared in 1978 followed by her first grand tour through Germany, this "had a similar effect to the Federal Republic's

suburban home-owners' idyll as Bill Haley's 'Rock around the clock' had had 20 years before" (Die Welt, Feb. 2nd, 1992). According to Fritz Rumler in Der Spiegel, "she thrusts herself into the music, aggressively, directly, furiously, roars in the most beautiful opera alto, then, through shrieks and squeals, precipitates into luminous soprano heights, she parodies, satirises, and howls on stage like a dervish." Punk attitude, sloppy poetry and the coloratura interludes of their lead-singer, it was said, had made "Nina Hagen Band" one of the hottest bands in Europe besides the "Sex Pistols".
                                     

In England and America, she was mentioned in one breath together with Marlene Dietrich and Lotte Lenya and was about to make a name for herself in the international music scene, when during a tour through European capitals, she separated from her excellently reputed band. According to contract

though, the Album "Unbehagen" was yet produced together with the band in 1979. In Amsterdam, she shot the film "Cha Cha" together with Herman Brood with whose band "Wild Romance" she occasionally performed. The media uproar that surrounded her was increasingly less concerned with her music though. Her participation in "Club 2", a talk show on Austrian television, became the spectacular climax of her appearances in public, when she lent a hand to herself to demonstrate with greatest aplomb how women could provide themselves with sexual pleasure.
                                      

In 1982, her first solo album "NunSexMonkRock" appeared, a mixture of funk, hard rock, fragments of

the Islam and medieval witch cults, and futuristic UFO-fantasies. For American standards remarkably discordant, this album, critics said, was yet easier to listen to than the two previous ones. After a tour through England, Canada and the USA with the "No Problem Orchestra" in the summer of 1982, and following the production of the album "Angstlos" including rock-variations on titles originally sung by Zarah Leander, she started a tour through Germany in the spring of 1984 and was one of the main attractions at the rackety "Rock in Rio" festival. But after that the public's interest in her decreased despite the fact that with her Mohawk hairdo and glaring make-up, and her cosmic visions of God and UFOs, she still managed to make shrill appearances. In addition, she regularly

addressed topics involving social and political conflicts: She protested loudly against apartheid in South Africa and according to her own account, she left the rights to one of her songs to Nelson Mandela to support his election campaign. She participated in activities against wearing fur and branded animal testing, for example in the song "Don't kill the animals" (1986). Her political horizon began to widen considerably in the late eighties. "My heart and my soul are cosmopolitan," the self-acclaimed "citizen of the world, the cosmos, and the beyond" confessed believing in the "divinity within human beings" after "having seen a UFO in her fourth month of pregnancy"
                                    

At the beginning of 1992, the shooting of Marianne Rosenbaum's film "Lilien in der Bank" began in which Nina played the role of a woman who had died at an early age and now kept appearing in the dreams of her grandfather (Georg Thomalla). In March of 1992, she got her own TV show on RTLplus where she chatted about everything on God's green earth. In 1993, the album "Revolution Ballroom"

came out with which the singer had hoped to incite a "revolution of humanitarianism" so that "mankind would finally evolve into humans". In 1997, Nina made a guest appearance in a TV thriller of the "Tatort" series with a science fiction story plot. In 1998, she became the host of a weekly science fiction show on the British TV channel "Sci-Fi-Channel". In March of 1998, she started a tour through Germany together with Meret Becker. The program was titled "We're both called Anna" and was designed to pay homage to Bertold Brecht on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his birthday. Besides this, she proved her versatility with the song "Solo" which she recorded together with the rap singer Thomas D. from the band "Die Fantastischen Vier".
                                       

"India" became a major issue in Nina's life. Since 1993, she had been travelling through this country and had spent a lot of time in an ashram within proximity to the Tibetan border. She found a Yogi there

and supported several aid projects in India, for example she raised funds to build a hospital by selling pieces of her private belongings by auction in a show. In 1999, she recorded the album "Om Namah Shivay" including mainly Indian songs. The album was distributed only through her internet homepage though. Half of its profits went into charitable projects. One of these projects (that she had already supported for several years) was a dying hospice in Cologne where she continues to pay visits to people who are saying farewell to their lives.
                                    

The work on her album "The Return of the Mother" that appeared in February 2001 took her three years. She was her own producer this time, since she had felt very hampered by the restrictions her record company had imposed upon her. In July of 2000, the documentary: "Family Stories: The

Hagens" was shown on the TV channel ARD. In 2001 Nina Produced the film "Om Gottes Willen" with "Catrin Schmitt" about her experiences with Babaji and India. She hosts her own internet show "Ninas TV" and a Live Show "Ninas Welt the Nina Hagen TV Show" both broadcast on the web with the support of www.canalweb.de she is currently recording a new album and plans to tour later in the year. September 9th, 2000: The singer Nina Hagen and her son Otis who had temporarily disappeared with his father returned to Berlin.

Artistic Work:

Albums (among others)
 
1978 Nina Hagen Band
1979 Unbehagen
1982 NunSexMonkRock
1983 Astlos
1984 Fearless
1985 In Ekstase
1985 In Ekstasy
1989 Nina Hagen
1991 Street
1993 Revolution Ballroom
1995 Freud Euch
1996 Beehappy
1999 Om Namah Shivay
2000 Return of the Mother
 
Films and TV (among others)
 
1974 ABC der Liebe
1975 Junge, heute ist Freitag
1979 Cha Cha
1992 Lilien in der Bank
1993 Nightmare before Christmas
Hot Dogs
1997 Tatort (ARD)
1998 Sci Fri (Sci-Fi-Channel)
1999 Nina Hagen + Punk + Glory
2000 Family Stories: The Hagens (ARD)
2001 Om Gottes Willen

Books
 
1989 Ich bin ein Berliner
                                          

Nina Hagen – Original Album Classics
Label: Sony Music – 88691901662, Legacy – 88691901662, Columbia – 88691901662
Series: Original Album Classics
Format:    Box Set, Compilation
Country: Europe
Released: 2011
Genre: Electronic, Rock
Style: Avantgarde, Punk, New Wave

 
         

NINA HAGEN BAND 1978        

                                        

01. TV-Glotzer (White Punks On Dope)    5:13
02. Rangehn    3:23
03. Unbeschreiblich Weiblich    3:30
04. Auf'm Bahnhof Zoo    5:24
05. Naturträne    4:07
06. Superboy    4:02
07. Heiss    4:07
08. Fisch Im Wasser    0:57
09. Auf'm Friedhof    6:14
10. Der Spinner    3:16
11. Pank    1:45

MP3 @320 Size: 100 MB
Flac  Size: 259 MB

NUNSEXMONKROCK 1982        

                                                       

  
01. Antiworld    4:43
02. Smack Jack    5:17
03. Tiatschi-Tarot    2:05
04. Dread Love    4:08
05. Future Is Now    2:57
06. Born In Xixax    2:55
07. Iki Maska    5:10
08. Dr. Art    4:51
09. Cosmic Shiva    3:19
10. UFO    4:54

MP3 @320 Size: 96 MB
Flac  Size: 252 MB

FEARLESS 1984        

                                                                 

  
01. New York New York    5:17
02. My Sensation    4:05
03. Flying Saucers    3:12
04. I Love Paul    3:50
05. The Change    4:42
06. Silent Love    4:08
07. What It Is    4:20
08. T.V. Snooze    4:00
09. Springtime In Paris    3:36
10. Zarah    4:37

MP3 @320 Size: 99 MB
Flac  Size: 287 MB

Nina Hagen: Unbehagen 1979 on Urban Aspirines HERE