Vinyl Research #5: Nina Hagen Band - "Nina Hagen Band" (1978)

I decided to move over to the hardcore/punk shelves for today's record. I reached into the third shelf expecting to pull out an obscure hardcore record. Instead I randomly pulled out the debut full length LP from the mother of punk herself, Nina Hagen. I am excited if this is anyone's first introduction to her. The cover features a close-up of Nina Hagen with short spiky shaggy hair, heavy eyeliner, lipstick, one earring and a cigarette in her mouth. This is actually a comparatively mainstream look for her, but she looks punk as fuck.

The album is by the Nina Hagen Band, who appear on the back cover, in front of a poster with the same painting of Nina as on the front of the album cover. They would only release one LP after this before Nina embarked on a solo career.

The center label is the boring CBS orange-yellow gradient that somewhat resembles a setting sun. The only thing interesting is that the "C" in CBS looks like Pac-Man.

I could possibly sell this for $8-$10 on Discogs:

https://www.discogs.com/Nina-Hagen-Band-Nina-Hagen-Band/master/56546

The album begins with a musical cover of "White Punks on Dope" by the Tubes. Only the music is covered as she wrote new German lyrics, re-titling it "TV-Glotzer." Like a lot of her covers, she completely reworks it in a way that one never imagined the song sounding. And yet it feels like the way the song should always have been played. But now she owns it, like how the soundtrack in a great film will make you never hear the song the same way again. Once I hear her sing the song, I can't hear it any other way.

Here's a live version from 1978, with Nina's unique stage presence on in-full:

The album is almost entirely in German. In her solo career she would alternate between German and English lyrics.

There is so much I can write about the career and life of Nina Hagen, but I'll try to focus on her life up until this record. It's not her first release and not her first band. Nina originally trained as an opera singer. She released a few singles in her native East Germany with the band Automobil. Her mom was an actress. She was already a star well before this album, albeit a star limited to a very specific culturally isolated area.

Here she is in 1974, at 19 years old, on East German television:

Here's another TV appearance in 1975:

You might want to compare this again to that video of TV-Glotzer, just 3 years later. So what happened?

In 1976, her stepfather was kicked out of the country. Nina and her mother were permitted to join him. She signed to a label in West Germany. But first she went to London and encountered the punk scene, where the Sex Pistols were just starting out, along with other punk bands like the Slits, the Clash and the Damned. She returned to West Germany heavily influenced by the British punk scene.

I used the following sources for this personal history:

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/music/2.681/she-has-calmed-down-since-her-baptism-1.652738

https://www.alternativenation.net/mother-singer-rebel-nina-hagen-truly-mother-punk/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nina_Hagen

This isn't her best album, but it's a good introduction and a great debut. Her masterpiece is her debut solo album "NunSexMonkRock" (1982). However, I also love the follow-up albums "Fearless (AKA Angstlos)" (1983) and "In Ekstasy" (1985).

I looked up the former band members on Discogs. Most continued to work in some capacity, on soundtracks and pop albums. Bassist Manfred Praeker seemed to have the most success playing in an 80s German rock band called Spliff.

Here's the full Nina Hagen Band self-titled album on YouTube if you wish to hear it: