This guy is certainly a strange discovery on your part, Goofle. Congratulations on digging up such an obscure artist.
I thought
Now You´re Gone was clever; the simple, cheerful music and unusual lyrics made it sound surprisingly fresh even though the credits say "Berlin, 1932"
Pre-war Berlin has been glamourised by Christopher Isherwood and others as being a time of experimentation, artistic renaissance and sexual tolerance, but in your second clip, Rainer Hass seems to reveal a much more sinister side to the decadence of the period. Rather like Brecht´s famous
Mac The Knife , which cheerfully depicts an assassin, Rainer Hass plays some happy-sounding music while reciting the following lyrics:-
I see folks walking to and fro, like cattle to the slaughter...
Those people ain´t no friend of mine
And killing cattle ain´t no crime.
It´s one thing to question staid old attitudes, as was apparently being done in pre-war Berlin, but to me, writing happy little songs equating people with cattle and suggesting that it´s ok to kill them shows a disturbing lack of moral compass. So while I was interested in your clips, I don´t think I´ll be investigating any more of Rainer´s material. Maybe I take lyrics too seriously, but songs that treat murder as a joke give me the creeps.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Silenzio
He's actually called Reiner Hardt. (1905 – 1943)
He recorded 200 songs, but due to the war which took place between 1914 and 1918, most got lost. Moreover he was never popular nor successful.
Just like most artists who experienced the WWI he got mentally ill and shot himself.
However, his music may sound facile - the topics are very deep though.
Reiner Hardt wanted to unite expressionism and jazz.
He was inspired by the expressionistic movies of that time.
In my opinion his lyrics are similar to Bertolt Brecht's works.
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^ Thanks for the info, Silenzio, but I think you got your wars mixed up; the only work of Rainer Hass that would´ve been lost in the 1914-18 war would´ve been his exercise books from primary school.