Nina Hagen Band - Unbehagen

And so, are we ready for a flying visit to Germany and the Neue Deutsche Welle? Of course we are, so pull up a comfortable chair, sit back and enjoy...

After the success of the debut, the atmosphere within the band literally became more and more uncomfortable. After Nina boycotted the band's joint departure from Berlin to the studio in Frankfurt / Main for the recordings for the second album, the future Spliff drove alone to the studio and recorded their part for the album in Hagen's absence. "Uncomfortable" was therefore recorded in 1979 for purely contractual reasons with the CBS by the four musicians of their already ex-band in the studio and the Hagen vocals then added without the intervention of the later Spliff. The album title had long since become an absolute program despite the funny play on words with the surname of the singer!

At the same time, the end of the Nina Hagen Band was sealed.

Nevertheless, the second and at the same time last album of the Nina Hagen Band still has real potential, whereby especially the radical, Led Zeppelin-like “Herrmann Was Called” , which revolves around the drug addict Hermann, stands out: “Hermann shits on life!”, is the key phrase.

The material for this album was created on the 79er promo tour for the first album.

After the tour, the band and Nina were completely at odds. So "Uncomfortable" took its uncomfortable course - which was musically a little free program, even if it has some fillers, like the live recording of "If I Were A Boy", which was cobbled in the middle of the A-side, or that "No Way" instrumental that completes the LP. It seemed there wasn't enough material to lead the album to a coherent, peaceful ending.

The rest anyway is history.

Conclusion: You can say whatever you want about Nina Hagen, but as a singer of the Nina Hagen Band she did remarkable work for two albums with "Nina Hagen Band" (1978) and "Uncomfortable" (1979). What came after the two albums was mostly schizophrenic garbage, which is why the importance of the band that accompanied them at the time, which later became Spliff, cannot be overstated. Basically we are dealing with two early Spliff albums, in which Nina Hagen sings and writes. Viewed from this point of view, the sheet will fly away smoothly!

Thoralf Koß

Nina Hagen Band

At age 21 Nina Hagen had settled in Hamburg, where she was signed to a CBS-affiliated record label. Her label advised her to acclimatise herself with Western culture through travel, and she quickly arrived in London during the height of the punk rock movement. Hagen was quickly taken up by a circle that included The Slits and Sex Pistols. Hagen discovered new styles of music during her stay in London and became inspired mainly by punk and reggae. She met with Ari Up, the lead singer of the band The Slits and together they wrote the song "Pank", which would later appear on the début Nina Hagen Band album.

Inspired by the London music scene, Hagen returned to West Berlin’s Kreuzberg district mid ’77 and met with members of the band Lokomotive Kreuzberg. Manfred Praeker, Herwig Mitteregger and Bernhard Potschka were joined by Reinhold Heil and along with Hagen they created the Nina Hagen Band. In November 1977, the band signed a two album recording contract with CBS Records. By 1978 they had released their self-titled debut album, Nina Hagen Band, which included the singles "TV-Glotzer" (a cover of "White Punks on Dope" by The Tubes, though with entirely different German lyrics), and "Auf'm Bahnhof Zoo", about West Berlin's then-notorious Berlin Zoologischer Garten station. The album also included a version of "Rangehn" ("Go for It"), a song Nina had previously recorded in East Germany, but with different music.

Using elements of American new wave similar to Patti Smith or Blondie, Hagen was in high demand and the renowned German news magazine, Spiegel, celebrated the band as “one of the hottest European bands since the Sex Pistols.” On the way to becoming an international star, however, Hagen dissolved the band because she felt that guitar solos had become more important than her voice to her accompanists. Hagen finished a second album with the band recording in West Berlin while the vocals were recorded in Los Angeles to fulfill the bands obligation to the record company. Unbehagen, released in 1979, was a success throughout Europe. In the meantime, Hagen’s extensive European media coverage focused more and more on her scandalous lifestyle rather than on her anti-establishment lyrics and music.