![]() ![]() West Berlin might have captured his heart, but Colombia has left an impression too, as he enthusiastically explains: “I like Bogotá, I like Colombia. They missed the point – we were doing something that was good for parties.” They used to say we weren’t hard enough, that we weren’t true techno. That meant we always had a lot of girls at our parties, which pissed off some of the other organisers around at the time. You know, melody makes it easier to dance. I thought techno was lacking melody, way too hard at that time. I called it MFS, which was a play on words with the official name of the Stasi. He claims to be the progenitor of trance: “I set up the first trance label, actually the first music label in East Berlin. ![]() “My idea, back at the start of things, was for something like that feeling of E, you know, hypnotic, trance-inducing, hence the name.” Photo: Katja Ruge ![]() This trance titan has lost none of his enthusiasm for new music, but he’s not entirely happy with the direction of the contemporary trance scene. But they only told their bosses about it after the concert, you see, so that they could enjoy it like everyone else. He adds, “The Stasi knew about the gig, there were informers there. The gig features in the documentary, with a couple of photos “we only found out about much later”. Feeling B were there too… halfway through the gig it brought me to tears, what we were doing”. It was all about the music, not production levels. No-one wanted to lend us gear because it was worth so much, but we eventually got hold of an amp or two and just played everything through them. It was in a church – they called it the Blues Mass – and we couldn’t bring any equipment, obviously. Bringing over Die Toten Hosen – unknown at the time – for the first illegal secret gig in East Berlin, that wasn’t officially part of the plan. Of course, we could go officially but only for tourism. More interested in divulging stories than ingesting his much-needed food, he immediately confesses to some of his past crimes as he tells me, “As a westerner we could go easily enough on a day visa. West Berlin seemed so interesting, not really Bowie – I never saw him as a Berlin musician – but this idea of a little musical island. At the same time I got into a lot of West German synthesiser music, a lot of very early electronic stuff, very different to anything else. I wonder why a young lad in Manchester would want to sack it all off and head out to Berlin, and he explains to me that “I was listening to a lot of punk of course, early stuff, and I was even in a band called Joe Stalin’s Red Star Radio. He needs little encouragement to waltz back into his memories of the Wall and the insanity of the eighties. Lugubrious and charming, he looks none of his 57 years, and is surprisingly well-preserved for a man who’s been through the worst (best?) of what West Berlin had to offer. It’s clear that he loves Berlin like a fetishist adores their obsession.Īs I stride into the hotel dining room, he jovially pushes a chair out as a greeting to put me immediately at ease. In fact, he’s being modest, the film very much puts him centre stage as the charismatic narrator and driver. It covers a few of the things I got up to”, he explains with a wink that makes it clear some of the more exciting things may have been glossed over. In the film, he explains, “I play the red thread, the central point that leads you through those crazy times. Recently, alternative music legend Mark Reeder was in town to promote a documentary about West Berlin, B-Movie. Typical of this commitment to culture are the multitudes of film festivals. One of the great joys of this city is the simply vast number of specialist and artistic endeavours that take place within its confines in the mountains. Never let it never be said that Bogotá can’t do culture. Photo: Doris Klaas Manchester-born, Berlin-based Mark Reeder takes time out of his Colombia tour to speak to Oli Pritchard ![]()
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