The mother of [German] punk turns 55 today - "so what the fuck!"
Catharina "Nina" Hagen was born in East Berlin on March 11, 1955. Her estranged father Hans was a scriptwriter whose Jewish parents died at the Nazis' Sachsenhausen concentration camp during WW II. Pretty Nina was a child opera prodigy & her teen group Automobil had a hit East German pop single in 1974 called "Du hast den Farbfilm vergessen" ["You forgot the colour film"].
Nina emigrated to West Germany in 1976, along with her actress/singer mother Eva-Maria, in the wake of her controversial folksinger/poet stepfather Wolf Biermann's expulsion by East German authorities. She launched her punk rock band in West Berlin in 1977, moved in 1980 to Santa Monica, California, where she gave birth to daughter Cosma Shiva (she later had a son, named Otis, by a Frenchman).
Nina lived in Paris for much of the 1990s & even hosted a UK sci-fi TV show. My favorite Nina Hagen album is NunSexMonkRock (1982), which features a psychedelic cover photo of Nina as the Madonna with her daughter Cosma as the Christchild.
I saw Nina Hagen perform at Shank Hall (yes, it's named after the fictitious unlucky club in "This Is Spinal Tap") in Milwaukee in the summer of 1995. She may have been past her hellraising & sexually daring prime, but Nina remained quirky & fun to watch. She really moved me with her cover of Nirvana's "All Apologies," which she performed as a tribute to the then recently deceased Kurt Cobain.
Nina Hagen's webpage is www.myspace.com/whymeohlord. You can watch her have a telephone conversation with dead gospel diva Mahalia Jackson.
Happy Birthday, Nina: I'm watching for the UFO's & awaiting any lessons they wish to share. "Love is the Truth."
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