'In Germany, the punks made music to express themselves': Mark Reeder, an avant-garde night owl

LeMonde

2 days ago

He hosted Nick Cave, organized the only Joy Division concert ever to come to West Berlin, and set up other clandestine shows in East Berlin churches. An Englishman, he stood out due to his iconic British demeanor, all while speaking flawless German. His name was Mark Reeder, and when he looked at you with his wide blue eyes, you knew they had seen a lot. He had haunted Berlin's nightlife in the 1980s, taking in all its sulfur and sounds.
He shared these memories one afternoon at Café Zazza, in Berlin's eastern Kreuzberg district. He had arrived wearing a leather coat, the kind you'd see back in the days of the Berlin Wall, and boots he had bought in East Germany in 1987. Music was his passion. At the age when other children sang nursery rhymes, he was listening to "Telstar" by the Tornados. His first 7-inch record. "It's the first techno record," he said. He still had it.
Reeder was two years old when Telstar came out in 1960. He lived in Manchester, in the United Kingdom. His father worked at the port, his mother in car insurance. "In the 1970s, the city sank into crisis. It was gray, dirty, grim. Only music saved us." Reeder began to hang out in record stores, befriending a fellow teenager, a record salesman: Ian Curtis, who would go on to become Joy Division's iconic singer. After a stint in advertising, he became a clerk at Manchester's first Virgin record store and became passionate about the pioneers of German electronic music: Klaus Schulze, Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, etc. "People didn't want it. For them, only English music mattered."
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