Ein groß weißer Luftballon - The Chinese


Posted On: Wednesday - February 8th 2023 9:54AM MST
In Topics: 
  Music  Humor  China  Zhou Bai Dien

Who are these two?



Honestly, I don't know. It's funny anyway.


Peak Stupidity is yet AGAIN repeating music. Hey, we didn't know what was gonna happen and that the blog wouldn't have already been destroyed by now. (No, not by the Chinese, more likely by Merrick Garland.) The German band, not its leader singer, was named Nena, and their Ninety-nine Red Balloons, translated based on meter* from the German Neun und neunzig Luftballons, was a hit song 40 years ago. Our original post with the song was just about the music.

The theme of Ninety-nine Red Balloons is a peaceful incident - the balloons in the sky - triggering military escalation and the start of a nuclear war. I was going by memory, but wiki supported me on it, that the band Rush's Distant Early Warning (also on this site, here) was from around the same time. It was from 1984, as opposed to Nena's hit in 1983.

This was still the Cold War era, and all the possibilities for large-scale nuclear war were on people's minds. They had been since the 1950s. This showed up in rock music into the '80s. I do wonder how much of this was anti-Reagan propaganda, against, you know, the guy who ENDED the Cold War. Also, the early and mid 1980s was also a time of great music videos. I can remember the video for Distant Early Warning, and 99 Red Balloons too, though, IMO, Nena didn't put as much effort into theirs.

Back at the swamp, bugs in the software
flash the message, "Something's out there",
Floating in the winter sky,
one big-ass white balloon goes by.

Ninety-nine politicians tweet
on smartphones from their toilet seat.
No worry, worry, don't you scurry.
Chairman Xi says "don't you hurry."

The President is on the line
begging "CCP, don't drop a dime."
"Let our balloon fly over slow,
or it's Hunter, Hunter, on video."

A thousand spies are there in place.
We just do this so you lose face.
Both Bai Dein and Xi can rot in place,
let's take this war to cyberspace.

None of you clowns could be my hero.
What was that crap about Covid~Zero?
Don't want to live under some 'tarded freak,
as stupidity comes to a peak.

Wait, where do balloons come back in again?


OK, this is not a time for levity. Do you understand what happened to Lawn Chair Larry Walters? (Pun and James Taylor reference** very much intended.) OK, I sucked myself into this:

Drei und vierzig white balloons,
sailing right through Class B airspace.
Lawn Chair Larry had no fear,
six pack and baloney sandwich near ...


This is the last verse of the actual lyrics of the American version:

Ninety-nine dreams I have had,
in every one a red balloon.
It's all over, and I'm standing pretty
in the dust that was a city.
If I could find a souvenir
just to prove the world was here.
Here it is, a red balloon.
I think of you and let it go,
as ninety-nine red balloons go by...


That was pretty poignant. I don't remember caring about that in 1983. I just cared that it was a good melody with decent sound (for the '80s) and that the girl I though was named Nena was standing pretty in the video.





* That's got to be tricky. The title was not hard, with "red" inserted for one more syllable, though it's still shy by one from the German. However, translating a whole song without butchering the meaning, while keeping the meter straight, and making it rhyme? I respect those who figure these puzzles out.

** We've got that too! Machine Gun Kelly was from JT's great album Mudslide Slim and the Blue Horizon. My wording is from the intro to the song.

Comments:
Dieter Kief
Friday - February 10th 2023 12:56AM MST
PS
I too thought the English criticism was bogus.
What is true though: She - visibly felt less lighthearted and engaged when singing English. ABBA mastered that hurdle with lots of discipline, Nena and her Band were - - - - - not into this discipline stuff so much. And why should they have been? They had plenty of success in Germany (both parts of it - but only the Western part spend money....).
Nena is .h.e.r. mostly. I don't follow her but I got the big waves she made by opposing lockdowns and the pressure that was put on the public to vaxx. She clearly did not like that and said it - willing to stand her ground - and pay the high (!) price! - Not many did that.
Moderator
Thursday - February 9th 2023 10:12AM MST
PS: OK, got your clarification on the masking there over in Canton, Mr. G. It used to be the Westerners could do no wrong, but I didn't know about right now, after the last few years of foreign relations. They DO still want to learn English badly, I guess.

Dieter, thanks for the story on Nena. It's amazing they would make fun of her English in the song. Hardly any Americans could do the reverse without butchering the German language. This reminds me of ABBA, who I've read early on did not know English. But the market for the music wanted English, so the songs were translated and the two girls (sometimes the men sang) would just make the appropriate sounds. That had to be kind of tough, till you play a couple hundred shows I guess.

So Nena was against the PanicFest over there, huh? Good on her, or the band, I should say. (Or was it just Frau Kerner herself) That'd be like David Dundas being against the PanicFest over here. You ask "Who's David Dundas?" That's just it - he was "one hit wonder" with a song called "Jeans On" in the 1970's, so everyone else but me would be asking the same question. I happen to like that song - it's on here somewhere (good luck) - so I'd be he only one going, "Hey, if David Dundas says 'Jeans on, masks off', who am I to question him?"
Dieter Kief
Thursday - February 9th 2023 3:39AM MST
PS
Last comment about charming and talkative typo in Alarmist's first Nena comment.
And of course, Alarmist, the German females' danced, so to speak irony in the AFU-clubs..."Rage diminishes over time, irony survives" (Poet/essayist Hans Magnus Enzensberger).
Dieter Kief
Thursday - February 9th 2023 3:35AM MST
PS
The etymology of knickerbocker*** trousers does hang together with Nena, so your Knickname-typo is precise! - Not least because Nena discovered early on that leather*** pants suit her perfectly well. - A huge (I hear The Beauty Contest Mogul Donald now, of curse) divcovery! - Very - öhhh: fitting!

German ***knickerbockers are often made of leather - easpecially in the South.
Dieter Kief
Thursday - February 9th 2023 3:25AM MST
PS

Frustrating - comment gone.
I'll try again:

Yep. Mod., translation not pefect, your's better!

School drop-out Nena was mocked by elitist snobs and by the revolutionary left alike for 99 Red Balloons. Leftists said it was a counterrevolutionary peac of artistically worthless hackwork, because it nourished the illusion, that "the system" would allow peace...
The snobs also looked down on her for being vulgar and childish.
Both mocked the school drop-out Nena for her bad English pronounciation in the English version of Red Balloons.

That then did not hurt often drugged up Nena: She then laughed this critizism all away-yyyy-yyy (Joni Mitchell in People's Parties - one of my favourite song-lines** (**Bruce Chatwin) ever).

But the still high spirited and charming grandma Nena had to weather much harder storms in the last two years caused by her loose public talk about lockdwons & vaccines. That was serious: Concerts cancelled; TV contracts annihilated, media appearences minimized. But she is a tough cookie and stood tall within all these shenanigans.- Which I liked a lot!
Ganderson
Wednesday - February 8th 2023 5:05PM MST
PS

This dovetails nicely with Severian’s thread on hot female rockers- started, I think, by someone who mentioned Leonid and Friends, a Russian Chicago (and others) tribute band, whose singer, Ksena Busina, almost reaches double figures, looks-wise. Amongst others mentioned, Liz Phair, Susanna Hoffs, some red haired chick who plays the slide guitar (not Bonnie Raitt)… etcetera.

Is the pic Swalwell and Fang Fang?

To clarify my earlier post on China- my son and his occidental friends don’t usually wear masks in the Middle Kingdom, but most of the natives do; although he’s been here in the states since before Christmas, so that may be changing.

Today’s ray of hope- I went to the dentist this morning- and for the first time no masks were required.
Deep Detroit House Electro
Wednesday - February 8th 2023 4:48PM MST
PS The Beastie Boys have the Root Down PP Balloon mix and the classic Egg Man.
Gut busting morale maintenance while reading about black women in college not finding their "soul mates" while the Karens and Sheilas have no problem snagging a you get half partner to spend our money.
The local Bolshevik enemedia had a lengthy segment about it's only a weather balloon and they can't travel far.
Yea, the CCP/PLA/PRC version travelled thousands of miles after being launched from the Aleutians.
Remember when Chicago Jesus was taking immaculate selfies in Alaska and the PLAN (CCP Navy) had a destroyer in the area!
The 1980's called and it wants Max Headroom back.
The Alarmist
Wednesday - February 8th 2023 3:01PM MST
PS

It probably should be “Ein grosser weisser Luftballon,” which kind of works.

Nigel Tufnel Goes to 11
Wednesday - February 8th 2023 2:05PM MST
PS Fitting that the Long March useful idiots of the faculty lounge stuck on a 19th century German bum get punked by 19th century technology!

Chinese state-owned television aired footage of a high-altitude balloon dropping hypersonic weapons in 2018.

The stunning footage displays a high-altitude balloon, not dissimilar from the one that traversed over the United States last week, carrying three hypersonic glide vehicles (HGVs) into high altitude and dropping them for testing. …

The balloon-dropped HGVs were part of an effort to develop precision warheads for hypersonic weapons, which would give the Chinese military an “unstoppable nuclear-capable weapon,” according to the South China Morning Post.

(source:ntd dot com)
Moderator
Wednesday - February 8th 2023 1:45PM MST
PS: BTW, the meter of this title in German is right - unless I've got words out of order (due to possible problems with accenting).* However, the English for this doesn't: "One Big-ass White Balloon" might have had to be "One More Big-ass White Balloon".. or something.


* A little help would be appreciated, Mr. Kief.
Moderator
Wednesday - February 8th 2023 1:42PM MST
PS: I see, so her nickname became the name of the band. That song was played during the time when I still learned and kept track band members, but for America, at least, this one was a one-hit wonder.

Yeah, that title would have been cooler too. Americans liked that foreign flavor, at a time when it was not nearly so ubiquitous. I remember the German version got played more after a while. By then, anyone who cared what the song was about already knew.

That must have still been fun, albeit ironic time, Alarmist!
The Alarmist
Wednesday - February 8th 2023 12:40PM MST
PS

FWIW, Nena is Frau Kerner’s knickname, picked up on a family trip to the Spanish resort island of Mallorca... it translates to “girl.”

The english-version meter would work better if the words were “Ninety-nine Red Luftballons.” Even us simple American folk could work out that a Luftballoon is a balloon.

I was USAF in those days, and the chicks who came to the club on a base tasked to deliver nuclear weapons to the other side of the world loved to dance to that tune. Ironic, ain’t it?
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