In April of 1980, the number one song on the radio was Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall," Roger Waters' Orwellian vision of a grim, bankrupt and totally administered society stamping out every spark of life and spirit that might flare up in the individual.

The image of the "Wall" resonated with meaning: fences, barriers, schools, prisons, factories -- and of course, the Berlin Wall -- no symbol at all, but an actual construction, a barricade running through the heart of a city like a scar; an ugly, immovable and monolithic reminder of the lengths to which our governments will go go impose their rule on unwilling and powerless subjects.

In one of those small ironies that go unnoticed at the time only to turn up later to make fools of us, Einsturzende Neubauten played their first show on April Fools Day, 1980, in Berlin. Composed of Germans (Blixa Bargeld, NU Unruh and two women, Beate Bartel and Gundrun Gut who later went on to form the bands Mania D and Malaria), the band played, perhaps not literally, but at least figuratively, in the shadow of the wall.

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