I’ve just created a Last.fm group for Germaniac.com. If you aren’t familiar with Last.fm, it’s a site and application that tracks what you play on your media player such as Winamp, and then creates weekly, monthly, yearly and overall charts of your listening habits. It can then recommend you similar artists you might like, and also point you in the direction of other people with tastes similar to yours. Last.fm also has some swell community tools, such as groups and forums for them. Now Germaniac.com also has its very own group for all you germaniacs!

So, come and join! You’ll be able to chat with your fellow germaniacs, see what sorts of music they listen to, recommend your own favourites to people, find new bands to listen to… All the good stuff. I hope we’ll be able to have some great fun with this! I go by the nick ruumisauto, by the way, and Greg is flammenstrahl.

If you don’t have a Last.fm account, you can sign up and download the application here. Don’t worry, the program isn’t very large and it doesn’t take much resources to keep it running.

Arndt Peltner, Radio Goethe’s producer, will be appearing at the German embassy in Washington DC on Saturday, May 3rd for a special DJ set from 10 AM until 3 PM. Aside from hearing some great music from some of the most creative musicians in Germany, you will also be able to sample German food, learn a lot about German culture and the work the embassy does, and tour the Ambassador’s residence during this time. I will be in town for this event also, so come join us for a day filled with culture.

EU Open House
This event is part of the EU Open House in which all the European embassies in the city are open to the public for the day. Everyone is invited to come in to experience what it’s like behind the gates and to learn about their respective countries and cultures. This open house event kicks off a week of European celebrations which ultimately lead up to Europe Day on May 9th.

Getting to the embassy
The German embassy is located just outside the main hub of Washington DC at 4645 Reservoir Road, NW. You can also see a list of all the European embassy locations and their events for the day here on CulturalTourismDC.org.

About Threadless
Threadless is one of my favorite websites. It’s a T-shirt printing company, but it’s completely different than any other T-shirt company because it’s 100% community-oriented. Anyone can create designs and submit them to the site, and then everyone votes on them and the best ones get printed. It’s a genius idea, the designs are practically guaranteed to to be great. If you’re not already a member or a customer, I would definitely suggest signing up to vote, submit a design, or go on a shopping spree.

How does this relate to German music?
Just entered into this week’s round of voting is a very awesome Kraftwerk-themed shirt by Webbins that features the classic image of the 4 members a la the Man-Machine cover, but Florian decided to be a bit more expressive than the typical uniformity of the band’s appearance with a yellow and green striped necktie. I just started laughing when I first saw it, it’s really funny if you are at all familiar with Kraftwerk. Go see the design here and be sure to vote 5$ for it!

Since we are now in a new year, I thought it might be a good idea to figure out what the best albums of 2007 were. Naturally, I have my personal favorites, but I want to know what you like, too. Post a list of your 10 favorite albums from 2007 in a comment and we can use the most popular ones as recommendations for newcomers. I will also do special posts for any albums that haven’t been discussed on the site already so everybody can learn more about them. I think this will benefit everyone.

Here are my 10 favorite German releases from 2007
Ulrich Schnauss - Goodbye
Die Krupps - Too Much History
Geist - Für Alle Zeit
Joachim Witt - Auf Ewig
Black Heaven - Kunstwerk
Polarkreis 18 - Polarkreis 18
KMFDM - Tohuvabohu
Emigrate - Emigrate
Tocotronic - Kapitulation
Krieger - Krieger

What are your favorites?
Leave a comment and let everyone know!

For those of you who don’t know who Peter Spilles is, he’s the singer of Project Pitchfork. Once again, his twisted humor has emerged in another side project called Santa Hates You, which is conveniently releasing their first album on Halloween, not too far ahead of Christmas. It’s called You’re On The Naughty List and takes you for a ride through some kind of dystopian holiday scene. I can’t help but think of the Futurama episode where Santabot’s “naughty or nice” standards are set too high and everyone in the world is terrified of Christmas.

Santa Hates You actually sounds a lot like Project Pitchfork in many ways, like their use of similar-sounding synthesizers and deep rhythmic beats. Some of the lyrics can get funny at times, but overall they have a darker tone than you might be used to hearing from PP. The images in the booklet (and on their MySpace page) are kind of disturbing, too, but I have to admit I do like the necklace made out of Barbie doll body parts. Check out the 5 full-length songs on the band’s MySpace page. If you prefer to download rather than stream, MusicNonStop has some MP3 samples, but they are shorter and of lower quality.

Santa Hates You - You’re On The Naughty List tracklist
01. U R Fucking It Up
02. Sugar And Spice
03. Karoshi
04. Love Song
05. Ego Inc.
06. Feuerball
07. Machine Sex Symphony
08. Sonne
09. Profumo Di Luce
10. Pantheon

Die Ärzte is heading towards an album release on November 2nd, but first they’re doing a bit of promotion with the first single from the new album. “Junge” has already been playing on the airwaves in Germany since August, but the single is just now going to be released this Friday, October 5th. Aside from the title track, the “Junge” single contains 2 B-sides which will not appear on the forthcoming album.

The “Junge” video looks like a scene straight out of Dawn of the Dead. There are zombies roaming the streets destroying everything in sight. As the video progresses, they turn other people into zombies and eventually overpower the band who are perched on top of a bus. Farin Urlaub never stood a chance.

“Junge” video:

Source: youtube.com/watch?v=egT6zjqC76Q

Die Ärzte - Junge single tracklist:
01. Junge
02. Das schönste Lied der Welt
03. Tut mir leid
04. Junge

I have always loved the game Monopoly ever since I was very young. It’s a great way to spend a few hours of your time with some friends. But after playing the game so many times, all those properties and railroads start to get boring. To draw people back, Parker Brothers has released a seemingly infinite number of variations on the game, but their latest version is quite possibly the best yet. Monopoly Deutschland!

Instead of properties like St. Charles Place and the Boardwalk, this German version of Monopoly has 22 cities that you can land on and buy, from Aachen to Würzburg. The game features 4 major German rail stations in place of the 4 railroads of traditional Monopoly. The Electric Company and Waterworks are also replaced by the Solarpark Bavaria and Wasserkraftwerk Rheinfelden. And the money is in Euros, naturally.

Monopoly Deutschland just hit stores in Germany this past Wednesday. For Germaniacs overseas, you can order it on various websites like AlphaMusic.de along with your next music purchase.

Normally I wouldn’t post something like this on Germaniac, but I thought this was pretty creative (and it kind of fits the site). It’s a T-shirt with a bunch of pictures on it to help you communicate with the locals next time you’re in a foreign country. If you happen to be in Berlin at the Popkomm festival and you don’t know how to ask where the best show is, just point to the guitar on your shirt and someone will direct you to a concert. You can get your own International Translation T-shirt for $15 from Threadless. Check out some of their other awesome shirts, too. via Uncrate.

Someone made a stop-motion music video for Rammstein’s “Feuer Frei!” made entirely out of Legos! Just the idea of this alone is awesome. This video really blows me away. The attention to detail is incredible! The band members’ hands and bodies are moving along with the music, their facial expressions change with the tone of the music, and there’s even Lego fire. You just have to watch this. Enjoy!

Source: youtube.com/watch?v=qxUZUnRwH7s

National Geographic is known around the world for educating people about our planet’s natural resources, history, and culture. About a year ago, they launched the world music part of their website, and Germany is one of the featured countries. On this interactive website, you can learn a bit about the history of Germany, their culture, and of course their music. Currently, there are seven German musicians that you learn about and listen to, in a variety of styles. Aziza A, the famous hip-hop and R&B singer has an article, as does the modern klezmer band Di Grine Kuzine. There’s even information about a German tango group, the Tango Five.

The National Geographic’s focus seems to be on more ethnic varieties of music, and that’s fine with me, but ideally I’d like to see more from Germany. (Take a look at South Africa or Congo, they have dozens of musicians listed) Hopefully in time, their database of world musicians will be built up with more variety. All of the musicians on their site, whether German or from any other country, are worth checking out, so take a look if you have a few minutes.