I came across Laibach on Youtube the other day while hunting down old videos. I was flooded with memories of the late 1980's. I had just moved to chicago right from school at MSU. I had just turned 21 and my BF had found an apartment on Addison in Wrigleyville, an amazing neighborhood that like boystown was rapidly turning gay as the gay migration was heading north. My boyfriend had basically scoped out all the gaybars that guys like us would and could hang out at, slighty dingy dark, new wavey, hipster-y styled bars. His favorite was Berlin. We would hang out there smoking and drinking(no drugs), we discovered that later in NYC. Berlin was truly an amazing bar, hot guys, great music, cute bartenders and seriously hip. Videos were big at the time and as people drank and smoked, we would shout at each other over the loud music and sneak glimpses of the insanely well directed videos of Rita Mitsouko, New Order, Depeche Mode, and so on, the heavy hitters of the fusion of art, fashion and music. I was in heaven. Then there was Laibach, fusing together the imagery of nationalistic eastern european propganda films of the 30's and 40's with the pomp and circumstance of a Wagner Opera, in a word, incredible. At first, I was afraid of obvious Nazi look and feel of the video, then, and I have to admit it, became sexually excited by it. Take a look and tell me how you feel. Considering this is from 88-89 I think it has aged very well...and I still get turned on by the imagery. BTW, I have researched Laibach and the group hated Nazi and Nazi germany but liked the feel of their propoganda and classic art composition that they felt preceded the nazi's and felt the art of that era cant be dismissed as Nazi. Russians and Americans used such classic art and concepts in their work as well.
Here is the video on You tube of Laibachs Geburt einer nation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YE_j0xIsJA&NR=1
