visions
| Visions on Alphaville´s music
by Alphaville, from various sources: Prostitute (album 1994) Press release The Paradigm Shift One of today´s most prominent factors is that nowadays everyone has an opinion about everything, although they are never actually involved, never directly affected´. ´Prostitute´questions the consequences of this. ´Prostitute´ pleads for a world view that is neither focused on Europe alone, nor trusts the so-called truths spread by electronic media. Marian Gold, who in recent years has travelled extensively in Africa, further explains the background as follows: "In every village in Africa there is a coloured television set, the people look at the pictures from our world and think it is great. I think it is extremely arrogant when West Europeans, ´comitted´ to the Third World, are upset by this. Basically they want to damn the ´nobel savages´ to vegetating in a zoo of their pittoresque fantasies of roots and origins. For Alphaville this one-dimensional way of thinking is a consequence of the ´Paradigm Shift´ : Opinions and attitudes are no longer the result of direct, individual experience and have nothing more to do with the immediate scope of life. ´We have completely lost contact to our past, we are the ´Fools´. ´Beethoven, on the other hand, stands for a completely different shift of opinion now taking place in Germany. ´Lot´s of Germans are proud of Beethoven. When there is talk of the holocaust, they immediately divert attention to Goethe, Beethoven or who knows else - since the Germans really aren´t bad at all. They aren´t. But Beethoven has nothing to do with it, it just steers from the real problem." The current position ´Prostitutes ´traces Alphaville´s path from the buresque elements to more serious moments. The band hold the album together with tightly-related compositions: ´Paradigm Shift´, ´Fools´, ´Ivory Tower´, ´Ain´t It Strange´ and ´Parade´. However, it is not a closely-woven concept album - there are even ´unimportant´ songs. ´The Impossible Dream´ is one of these that, as Marian says, "´contextually´ does not represent any particual point of view. It´s simply a love song, like the millions that are written every day." |