"Lost in Music" in Berlin | Are you interested in music?

And what do you like to do most in your free time? "Taking drugs," "cuddling," "nothing at all"? Such information is rarely provided in standard questionnaires, and the poet Horst Tomayer's famous question, "Are you interested in sexuality?" is neither asked nor answered. What always works, however, and can be very good, is "reading" and "listening to music," or alternatively, "making music" and "reading aloud." And that's exactly what's now available in Berlin in a very practical special package: "Lost in Music" is the name of a new event taking place next Friday in the Taz canteen. It's about "stories from pop music" in the form of readings and live music. Autobiographical or biographical, or completely different.

Acclaimed musicians play music or read about music, or authors read and play music. Just as Kraftwerk once sang: "It will always go on. Music as a vehicle for ideas." Now that there is no longer a music press that can broaden one's consciousness, this is more important than ever. Organizer Markus Naegele used to publish hardcore books about pop music with Heyne, but also made records himself, as the singer of the band Fuck Yeah (post-grunge) and as a solo artist under the name Don Marco (Americana in German). In the 1990s, he was active in the indie scene in Frankfurt am Main, including as editor of the magazine "Superstar," one of the best West German fanzines of all time. This man really has credibility.

"Lost in Music" evenings have already taken place in Munich at "Live Evil" and in Hamburg at "Nochtspeicher." And now it's Berlin's turn, starting at 8 p.m. on Friday evening at the Taz canteen in Kreuzberg. There will be three readings and three concerts, mixed and running consecutively, each lasting 15 minutes, without a break.

Music will be playing: Brezel Göring with his raw, psychoanalysis-oriented garage rock. He was the other half of Stereo Total, and his first solo album after the death of Francoise Cactus shimmered as "a truly moving, dark masterpiece," as this newspaper called it. It was also self-empowering, original, and funny. Jesper Munk was once considered the greatest talent on the German blues rock scene and now makes more soul music for young adults. Bird Control call themselves the "Future Sound of Trash." Twenty years ago, their members played with Mucus 2, Monochords, and Jeans Team, and now they make "moody psychedelic garage punk."

Reading will be bassist Julie Miess, who wrote her doctorate on monsters and played with Half Girl, Mutter, Britta , and Jens Friebe 's band. Her current band is called Motörcat because it "combines her love of cats, noise, and Lemmy Kilmister ." Journalist and night-out style icon Jenni Zylka invented a similar band for her 2004 debut novel, "Beat Baby, Beat!" She writes for various feature pages, is on the jury for the Grimme Prize, and curates films for the Berlinale. Eric Wrede, a former DJ, worked as a manager for Motor Music, and then became a professional undertaker, with his own company, podcast, and book, a "Spiegel" bestseller ("The End – The Book of Death"). Records are also being played, by music journalist Martin Lippert: soul, disco, new wave, Italo-pop, and vinyl-only.

No, pop music isn't being buried this evening; quite the opposite: "We're lost in music / Feel so alive / I quit my nine to five / We're lost in music," as Sister Sledge once sang. A very good song, a very good event. Feel so alive.

Friday, May 30, 8 p.m., "Lost in Music – Stories from Pop Music," Taz-Kantine, Friedrichstraße 21, Berlin