Customer Reviews

Learning English: Lesson One

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Cover albums are generally a cheap and easy way for bands to release an album when they have not gotten around to doing anything themselves. To keep fans hanging, they knock out a few songs someone else has written. Some work reasonably well ('Acid Eaters' by The Ramones), some are decidedly average ('Garage Inc' by Metallica, 'Undisputed Attitude' by Slayer) and some are outright rubbish ('The Spaghetti Incident?' by Guns and Roses). 'Learning English, Lesson One', however, is in a class of it's own.

Die Toten Hosen were at one time the biggest punk band in the world, but were generally ignored by English speaking audiences because they performed in German. In their first crack at English, the band produced a highly entertaining album.

Moreover, what we have here is a delightful English language instruction tape, complete with Janet and John discussing the finer points of pronunciation, usage, taking dirty pictures, and making Molotov cocktails. It is a collection of a number of defining moments from the formative days of punk, along with a track written by the Hosen themselves. Most fans of 70s punk will be familiar with "Blitzkrieg Bop", "If The Kids Are United", "Gary Gilmore's Eyes", "Smash It Up" and "Stranglehold", and all are reproduced with great reverence, but with a nice clean 1990s production. There are short stories from the band members as to why the songs were included in the liner notes.

One of the cool things about this album is that musicians who originally recorded the songs made guest appearances on all of the tracks. Some have died since. Included are Joey Ramone, and the last recording of Johnny Thunders, who died just 36 hours after helping record "Born To Lose". Other legends of punk on the album include living fossil Charlie Harper, Captain Sensible, Jimmy Pursey, Handsome Dick Manitoba, and Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs. Biggs helped write the irreverent tribute to punk "Punk Was".

As you can probably see from the track listing, this isn't the sort of thing that would appeal to fans of Discharge, The Exploited or Agnostic Front. It is too pop-oriented. However, if you enjoy a fresh take on some old favourites, this is addictive stuff. It is almost impossible to listen to this album and not have one of the songs stuck in your head for the rest of the day.

This is a neat album, and for a German band, they don't sing with thick accents like others do. I had not heard all the originals before, but now I am interested and will be checking out many of the ones i had not heard of before (like Dirty Pictures). The clips in between some of the tracks where amusing, and this is one cd definitely for perverts.

Die Toten Hosen (The Dead Trousers) are a German punk band. This CD here is their "covers" album. It features their cover versions of some of their favorite punk songs. The cool thing about it is that all the songs feature one of the original recording artists guest-starring on them. The songs are well performed and fun. I would recommend this album to fans of old school punk.

Die Toten Hosen one of the best German punk bands around has really teamed up to bring a great collection of older punk songs to the younger generation that has been living with bubble punk.

All song are sung with a member of the band that originally composed the music. Including luminaries like joey Ramone, Johnny thunder, and wreckless eric.

Take a spin on the simple side of punk and get an insight as to what the movement was like before it became overly commercial or to associated with skin-heads.
The liner notes are great too!!

Just the idea of doing an album of covers of classic old timey punk songs from back in the 80's is good enough for me. They somewhat manage to make most of the songs sound pretty much like DIE TOTEN HOSEN. There's an opening dialogue about 'we'll teach you English' that's quite funny.

I'm not sure I'd say forget the originals. In fact, I'd love to have a mix tape of these very originals and see how that sounded. More distinctly uniquely each song, that'd be for sure. Still, lots 'o fun here. If you haven't heard this band and you like punk this is a good way to start. They're not hardcore. It's sorta enthusiastic punk flavored. They sound like they've done a bunch a albums and been around several years. Given all the albums listed here on amazon.com it seems so. I've got like 1 or 2 other DTH albums, none really sweep me off my feet. chrisbct@hotmail.com

I bought this CD my freshman year of college because I fell in love with Hosen's german work at 14. While I prefer their originals, this is a great album for anyone who misses the way "Punk Was". I've met some Brits over the years who were teens when these songs were out and they were impressed with my knowlege of the classics. There is something about hanging out in a bar with a bunch of old punkers who turn to eachother and say, "Bloody h***, she knows all the words!"

Overall this is a pretty good collection of some of the UK's best Punk-Rock favorites, however the "Dead Pants" do much better singing their own tunes in German. But it is nice to see them still staying true to Punk after all those years.