Nunsexmonkrock
	Produced by Mike Thorne
	Released on May 1982
	US CHART POSITION #184
	Find it at GEMM
CK 46993 cover

B efore there was Madonna, there was the Anti-Madonna. Madonna (the artist) was so sexy it was almost scary; Nina Hagen was so scary it was more than a little sexy. After two albums and a little time off for bad behavior, Nina came to New York City looking for a fight, and she found it with Nunsexmonkrock. It is a startling, visionary record, one of the milestones in the evolution of the female rock icon. Originally tagged as a punk, Nina quickly came into her own as an artiste, welding large chunks of punk, dub and the paranormal and displaying it in her distinctive (an understatement) possessed polyglot. It was kind of Yoko Ono meets Marianne Faithfull in the wild Eden of Kate Bush’s garden. To hear “Born In Xixax,” “Cosma Shiva” or “Future Is Now” is to enter the bizarre, blissed-out universe of Nina Hagen. It helps that the backing band is purely professional: session players Chris Spedding, Allan Schwartzberg and Paul Shaffer are the straight men that Hagen and Karl Rucker need to pull off a cosmic joke of these proportions. So how does it come to be that a Nina Hagen doesn’t dwarf a Madonna in the minds of young girls? Tell me that somewhere, in a wonderful gothic corner of the world, teenage girls were raising their fists in the air, communing with inner space and outer space, practicing their come-hither-so-I-can-kick-your-ass glances and not just standing in front of the mirror in a Madonna pose looking like a Geisha girl who ran through a Frederick’s of Hollywood with double-sided tape stuck all over her body. Otherwise, ladies, you have no one but yourselves to blame: A Nina Hagen doesn’t come around very often.

CK 46993 back sleeve

TRACK LISTING

1. ANTIWORLD    (Words by Nina Hagen/Music by Paul Roessler)    4:41
2. SMACK JACK    (Ferdinand Karmelk)    5:17
3. TAITSCHI-TAROT    (Words by Nina Hagen/Music by Paul Roessler)    2:06
4. DREAD LOVE    (Words by Nina Hagen/Music by Ferdinand Karmelk)    4:07
5. FUTURE IS NOW    (Nina Hagen)    2:55
6. BORN IN XIXAX    (Nina Hagen)    2:55
7. IKI MASKA    (Nina Hagen)    5:09
8. DR. ART    (Words by Nina Hagen/Music by Karl Rucker)    4:50
9. COSMA SHIVA    (Nina Hagen)    3:19
10. UFO    (Words by Nina Hagen/Music by Karl Rucker)    4:53

CREDITS

NINA HAGEN -- guitar, synthesizer, voice
AXEL GATHE -- baritone saxophone, contrabass clarinet
PAUL ROSTLER -- piano, synthesizer
KARL RUCKER -- bass, synthesizer
ALLAN SCHWARTZBERG -- drums
PAUL SHAFFER -- synthesizer
CHRIS SPEDDING -- guitar
Nicolaj Ilieff -- cover design
Juliana Grigorova -- cover photography
Michael Ewasko -- engineer
Don Wershba -- additional overdubs
Harvey Goldberg -- additional overdubs, mixing

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