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When Cruise , the film whose dialogue I used as an epigraph for this chapter, was
released in 1970, these words were seen as capturing Polish inability to move
beyond the safe zone of a well-known repertoire of images, melodies and symbols.
Austrians allegedly are also stuck in the past (see Chapter 1 ). This would
explain Kruder and Dorfmeister’s penchant for making capital from our pleasure
of listening to melodies we already know, if not for the fact that they gained fame
not from capitalising on Vienna’s music history but remixing songs coming from
the Anglo-American centre of popular music, such as those by Depeche Mode,
Madonna and David Holmes. Theirs is thus an interesting case of colonisation,
which includes self-colonisation and reverse colonisation: taking something from
the centre, reworking it and returning to the centre an improved version. Depending
on the perspective, their productions can be seen as proof of the hegemony of
the centre or a sign that the periphery can not only resist the centre’s power but
also penetrate it on its own terms. Equally, they can be seen as a sign of the end of
authenticity and originality in popular music (and art at large) in the postmodern
era or a need to rework these concepts to fit the art of creative recycling.
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