Review of Nina Hagen : Official Live Bootleg
Nina Hagen live at Kulturfabrik / Krefeld (Germany) 2001. 23 tracks altogether on 2 CDs, including 'My Sweet Lord' (George Harrison) & 'My Way' (Sinatra). Packaged in a snazzy, slim gatefold paper sleeve.

Users's Reviews - Nina Hagen : It could have been the live of the century but....
It turns out to be a dissapointment to the hardcore fan like me Why ?
you may ask ?
Because, for some reasons this live was done at the last moment with very little preparation.
The sound is good...but not great ! Nina's voice comes from far away...its sounds like a bootleg. Also, when you want to do a good live record you select a specific nights where the artist has had a night off or two before, to allow the voice to be at his max...if you look at Nina's schedule at that time you can see that she was in a middle af a long tour...
You can feel the voice was not at his best.
Another point, the crowds seems so far away ...actually was there a crowd ? They seems so quiet !
And then after, you bring that live into studio to fix the little technicality that needs to be fix, or you can add sounds to make the live even better.
Dont get me wrong i love this record. Maybe because there is no other live around from Nina... this is something incredible. The best female singer of all time without a good live or DVD !! incredible.
Now, if you dont care about Nina's voice or the fact that the sound comes from somewhere in the back of the concert hall then you will like this one. Most of her hits are there and its a double CD.

Your latest reviews - Nina Hagen : Nina in plain english
The easiest approach would be saying you can't think of anything you like about this album, you won't get bored. It's not entirely true; with a very short attention span you might judge this as incredibly crappy pop. It takes a few listens from a completely unprepared listener to understand this goes way beyond pop.

For fans of Nina Hagen Ekstasy is on the poppier side of her music, which essentially means this album will cause the average Mtv watching teenager's head to explode in about 2 minutes, instead of 20 seconds. Let's make one thing clear, if you're not into giving music (even weird crappy sounding music) a second or third listen, stop reading at this point and buy some elevator music from Madonna or Eminem.

Hagen's style requires a few listens before it changes from random noise to more or less coherent onslaughts of pure creativity coupled with outrageous vocals and lyrics. The music is largery powered by funk, but it's only the foundations for anarchistic selection of musical styles and sounds from synthpop to punk to bubblegum pop.

Universal Radio is one of my favorites, a nicely psychotic pop tune where Nina sounds cuter than ever. She has a marvelously beautiful nasal voice that the likes of Kylie Minogue and Madonna would quite simply die for. Another strong point is Russian Reggae, with an athmospheric chorus, a couple great twists and great guitars. The Lord's Prayer is more chaotic and playful in typical Nina fashion, but pretty much right on target delivering a catchy anarchopop song.

All in all while Ekstasy manages to be just a little more easily approached, it does not lose much of the raw creativity of what makes Nina, in the process. Nina has never made an album that would be a musical masterpiece by strict standards, but among billboard top 40 she is a genius.