Berlin Teyl Dray. We meet again. This time I came REALLY prepared, having gone bezerk on $0u1$33k for five days before this trip, and coming away with about three gigs of mp3's to keep me occupied. So, there's little chance of getting bored with all my music after two weeks. Nevertheless, the pop station has remained popular in the lab. Already, I've heard the dance remix of "Mad World" far more times than is necessary.

Despite an all-nighter that left me in dire need of sleep (finally admitting defeat after being awake for 32 hours and passing out at work), I arrived home at our quaint little riverside apartment (having gotten lost on the bike ride home -- it was actually the first time I'd gone home via bike since arriving) ready to crawl in bed, only to be greeted by my old buddy, that leading light of Deutschlander TV entertainment and one of the few beacons for the English language on our video airwaves. Yes, it was old reliable, MTV Germany, with a short look at the year 1990. This was not a Behind The Music :1990 "let's make everything look as important as possible and give ego-stroking interview time to has-beens". It was all about the vids, introduced and bookended with the occasional informative or goofy comment from VJ Markus (complete with new, greasier haircut). I forgot all about sleeping and enjoyed the following "classics":

NKOTB -- Step By Step. Of course, I'm using their latter-day, smoother-sounding name (at least that was the plan). Their 1993 comeback failed horribly, although unbeknownst to anyone, a certain Ron Perleman was sitting on a plane and wondering why it couldn't happen all over again. At the height of alternative/grunge's commercialism, he went back to Orlando and created New Kids Mk II and III. And it turned out that he was right -- it DID happen all over again. Life is funny sometimes. Anyhow, Donnie wears about three different PE shirts during this fiasco, but unlike the others, he is fortunately spared by not having to perform the horrid sub-MC Hammer jive dancing. Probably New Kids' best single, though. As is the case with just about every act on this retrospective, they became irrelevant post-grunge, although that may have come to pass regardless, since you always take the chance of becoming irrelevant overnight when your fan base mostly consists of preteen girls.

Enigma -- Sadeness, Part I. It was all downhill from here. "Mea Culpa" was pretty good, and the "MCMXC A.D." album was actually quite awesome, but the second and third albums descended into New Age floaty crud and are best never mentioned again. This first single, however, was perfect, more or less trumping The Orb at their own game by nailing ambient house on the head on the first try, and triggering a short-lived Gregorian Chant revival in the process (note: there was no Rickie Lee Jones revival). I had the cassette single and must have listened to it more times than any other single in 1990 save "Enjoy the Silence". Too bad the video is crap, though.

At this point, I flipped channels to VIVA, and there was a girl taking off her clothes to Massive Attack's "Be Thankful For What You've Got". As yes, I thought, it's more of those soothing Berlin late night girlie ads, but this time they're advertising the 976 numbers with Massive Attack tunes. What an impressive choice. But NO, it turned out to be the video! I had no idea that a) there were videos from "Blue Lines", b) this tune was a single (it's one of my least favourite on the album), and c) stripping!! nudity!! In a Massive Attack vid!!! Who knew?

Leila K -- Got to Get. Leila K has never been, and will never show up in a Behind The Music special. But remembering 1990 isn't always about the biggest and brightest names. I would have gone to my grave and not remembered this song at all. And despite not giving this tune the slightest thought for the last fourteen years, I instantly remembered it and enjoyed it. As Beyonce has shown, horn samples tend to work like a charm. 1990 -- the days when you could make a video with your friends and a shoestring budget and get it played on MTV.

Phil Collins -- I Wish it Would Rain Down. Clapton's in this video! How did I not notice this before? The guitar solos are so obviously him too. Was I paying attention at all back in 1990? This is a really really good song for Phil Collins, full of emotional hooks and wails that would have curled Joe Cocker into a pretzel had this song been written for him. In this way, it's not the least bit subtle, but I like it anyway.

And the video is the typical Phil Collins Lighthearted Humour For Young and Old, in which our hero dreams of a rags-to-riches life whose vault into stardom begins with a chance opportunity to perform this very song in a play. I *think* he's partly taking the piss out of himself -- the newspaper headlines declare a gigantic movie debut for "Bill" Collins, whereas "Phil" Collins' actual movie debut ("Buster") was a gigantic flop. But these same headlines carry a story about an Oscar win for Collins, which of course DID happen (Best Song, from "Tarzan"). So who knows. Collins is pompous enough to have dreamed up these things for himself for real.

KLF -- What Time is Love? What a great mix of stuff here. This is why MTV Germany rules it. The song may be familiar to many, but I'd wager that most of those people would have never remembered this video. It's basically three long shots of a car driving down a long road in the desert. Nothing about it has any relation to the song, and was likely thrown together haphazardly because the song became more popular than expected and they needed a video to send to the music stations. Either that, or it was a deliberate anti-video concocted by Bill and Jimi as a giant up-yours to the collective musical establishment. You never can tell with those guys.

A-Ha . Crying in the Rain. You might think that any A-Ha song that isn't titled "Take on Me" isn.t worth your time (as I did) but you'd be wrong -- this one is a pleasant surprise. The line "I'll do my crying in the rain" is a powerful visual image, the video isn't as cheesy as you'd expect from such a weepy little love song, and the band (and their hair) are in handsome form.

Technotronic -- Get Up. P. Diddy is going techno on his next album, or so say the reports. He could do worse than steal a few tricks from Technotronic's rap/dance template. They were so far ahead of their time, courtesy of a great techno producer/svengali (Jo Bogaert), not to mention putting the rap/techno hybrid high up in the charts years before anyone else.

Torfrock -- Beinhart. And now for the show.s bonus German content, and it's a boisterous novelty tune with an animated movie tie-in (at least that's the jist I was getting). It's sung in German, so it's obviously unknown from a North American perspective. But it's an interesting example of the oft-ignored German sense of humour (it's not Rammstein all the time here, you know).