The Rammstein Phenomenon
Greece has of course a widely differing music market from most of the rest of Europe in that the local music style is alive and kicking. Turnaround in hard cold Euros is much, much higher for Greek music than what the the anglo-saxon popmaffia makes. There's more money in bouzoukia than in Boomtown Rats. But I'm not talking about this obvious difference here, rather I would like to point out a different thing with pop or rock music here, what I would call "The Rammstein Phenomenon"...
The Rammstein phenomenon. Interesting enough, Rammstein is really big in Greece (this phrase just reminded me of the 80s song "Big in Japan"). It's definitely much bigger here than in Germany. Lots of young people here know Rammstein as the only German band (next to the Scorpions which are probably all but forgotten in Germany). Mention Germany or the German language to males age 18-24 and you are likely getting to hear that they know / hear / like Rammstein.
I once drove back from Larissa with Thanassis (from HelMUG and MacLand magazine) who had only and only Rammstein in the CD player all of the way, asking me for translations of the lyrics. (Translating those lyrics is of course impossible, they are mostly disconnected words and plays-with-words.) Made for an interesting night drive. Not that I mind listening to Rammstein myself when the atmosphere is right.
I could call this the scorpions phenomenon as well, since those hairy guys have still a large fanbase here too. Or, to keep it off the "German special case" path, what about The Cranberries? To me their songs were a faint (but with some of them: nice) memory, but nowhere like the following they have here. Concerts by these people are bound to fill up in Athens, even at times when those bands are low in their pan-European success curves.
The idea for this post came up after reading and commenting on the post from kassandra "just another saturday". Oh yeah, and The Cranberries are right now on the radio. Somebody tries to help me prove my point. Uh, what is my point? I guess it's that the non-Europeanness of Greece differentiates the perception and wishes of young Greeks, as exemplified by their music tastes. See, "Rammstein is pretty big in Greece" sounded much better.