Jan Reetze responds to me:

>>And the home-grown pop music was worse.
>
>What is "the" pop music?  Would you say that there's anything like "the"
>classical music?  German pop music offers a lot of pure crap, loads of
>boring mass-produced chart-ware, which is forgotten after six weeks, and
>there are - as always in music - some hidden pearls.

Sloppy writing on my part.  What I meant was that Germany, like most
European countries, is somewhat split as far as its pop music goes.
The better stuff is generally influenced by American black music, the
rest rather lame.  In Germany, one gets (or got in 1972) either the
quasi-operetta of the otherwise wonderful Annaliese Rothenberger and
Michael Petroff or the stupefying awfulness of Heino. About the only
thing I found worth listening to was the remnant of the cabaret tradition,
but not for its musical values.  France has the chanson tradition, and
that seems to me it.  England has music-hall, which I've never cared
for, but which has its fans.  And how often has A Song for Europe actually
produced a song as good as "On the Sunny Side of the Street?" That's
just how it seemed to me when I lived in Germany.

Steve Schwartz