h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It was on a Rammstein website. It sounds like a sort of pre-crash-black-box type of message.

It said on http://herzeleid.com

Yeah its a bit jumpy for me too, i think its supposed to be hard to make out. I dont understand German anyway so I wouldnt understand what was being said.

Simulpost

And just as I was saying that I found it fairly obvious, you ask what it is...

The original CD comes in two versions, jewel case and digipack. The digipack was slightly more expensive, but included a bit more artwork. The pictures all allude to a plane crash. You see the band, wearing flight personnel outfits, walking away from a crashed plane - and two of them are carrying weapons: a punp gun and a baseball bat.

The sleeve artwork contains the words "Flugrekorder - nicht öffnen" meaing "flight recorder, do not open."

Does that give you an idea about what you are hearing?

Y.

I've got the digipack, it's really neat.

Ah right cool. I need to hear it again to be totally sure (i'm at school right now so i cant) but i'm guessing its the plane crash we're hearing?

Yes, a plane crash - from inside the cockpit, it would seem. You hear all kinds of alerts going off and a man, whom I believe to be the (co-) pilot sounding not-so-very-relaxed. However, I don't understand what he is saying.

It'd be great if you could re-check to see if it is English. It certainly is not German. I *ought* to be able to tell if it's English, too, but what with the plane going down all around, I get a bit distracted .

I kind of have the feeling that it is a different thing, though. Back in the mid-nineties there was a very bad plane catastrophe when a plane full of tourists crashed into the sea shortly after take-off in the Dominican Republic. It turned out later that the instruments the crew was flying by were faulty. They got a reading that they were way faster than they should have been, so they slowed down, and got ever slower, until they did not have enough speed to remain airborne. So the plane went down, spiraling out of control. It took them more than a minute to finally hit the ground (the sea, actually). By the time they did, the plane had spun around horizontally and vertically - no way the passengers would not note. Can you imagine the kinds of things going on your mind during that minute?

Anyways, don't ask me why, but I am thinking that what we hear on the CD is part of the flight recorder data. If this is the case, you would understand why Rammstein chose to hide this track... The airline in that disaster was from Turkey, so maybe the voice is Turkish?

Y.

I relistened to it last night, the language is hard to distunguish. I think I just have to keep on listening to it over and over and listen really hard to what he's saying. But as you say, it is pretty hard to focus with all the alerts and stuff.

Wow, you really think so? But how would they get the sounds from the flight recorder? Wouldnt it be destroyed in the plane? (or is the flight recorder not in the plane? i dont know anything about planes..) Man it must've been so horrible to have been in that plane. Just knowing that you're going to die. I cant believe I hadnt heard about that crash before. It's kinda made me listen to Reise Reise in a different way.

Well, as I said, it was back in the nineties. I did a little googling, and got this: a transcript of the whole thing... + Press Release about the investigation.

http://www.rvs.uni-bielefeld.de/publications/Incidents/DOCS/ComAndRep/PuertoPlata/18-3-birgenair.html

http://www.rvs.uni-bielefeld.de/publications/Incidents/DOCS/ComAndRep/PuertoPlata/CVR-birgenair.html

You see, the flight recorder is probably the safest thing in an airplane. It is designed to "survive" basically every kind of disaster its designers could think of. It is a little box (the infamous black box) that contains two kind of recorders: one actually records everything that is said by the flight personnel - provided they use their headset thingies. The second recorder tracks all data about the plane: compass readings, speed readings, the exact time any operation is carried out.

When a plane crashes, chances are that the flight recorder is preserved well enough to get information about what caused the crash. Most often, the hardest part is to find the darn thing. That can be pretty difficult when you have to go down to the bottom of the ocean to look for it.

Well, anyway. I have really no proof or evidence that Rammstein used bits of that particular accident. For all we know, it might well just be something they put together with a keyboard and a computer. But then again, it is this gut feeling I sometimes have, and it seldom fails me - unless, of course, it comes to girls, but that is a totally different story.

Y.

And as to how Rammstein might have gotten hold of the recording - why, on the internet, of course .

There have been plenty of documentaries on TV that broadcast the whole shebang. It would be really easy to either record it off a TV or simply ask your manager to get it from the TV companies - or even from the Official Authorities.

Y.

AMAZING

It sounds cool, though. Anyway, if Manowar can get Orson Welles, why couldn't Rammstein get a bit of flight recorder?

Yay - topic drift. Manowar!!! I guess you are thinking of "Defender"?



Y.

No, Dark Avenger.

"And they placed in his hand a sword called Vengeance, forged with brimstone and tempered by the woefull tears of the unavenged"

Well, he was on "Defender," too. Pretty stupid lyrics, but that is what we love Manowar for, right?
("When you are old enough to read these words,
their meaning will unfold" Isn't that just like saying "When you can read this, you can read this"???)

Feel like writing an Entry on Manowar, then?

Well, back to Rammstein, anyway.

Write an entry? You've got to be kidding me!

"Ohne Dich is online now... I think I'll go watch it.

what the video?? where?? show meeee!!!

Link's on Herzeleid. And the flight recorder bit is also on the Rammstein website.

I have Live Aus Berlin on a DVD image!
Real cool.
There's this one part where the drummer starts drumming with burning firework sticks, (lots of firework) real cool stuff.

*still sad he missed the live show*

yes, yes, that is sad.
However, i doubt you could have seen anything.
The stadion was packed tight.