It was always a bit uncomfortable when looking for the magazine tempo wrote and submitted a text to archivist Andreas Banaski for proofreading. You knew that in case of doubt he would have written it better. Its sharpness and its language belonged to the yardsticks of a new journalism towards which one slowly worked.
In 1981 he came to the magazine Sounds, the central organ of good taste in Germany. He called himself Kid P. by then and was soon the man for the distribution, someone who did not allow elite thinking to arise in the dawn of pop intellectualism. Tony Parsons and Julie Burchill were his role models, the London grandmasters of brilliant hatred. He published punk fanzines and made small films with his friend “Donald Fuck”. Chatter and poses were anathema to him because he suspected they were a sloppy approach to the truth. And in his legendary series about the German pop cities Berlin, Hamburg, Düsseldorf, not much remained of the self-enthusiasm of the Neue Deutsche Welle at the time. But he was just as passionate about being enthusiastic. For pop like him Heaven 17 or ABC played for Hollywood films.
He made sure that pop culture was taken as seriously as high culture in Germany
1983 was the end of it Sounds and also with the fictional character Kid P. At the magazine tempo he found shelter and, together with Tina Hohl, set up a documentation department that did not exist in Germany. They meticulously evaluated all the magazines that were only leafed through in the major editorial offices. The Face, NME, Actuel or Rolling Stone took her as seriously as others National Geographic and the New York Times. A unique archive of pop culture has emerged over the years. As tempo Closed in 1996, they were allowed to take the archive with them. And so he continued to earn money for a long time by supplying the big editors with pop knowledge that they couldn’t find in their own archives. If there is one thing that remains in his life, it is that he helped ensure that pop culture is taken as seriously in Germany as high culture is otherwise.
Andreas Banaski spent the last years of his life seriously ill in a nursing home in his hometown Büchen. He died there last week. He was 63 years old.