Otto Berchem

b. 1967, USA

Dean Read was an American and the biggest rock star in the history of the Soviet Union. He was so famous his icons were sold alongside those of Josef Stalin.

— Reggie Lawson, Comrade Rock Star, the search for Dean Reed

Otto Berchem’s video features a group of young traditional Irish musicians singing a song entitled Love Your Brother. This is no typical Irish song, but a reinterpretation of a piece originally written for a 1970s East German western called Blutsbrüder, and performed by the American singer and actor Dean Reed. Both Berchem’s remake and the original include an introduction in German, explaining a little bit about the movie and the song that’s about to be sung. The monologue and perhaps even the song itself are almost a pastiche of Socialist propaganda. The original film, like Reed and his music, are relics of a bygone era, ignored in the west and for the most part forgotten in the post-communist countries, but now brought back, fresh and revitalised, by a new generation, living in Limerick, that had its own, and mostly forgotten experience of socialism during the Limerick Soviet of 1919.

(Text: give(a)way catalogue, 2006)