I really tried quite hard to like Nina Hagen, the so-called Godmother of German Punk. She was beautiful, glamorous and a little bit frightening – like a grown-up Toyah.

She also stretched her voice into an irritating operatic register. And, on this tune, yodelling. Despite her, ahem, “theatrical” vocal style, I have a soft spot for cod reggae in general, and this fillet of cod reggae in particular.

And I do like what Nina Hagen represented, rather more than the actual music she made; anyone who could get both Lene Lovich and Lemmy to guest on an album can’t be all bad. And also George Clinton, who played on her 2020 comeback record Unity, a reggae-influenced tribute to Black Lives Matter.

Born and raised behind the Iron Curtain in East Berlin where she sang in a very different band called Autombil – here she is, fetchingly clad in drndl, singing Komm Komm – Nina managed to follow her dissident stepfather to Hamburg after he was expatriated in her teens.

The Nina Hagen Band first came to my attention in 1978 with her self-titled debut album and a version of The Tubes’ song White Punks On Dope (with new German lyrics) called TV-Glotzer.

The album also included a propulsively punky song called Pank that she co-wrote with her fellow German punk Ari-Up of The Slits, whom she had met in London in 1977.

Her second LP Unbehagen included a version of Lene Lovich’s Lucky Number called Wie Leben Immer… Noch and another song, Herrmann Hiess Er, about Hagen’s boyfriend Herrmann Brood, a Dutch musician who battled addictions all his life and later committed suicide by jumping from a hotel roof.