B East

B EAST is a pretty sweet magazine based in Berlin, Prague and a few other cities out east. That's the point of it. They write about things that happen in the east. So if you're a hot new band from Fulham, you won't get any mention till you move to Bow, and if you're an artist from West Queens, you can say good luck to a review until you move across town, and well you get the picture.

I'm going to start writing about Kosovo for them. East Kosovo. Only thing is they can't afford to publish again. When I ran into their editor he was running a night in East Berlin to get some funds together for a print run.

As homage to the DDR, the organisers booked two old cassette DJs to play for the night. Although they weren't called that back in the day. To differentiate them from Westerners, East German DJs were called SPUs, which stands for Schallplattenunterhalte, which translates as disc moderator, which in English sounds more like someone who resets your lumbago rather than plays the one you want to hear.

It was a fun night, and I hoped they made enough money to pay for another issue. You can check out their online magazine here Beast .