Sunday, December 06, 2009

Road Trip Stories: Small Crowds & Some Bad Luck

Day 1:

Waking up early to hit the road again, too early after having spent the last night watching sci-fi stuff on TV. "Stargate SG-1" and "Stargate Atlantis" are highly addictive to me so I was up 'til about 4 a.m. , a fact that double hit me as I'm suffering from the snuffles and a pink eye. But whatever, clothes, stuff & the box are prepared for the upcoming Plutonium Pogo Tour with Dadajugend Polyform and Das Audiolith. Leaving Hamburg heading towards Oettinger Villa in Darmstadt we lost the first 45 minutes being stuck in a traffic jam even before getting out of town and it took way longer than expected to finally arrive there. The place itself is a formidable old mansion indeed, formally squatted and now alternatively run for ages, with nice staff, partly impressive antique furnishings and a basement with a very underground feel where the lot of us were about to play, ready to rock the house. But for some reason the promo quite fully failed and only a very few people showing up - maybe due to the fact that it was a thursday night and a quite unusual date for parties in that place, maybe due to the fact that there was a big demonstration with a spontaneous MinimalTechno after party going in the nearby town of Frankfurt where the authorities had cleared the squatted university campus. Bad luck.

Day 2:

Arrival in Leipzig, one hour too early to set up things at Sweat Club so we're spending some time and dough at Bagel Brothers - coffee and sweets. Bad luck struck again as we heard about La Roux playing Leipzig the same day, sponsored and promoted by a big commercial radio station. Sharing the same target audience is not necessarily a good thing on days like this. Anyway, Sweat Club is a good one as well, apart from the fact that they chose to have an Allen & Heath Xone 92 mixer for their DJ booth instead of a Pioneer DJM 500 / 600 / 800 - I really can't stand this A&H mixer and I don't know why ppl making such a lot of noise about it, to me it's crap. Helped Dadajugend Polyform with some technical issues appearing throughout their sound check and enjoyed their show which really has evolved since their last Plutonium Pogo appearance, not only due to Frau Lehmann - you gotta see her on stage, massive! - joining the band but as well to musical improvements and a few new songs included in their set. "Small Town Gossip" is still stuck in my eardrums. Played some NuSkoolBreaks to a small crowd at the end of night, had to tell an annoying and dead drunk Indie geezer to either get his hands off my deck or getting his nose punched in and left l8r on with a strange feeling about that. Leipzig.

Day 3:

Off to Erfurt to play at Stadtgarten , but before that I discovered a second hand record store only a few meters from where our car was so I just had to crash in quickly and for a few minutes only. Stumbled upon two records I've been looking for for ages: Daffy Duck feat. The Groove Gang - "Party Zone", which is quite a funny piece of 1991 EuroDance trash and LDC's "Die Schwarze Zone", a legendary 1991 Techno classic featuring the very great lyrics "Willkommen in der Schwarzen Zone. Wir schicken Dich ins All." Plus: I discovered a stereophonic test record to adjust hi-fi stereo systems - not that unusual but this one is originally made and manufactured in the former German Democratic Republic, shortly known as East Germany by VEB Deutsche Schallplatten Berlin DDR. Rare stuff. Nothing spectacular happenend in Erfurt that night, a small crowd as well up for the concert but not that up for the after show party, a few dancing people, NuSkoolBreaks and oldskool'ish RaveTecho and an early closing.

Day 4:

Now, back in Hamburg and still not that healthy. Guess my eyes are getting better and the snuffles are gone but I feel exhausted. The all over feeling about the last days is good, but still the outcome of these three days is not as expected. Next time will be better.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home