I was in big trouble booking the events of this past weekend! A Saturday night in London town followed by another gig… in Berlin town. Two gigs in the space of 24 hours was not the problem per se it was the sparrow’s fart flight to Germany that was the issue. We live close enough to Stansted airport such that our car and windows receive regular dusting of spent aviation fuel, so it is our airport of choice, but this means Ryanair and whilst their flights are cheap, they tend to depart with the coming of the dawn! Still by my reckoning, if the bands that we follow (the musicians in which are almost always older than us) can do it, then so can we.
Saturday night’s entertainment was a celebration punk’s ‘Year Zero’, 1977, that was set up to coincide with the 50th anniversary of one of the most notable punk gigs of them all, the ‘100 Club Punk Festival’ of 1976. On this, the second night, the proceedings were kicked off with a Q&A with Marco Pirroni, best known for his work with Adam Ant in Adam and The Ants and beyond, however, for the purposes of this gig he was present as someone who had played at the Festival on 20th September 1976.
The Q&A held promise for a while, as people realised that a discussion on stage was in progress, the chatter ceased. However, the interview did not go well. Marco is the real deal, to steal a term from the Dictionary of Mod, he was a ‘Face’, one of a handful of witness from within of the most exiting few months in rock history. As such there were 1001 questions that could have been fired at Marco. Unfortunately though, the interviewer struggled to get past ‘Did you ever expect to be talking about punk 50 years on?’, ‘Did you know something significant was happening?’ and ‘Marco, you were more into the clothes than the music, correct? To which he responded several times ‘Yes, because there was no punk music then’…. As this loop of questioning went on the audience were lost and the chatter returned quickly reaching a volume that drowned out the Q&A anyway. A missed opportunity indeed. Luckily, his book was available on the night and that I’m sure can fill the gaps that the Q&A failed to address.
No time was wasted before TV Smith took to the stage to deliver a blistering set that was effectively an almost complete rendition of the ‘Crossing The Red Sea’ album. For a man of 70 he still ‘means it maan!’ He left an audience in no doubt that the songs that he wrote as a 20 year old still mean the world to him now. We were located stage left and for the early part of the set a very tall bloke looked on appreciatively. I thought that bloke looks like Richard Strange and indeed it was and Tim invited him onstage for ‘Back From The Dead’ from 1978 (as an aside Tim and Richard recorded an album together many years ago which only saw the light of day in 2021 under the title of ‘1978’). Another notable in the set was ‘Quickstep’, a song only attempted (and ‘fucked up’ in the opinion of TV) once at Rebellion this year. This, a second, attempt sounded fine to me. TV and his Bored Teenagers crashed out of the set with a thunderous ‘One Chord Wonders’.
The Punk Festival theme continued with the headliner’s ‘John McKay’s Reactor’. In keeping with anniversary, the set was made up of early Banshees material that John McKay would have played in the studio or as part of live sets…. Much better that than another 20 minute version of ‘The Lord’s Prayer’!
It was indeed great to hear that very distinctive, angular guitar sound grinding out of his amp. If I had a criticism (and it isn’t one really) it would be that Jen’s vocal is a bit higher than Siouxsie’s, something that could be remedied by a strict cigarette diet… but then again the means would not really justify the end! It was actually a great set, made all the more memorable by the involvement of one of punk’s most noted guitarists. Their set closed with ‘Love In A Void’, ‘Hong Kong Garden’ and ‘Helter Skelter’.
Back home at 12.30 I opted to lie on the bed for a while, but sleep did not come, probably due to nervous anticipation of a volley of phone alarms set to go off in quick succession at around 2.30. Hey, who needs sleep when you have rock ‘n’ roll!
The flight was on time and trouble free, although both Gunta and I decided that in general the experience of air travel is just awful these days. The real frustrations started at Passport Control as we entered Germany. 90 minutes to get through, even after registering my biometric details for a third or fourth time in recent months. Another Brexit gift to the nation!
At about five o’clock I was feeling a little hyper, either through mild sleep deprivation or due to an adrenalin rush caused by a Virtual Reality experience that took me around and over the top of the iconic television mast in Alexanderplatz. Funnily enough whilst the VR experience triggered my fear of heights the actual experience of scaling the tower and viewing Berlin from on high had no effect on me… thankfully the ‘evacuation platform’ as they call it remained unsullied!
Back on earth we checked in and headed to the gig. Anja Huwe was playing at in the Betonhalle (concrete hall) within the Silent Green cultural complex on the site of a former crematorium serving the Berlin-Wedding area. The setting was perfect for this a ‘Sonic Morgue’ club event.
The venue was amazing. From what I can gather, this industrial space was created in the early 1990’s by building onto the former crematorium. A concrete tunnel leads down into an area containing the bar and gathering space before another set of steps leads down into the auditorium. Overall it was a great setting for a gig.
Support came from an act (one person cannot really constitute a band… and to call him a one man band would conjure up all the wrong ideas). This guy played a set of electronic music with his own vocals that drew heavily on Devo, the early Human League a bit of Numan and The Normal. It was weird, very visual and very good to watch. He was also very humorous and self-effacing in his interaction with the audience… or so Gunta told me.
And so to the main attraction of the night. I have plugged Anja Huwe’s solo album, ‘Codes’ on here a couple of times, the material from which makes up approximately a third of the set. The other two thirds of the set being made up of Xmal Deutschland material. The new and the old are easy bedfellows despite a 40 year separation. The ‘Codes’ tracks are perhaps a little more reflective than those Xmal songs but it all works together – take a listen to the mash up track ‘Polar Forest’ to see what I mean. The band opened up with an instrumental before Anja took to the stage wearing a shrug of black plumage, a nod to the raven. She was showing no effects for having just returned from dates in the US. The set is well established but that was just fine for me. I was impressed by her vocal. This stuff is not easy to sing (like I would know!!), especially the Xmal Deutschland songs. Caterwauling Owen once described it as, all I can say is that she can still caterwaul with the best of them. Throughout her career she has had a lot of cameras pointed at her so it was interesting to see her turn the tables when she armed herself with a Polaroid and took shots of keen members of the audience. Needless to say my miserable boat was not picked out for such treatment.
It was a brilliant night of expected and unexpected pleasure.
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