A phenomenon that I apparently missed - last summer, Germany and Austria were swept away by the rapping, ah, talents of a certain "Money Boy." His revolutionary Denglish-packed DIY rap "Dreh den Swag auf" (Turn the swag up) was so amazingly terrible that over 6.6 million people felt the need to watch it.
In any case, certain glorious phrases like "schaue kurz in den Spiegel, sag whaddup" (glance in the mirror, say what up) have passed into mainstream German pop culture, and probably every inhabitant of Germany under the age of 30 now knows the English word "swag."
What interests me more, is this far superior indie version of the song. Much like Hayley Williams of Paramore, Ethan Luck of Resilient K, and Jordan Pundik of New Found Glory went and made a semi-legit and fairly decent pop-punk song out of Autotune the News and Antoine Dodson's infamous "Bed Intruder," German indie rockers Untertagen went and made a totally sick music video for their reimagined rock version of "Dreh den Swag auf." Like Ke$ha meets hipsters meets Deutschland. Love it.
Update: as of April 26, we saw these guys in concert! Awesome show at the Waschhaus in Potsdam, bought their CD afterwards, took a photo with them and snagged the setlist.
What song is simultaneously stimulating, relaxing, and focusing enough to help you cram for (and totally own) an Arabic final? That's right, this one. Prepare to have the paths of your mind wayyyy unwound.
If you're feeling the vibe, you can buy the track at Mediamarkt! xx DJ Nena
Update: Got to see the band perform a few songs up close and live for a TV recording session on May 25! They were doing a show for ZDF neoMusic and I answered an audience casting call. Weird experience! TV audiences are highly coached and the show itself was just goofy, but the band's performance was amazing. Suzie has an incredibly beautiful voice.
Saw the band outside after the recording and thanked Suzie for the great performance. She was so sweet and grasped my hand before scuttling off to the band taxi. Cool experience! The show should air on June 19.
Got to see awesome German indie band Herrenmagazin in concert on January 27, and was lucky enough to be able to do an interview with them for Frequency Magazine before the show. I'll post the link to the full article as soon as it's through the redaction!
For photos from the concert, check out my album here.
The band's music is available on German and US iTunes - grab yourself some of it! They are fantastic.
It's February, the month of love! TH fans, leave a comment explaining why you love Tokio Hotel. 10 copies of Bill's Saturn catalog up for grabs! Contest open worldwide, ends February 14. Please use a valid email address - winners will be contacted via email, and will have 3 days to respond with a shipping address. Cheers!
Update - winners drawn! There were so many beautiful statements of love. I wish I had more catalogs! Sending out my last two however, so we have twelve winners instead of ten. Congrats to ladylovelace, Sam Nolte, eightiesgirl, Jamille, fluffisgoodyay, Sturmischen, THLiebhaberin, CatherineAnn, Dacia, DanielleWrae, Liabird, and shannonlovesth! Check your emails. :)
Die Toten Hosen are definitely one of my top five favorite bands. They're like the German Green Day - epic, timeless punk rockers who have been around forever and will probably keep being around forever.
Nonetheless, as they rarely tour far from Germany, my own chances to see them were nonexistent until I moved to Berlin. When they announced tour dates in Eastern Europe, I knew I had to seize this opportunity or risk missing them entirely. I bought a ticket for Breslau, in Poland. The day before the show, I dragged my ass out of bed at five in the morning and got on a bus headed east.
Arriving in Breslau, I wandered a bit and then found a drugstore to stock up on hobo supplies. I had this one chance to see them, and I'd come this far, you better believe I was making front row. Armed with tinned pears, other snacks, and cheap fleece blankets, I lurked my way to the venue. Too many people around. I bummed in a hostel lobby for a few hours and came back in the middle of the night. Home sweet concrete.
At 5 AM a Polish security guard woke me, and mercifully brought me inside the business lobby next door to let me sleep where it was warm. I speak no Polish, and he spoke no German and little English, but his genuine wish to help me could not be stopped by mere language barriers. He brewed me a mug of bitter, sludgelike coffee, and introduced me to two American Mormon missionaries working on the second floor. He then saw Die Toten Hosen's crew bus arrive and brought me out back to see it. Which is when things got really interesting.
I somehow went from the normal fan routine - watching a tourbus, exchanging "Morgen" and other chitchat with the German crew guys - to being invited INSIDE the tourbus. A first. Crew bus, not band bus. But still - I'd never been in a tourbus. My inner fangirl (okay, my inner everything) was flipping out.
I thought, okay, they're just letting me have a glimpse, they won't want me to stay, I'd better leave quickly. Not the case. Stefan the bus driver pointed me to a seat and told me to warm up while they unloaded stuff.
I chilled in the bus. Some other crew guys came through and chatted a bit auf Deutsch.
Events continued to get mindboggling. As I announced to Stefan that I should probably go back to the front of the venue and wait before more fans came, he smiled and asked, well do I just want to wait inside the venue? My stunned response - "Du verarschst mich grad, oder?!" Apparently he was not verarsching. Do I want to wait inside the venue. Avoid sitting on concrete all day, avoid the tedious drama of establishing order and relationships with tense fans who are all ready to steal my place on the barrier. I had dreamed of such a scenario, but it usually involved breaking into venues through ventilation systems and hiding in bathrooms. Nope. I was given a cushy corner booth, introduced to the rest of the crew, and brought water.
I spent the day watching the stage setup, just hanging in my corner, in comfort, with food and water and restrooms. Amazing.
I was loafing and chatting with a new crew friend, when in an understated flurry of movement, Campino and the others entered the room. My heart raced. This laid back guy in a track jacket, so close to me, could not possibly be the man whose magical voice had raised and quieted tempests of emotion in the landscapes of my mind, could not be the unreachable idol I'd watched on DVDs recorded on stages thousands of miles away from my Seattle home. But he was. He radiated charisma like a sun illuminating the dark, quiet venue.
Campino drew closer. He wandered over to my corner, said hi to the crew guy next to me, and shook my hand. "How's it going?" asked the magical voice. In a room full of Poles, Germans, and Brits, English had become the default language. I stammered, "Ganz gut!" and tried to mask my overwhelming exhilaration. Then - soundcheck.
Hearing Alles wird vorübergehen in such a setting was an incredibly emotional experience. We were just sitting around, the room mostly empty. The band calmly ran through the song, one of my favorites of theirs. So beautiful.
Things then got even crazier. While Campino chatted with the girl chilling next to me, English drummer Vom came over and asked if I was the one who had slept outside overnight. Apparently someone from the crew had told the band. I said yes. He handed me a drumhead signed by all five band members. I was in shock and thanking him profusely and coming up with inadequate statements like "You guys are the greatest!" There's only so much a fan's mind can handle. He was so sweet and unassuming. "You gotta tell us these things, that's crazy!" - as if no one had ever slept on concrete for a world famous band before.
The show.
An orgy of sweat and noise and the unique perfection that comes with finally seeing long-loved songs performed live. Insanity. They were so close. I had never dreamed that I would see them in such a setting - based on their DVDs, I had always assumed, if I ever managed to catch a show, it would be a huge affair with a lofty stage a million miles from the barrier. Not this small, packed club, Campino rampaging into the front row, his sweat mingling with ours.
After the show.
Things proceeded to get even more out of control. You couldn't make this stuff up. I had been talking to the crew all day. They knew I was studying in Berlin. The crew bus was also driving to Berlin, directly after the show - the Breslau concert had been the final stop of the tour.
They offered to take me with. Not only was this a totally unique experience for me to actually ride on a tourbus, it saved me another night wandering around without proper lodging and an entire day of cooling my heels in Breslau before my own bus would have come, Monday evening. Unbelievable.
So I was beyond grateful, and waited in the venue while the breakdown went on. I retreated into the bathroom, changed shirts, dried my hair under the blowdryers, and fixed my makeup. A fortuitous choice - the band was still wandering around, and while a British crew member found me a tour laminate backstage, I summoned my courage to thank Andi and tell him how amazingly fantastic the show was. Campino came out, and walked straight up to our little chat. He'd seen me lurking all day trying to contain my immense happiness. At no point could I have approached him myself - the awe was too strong. But somehow. He came over and started asking questions. We actually talked, like more than the "amazing show!" "Thank you!" typical band-fan talk, we talked about where I came from, what I study and then how much I love the band. We shook hands. I was trying to keep a composed veneer, at the expense of all my brain circuits. Then he decided to make my entire life, set both hands on my shoulders, and gave me the European kiss on both cheeks. My mind was an incoherent symphony of hero worship. I managed to thank him again and wave him and Andi goodbye, and then they went off.
At this point I feel like interjecting a disclaimer, because I'm aware that the whole narrative sounds more like fiction than reality. All I can say is - well, it happened. I don't even know. The course of events in this day was like something out of Almost Famous - I could literally hear Kate Hudson going "it's all happeningggg!!!" at various points throughout the experience.
Stefan the Busfahrer and I.
The crew finished packing and left the venue at 2 AM. I rode with the guys (and one girl), sat around and told jokes, and grabbed a few hours' sleep in a bunk. Crew buses are amazingly compact - the bus fit twelve stacked bunks plus lounge, bathroom, and kitchen area. They were such amazingly nice people and I'm still so grateful and baffled that they decided to take me along. I don't get it. I swear that no blowjobs were handed out. I just never thought things like this happened to normal fans, only to actual "groupies." Madness. I'll never forget this concert experience.
Tourbus at Berlin Hauptbahnhof - nearing dawn Monday morning.
The Silbermond show in Kamenz, in retrospect, had so much potential for disaster, and yet somehow everything went off with insane perfection.
I arrived at the train station of this tiny, boring German town after nightfall. I called the local taxi service. Their one taxi was somewhere outside the city limits. No problem. I looked up and down the street. Two men ambled slowly through the darkness. I inquired in German if they knew the direction of Hutbergbühne. They pointed uphill and asked what I was there for. I told them I was planning on camping, resolutely declined their offers to stay with them, and tromped off.
The occasional promo poster looming out of the shadows confirmed I was on track. I eventually arrived at the amphitheater.
Now, another might have thought, "Berg Bühne... mountain stage? That sounds cold." But not me. I was optimistically prepared to sleep in the open, up on top of this blustery amphitheater, armed with my layers of clothing and a few handwarmers. I've suffered through cold pre-concert nights before with inadequate camping supplies, but I seem to be slow in grasping the lesson. I had not spent enough time on my freezing bench to fully explore the depths of this foolishness, when two security guards arrived to save me from myself.
It is for this reason, that I love attending concerts in Germany. Two American security guards would have certainly thrown me off the premises without further ado. But German secus are... chill. And most of them feel protective towards lone females.
In this way, I found myself invited down to the stage and given coffee. Hanging out ONSTAGE. Where my idols would perform in less than 24 hours.
In true German fashion, they skipped the small talk and went straight for world politics, history, my views on about every hefty sociopolitical topic I could think of. We chatted, time passed, and eventually they invited me into their car.
YES, sure, I know how it sounds - but my brain was sounding no alarms. When you've lived and traveled a certain amount, you gather a sense of people. You can be wrong, and maybe that one mistake is a serial killer or rapist. But I've never been mistaken yet, and I don't choose to live in fear. I didn't go with the men at the train station, but I had no hesitations to join the guards in their car.
We bundled into the car behind the stage, they cranked the heat, and put some rap tunes on. We started chatting German rap, Bushido, Sido, Aggro Berlin. Eventually they offered me a blanket and kindly let me sleep in the backseat while they kept an eye on the stage equipment.
When dawn approached, I thanked them profusely and headed back to the top of the amphitheater. No mishaps, and a frigid night avoided.
With my rescuers:
With sunrise came other fans, and a long, relaxed day getting to know each other and listening to the Silbermond discography.
Barring a tense entry instigated by the constant coming and going of trucks through the line-up area, everything went perfectly smoothly, and I snagged my prime spot at center stage on the barrier.
The atmosphere was amazing - such uplifting heights of catharsis through music. The band brought the crowd to the emotional warmth and unity of Coldplay, while simultaneously bringing the rockout vibe into the same galaxy as Green Day, if not quite on the same level.
"Krieger des Lichts" live - so beautiful.
After the show, we hung around for signing with the band. I was just going to say "Vielen Dank, geiles Konzert!" or something simple, but the girls I'd been with in line were like, You have to tell her/them where you'll from! She'll cry! So I told them I was from Seattle and their music had inspired me so much, and Stefanie that she was a heroine of mine. She didn't cry, but she was so touchingly touched. I would have thought they'd heard so many similar declarations that it wouldn't move them anymore, but they showed astonishing interest and appreciation, the guys complimented my German, and it was just beautiful.
After everything, while heading back to the train station, I scaled a wall and stole a nice big promo poster for my apartment. :)
I was so happy to have been able to see them. Phenomenal concert experience. <3
I am an American-born freelance journalist living and working in Berlin, Germany. I have a Bachelor of Arts in German Studies from Whitman College, where I worked as a reporter and editor on the national award-winning newspaper The Whitman Pioneer. I created and hosted the German music radio show Midnight Monsoon on Whitman's KWCW 90.5 FM, for which I operated the blog www.midnightmonsoon.com.
After graduation, I received a DAAD "internXchange" fellowship to study journalism in Berlin and complete a radio internship at Berliner Rundfunk 91.4. I have also interned at Seattle's premiere commercial station for alternative music, KNDD 107.7 The End. I now work as a freelancer and edit the arts and culture blog Nomad News, at www.nomad-news.com.
