Saturday, May 18th 1996 in Bremen (Wehrschloss)
The concert took place at Bremen's Wehrschloss. I've never been there before,
so when I arrived at Bremen Hauptbahnhof and took a look at the map, I decided
to go there by foot. Maybe a 45 minute walk, I thought, and started.
Twenty minutes later I arrived at the street at which the Wehrschloss is. I was
happy because I had plenty of time left. Only ninety buildings to go, I thought
( the Wehrschloss is at number 230, and I hit the street at number 50 ). But
how wrong I was! I soon realised that not only all buildings were at one side
of the street ( normally the ones with even house numbers are on one side and
the odd ones on the other ), but also there were much more houses than numbers!
So I didn't pass 90 then 92 ... as I had expected, instead I passed 78, then
78a, then 78b, then 78c, after that 78d, then 79, 79a, ... It was a LONG walk.
I needed nearly one hour and a quarter till I finally made it, and was pretty
sure I would never walk there again. The only good thing was that the gig
apparently hadn't started yet.
The entrance fee was DM 12,-, which is expensive for a punk rock gig with
only two bands. Seems, that some of the communal youth centers ( the Wehrschloss
is one of those ) don't have enough people with idealism who put their work
into gigs for free, so they have to pay them, which makes the costs immense.
Well, the place was crowded, more than 300 people, I guess. After a short
time, the first band started to play. It was the "Robespierres" from Hamburg.
They didn't play punk at all, it was more the kind of music you hear in this
movies about students in the late sixties, with organ and guitars, sometimes
they even sang french. And they looked like those students, too. The singer
had one of those polyester shirts, and their shoes were painful. I expected
every minute Francois Truffaut coming on stage. I liked it.
Dackelblut were next. And they played as they always do. They entered the
stage, Jensen said that they had 21 songs, and they would play them all.
If we would go mad, they would repeat some of them. And that's exactly what they
did. Pure punk rock, pure energy. No show, just music. Well, no show isn't
correct, Jensen told us they flew in the "Toten Hosen"'s light engineer to
create Dackelblut's very first light effect: At a certain moment, Jensen
would give a signal to the light man, and a single spotlight should be directed
at the band. Of course the light engineer failed and missed the signal (maybe
Jensen didn't give one :), so he switched the spotlight on by chance. I will
never see such an impressing light show again. Maybe next year, when they
ended up their holiday, and are on tour again.
All in all, it was a great night. Dackelblut ( btw. their name would be
translated to Dachshundblood ) alone was worth the travel, and definitively
worth the 12 DM. One of the best german punk bands around. If you can see them,
do so !