The Show is over. It’s been a long time awaited, the Berlin Festival at Airport Tempelhof, this unique but in fact contentious location. Myself, I had to recover first before writing down what I experienced at the Festival. After coming home from work on the first day of the Festival, I took a quick shower and remade my make-up before rushing to Tempelhof, just in time to see Pete(r) Doherty and the two dancers he brought with him.
Pete, the ingenious but always wasted former lead singer of The Libertines and former model predator. Well, I rather heard his voice than seeing him in person. Why is it that all those gargantuan guys position themselves directly in front of me? I was highly surprised at Doherty’s clear and unmistakeable voice, singing all the songs in a MTV unplugged manner, giving not only me heebie-jeebies. Later, a friend of mine met him in the backstage bathroom where Pete(r) didn’t seem to be as clear as his voice sounded shortly before, he just was tumbling and mumbling and obviously very drunk…
More impressions after the jump.
I spent most of the evening exploring the giant area that accommodated an old plane, several food boxes, bars, a White Trash Restaurant area, promotional stands and even a ping pong area!
They probably expected more people on the first day, since it would have been easily possible to have a football match on the huge area. My suggestion for the next festival: what about some grassland to have a cosy place for sleeping, eating and making out.
The festival’s second Day I did without rushing home before-I had to see The Rifles and they made me sweat anyway. I started taking pictures of a bunch of girls carrying plush animals around and who seemed to know the lyrics of all the songs played.
After the gig ended, my friend and I went on to explore the festival area, still singing “Repeated Offender”.
But there was no time left to pause, because Zoot Woman started playing right after the Rifles. We had to rush back to the main hall, short stop at the bar, another stop at the African Food Box, back to the bar…
During the Zoot Woman gig we reminisced about the times when we constantly listened to their first album and hypnotised we sang along songs like “Automatic” and “Living in a Magazine”. Both of us being very euphoric after the concert, completely forgot to watch the time and thus missed Jarvis Cocker. Damn!
Later the evening, half in astonishment and half appalled, we followed the Deichkind gig. Their music being surely a simple matter of taste, their show is nothing less than insanity. It somehow reminded me of a Rammstein show, only with more light effects. We got to see guys wearing weird animal masks pretending to have sex with each other. Moreover they seemed to be able to hypnotise the audience: the fans were told to sit on the floor- they all did it. Instantly, we felt a bit awkward after finding ourselves being the only standing people when everybody else around us sat down, doing as they were told to… scary!
We finally left the Deichkind fan army to join the mobile disco floor, a nice little dance floor with electronic and indie music, bringing us lots of joy.
Later the night I had to pay attention not to fall over the sleeping people who probably gave everything and now used to lie all about the festival area.
Due to exhaustion I’ve been missing further acts and later sang my self to sleep with Zoot Woman songs. “I got a feeling, it’s automatic…”
