Live Adventures Of Past Times

 

Travelling in the 70's was much more difficult than today. Especially when you have a very low budget to spent. Under normal circumstances it is not a big problem to get a cheap flight to any capitol in Europe. Back then those flights were invaluable for one who had started his education as an apprentice boy. Nevertheless I needed to have a break to see other countries and cities. The cheapest way was to buy an Interrail Pass. This ticket was valid for one month and you could travel to in and between all participated countries for approximately 30 pounds. So me and my younger brother bought the tickets and traveled by train through Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium and Northern France mostly close to the sea during July 1977. And it was fantastic to see all the countries, sleeping in youth hostels and meet all that different kind of people.

When we walked through Copenhagen we saw many bills announcing  The Sex Pistols playing two nights in town. I have to admit that I heard of them and that they are spearhead of the new punk movement but I didn't know any song by them. So I decided to get us tickets for the show and looking forward what will happen. Daddy's Dance Hall was a smaller but elevated club with a small stage and a long bar. The DJ before the show started played his records from a gallery circa 10 feet over the ground and the first song he played when we arrived was a loud version of Faith Healer by The Sensational Alex Harvey Band. And this loundness was silent by comparison to what The Pistols would be able to. Sadly there were only a few dozen people watching the show but they missed something special. Not the sound - this was horrible and overcharged but to see those guys in their rotten and leather outfits playing with an energy I never saw before and seldom after. As far as I remember the gig ended after 45 minutes but they played all the songs they had in these days. From EMI to Anarchy In The UK, Pretty Vacant and God Save The Queen and a cover of The Stooges No Fun. But this concert changed my musical taste radically.

Sex Pistols - EMI

Sex Pistols - Anarchy In The UK

Sex Pistols - Pretty Vacant

Sex Pistols - God Save The Queen

Live Adventures Of Past Times

In the early 80's Oz, a new discotheque (later it was called as a club) opened the doors in Stuttgart. The specific at this place was the basement where the owners realized a small venue for live concerts. I remember one evening when me and a couple of friends owned tickets for a new band from West Sussex. The Cure came to promote their second album Seventeen Seconds and we expected nothing more than a good gig. What we became was one of the best concerts I ever had the luck to be part of it. The venue was very small and constructed for maybe 300 visitors but at this evening there were more than 500 persons in this venue. You could imagine how it was standing in a crowd  close rank to your neighbor, the air was filled with a full load of cigarette smoke in the air for a couple of hours. I remember also that lots of people standing on the stairs and watching the show. The concert started with the supporting act, Abwärts a punk band from Hamburg and they were full of the energy punk gave them in these days. I really enjoyed their fast and amateurish songs. The perfect support for the main band. I saw The Cure several times during the last decades but they couldn't beat this gig. Robert Smith and Lol Tolhurst had so much fun playing their songs and made their gloomy songs brighter. After almost two hours playing most of the songs from their first two albums they finished their gig and giving the audience a session of four songs together with Abwärts playing a few standards by associated bands like Siouxsie and the Banshees. All in all a venue were we came back often in these days.

Abwärts - Computerstaat

The Cure - A Forrest

Live Adventures Of Past Times

 

It was back in 1979 when German fun punk band appeared close to the place where I used to life. ZK (absolutely sickening) where from Düsseldorf and formed around the punk scene from their home town. And they were an original punk band and often not knowing how to handle their instrument and later become Tote Hosen, probably the most well known post punk band in Germany. I really liked them in their early days and don't agree what they became decades later: just another mainstream band playing hooky songs in the tradition of punk adding rockabilly and schlager to their sound. I was there when they played their gig in spring 1979 in a very small venue. The place was called mouse trap in was in the first floor in an old house in central Stuttgart. You have to move a step to get there and the venue was on the left side. The main problem that there was a whorehouse on the right side and the customers had to push themselves past the concert visitors. I remember that the concert was very nice and amusing I we had great fun with the band. We were standing at the bar and a young person showed up to us and asked us if we are able to buy him a beer because he was to young to buy it in person. Of course we spent him a drink, not knowing that it was Campino, the main figure of the Toten Hosen, who became the leading figure of German punk rocker years later.

ZK- Conrad