6.) Hamburg, DE
DAVE MARCH AUDIO
OH here we are! Back in Deutschland. The breadbasket of Europe. I don’t know if that’s remotely accurate from a geopolitical standpoint but it is accurate from the standpoint that there are baskets of bread in every room. It looks like the set of Aladdin or Beauty and the Beast where there are just massive loaves of artisan wheels, bats of baguettes and seeded footballs stacked on every counter surface.
Let me just describe to you the glory that is a German catering table. You show up hungover to a quintessentially modern building that was somehow purpose-built and quasi government funded for your loud band to come and sing songs about growing up in America. Actually backtrack - if it’s not a perfectly shining and modern building it is a repurposed bunker underneath a train station or next to a river that somehow feels more like camping than being in a building, and its still absolutely beautiful.
But! Back to the German catering! I’ll have to throw a picture up. All of the bands, crew, promoters, drivers, and venue staff graze on fresh cut vegetables, vegan and analog meats, the fanciest cheeses, olives, and my personal favorite: the ambiguous sandwhich spreads. Shit is real. There is also an assortment of teas and coffee with fresh fruit and ginger at a stand. It really is quite lovely, it becomes more of a communal ritual complete with decorations and candles as compared to the utilitarian “let’s fuckin go” one finds more often in America. We’re definitely a bit of a ways from Henry Hill’s ketchup and egg noodles the cost-cutting venues slop on a plate oft times in the states. Hot take.
We flew American/British from PHL to Hamburg with a layover in London. It went by surprisingly quickly. My secret sauce plane cocktail sorted me out nice for a little shut eye. The secret sauce is drugs. I have a hella-pretentious habit on long flights: Only watch foreign movies. I haven’t had a miss so far. This time I watched Monos which was fantastic. A modern Apocalypse Now mixed with Lord of the Flies kind of vibes. It was stunning. I can’t recommend it enough. Oh! Lil pro-tip for other musicians and photographers/videographers out there. Research “media rates” for baggage when flying domestic and international. As a representative of a “media company” some airlines will allow you to check bags that would normally be overweight, as well as check multiple bags for the same price and getting around their typical checked baggage fees. If you’re flying with a couple guitars you can save some serious scratch.
HAMBURG
Last night we indulged in one of our collective favorite past times: get hammered together on the bus and having always-sunny-esque debates about things we could easily look up. In the fog-kissed haze of this morning I decided to look up and solve once and for all: Why the fuck is the sandwich called a Hamburger? From How Stuff Works:
““Hamburger started with the Tatars (or Tartars), a nomadic people who invaded central Asia and eastern Europe in the Middle Ages. The Tatars ate their shredded beef raw (hence the name “steak tartare” these days). According to one account, they tenderized their beef by putting it between the saddle and the horse as they rode. When the Tatars introduced the food to Germany, the beef was mixed with local spices and fried or broiled and became known as Hamburg steak. German emigrants to the United States brought Hamburg steak with them. It showed up on New York restaurant menus in the 1880s. Hamburgers became a sensation as sandwiches at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis.””
God I love Hamburg. From the beloved anti-fascist Football Club omnipresent in the European Punk Scene to the cartoonish debauchery of The Reeperbahn, Hamburg is a city all its own.
Last time we came through I took an architectural boat tour through the city. It was stunning, but also in German. Hamburg is the city where I really hit it off with one of my best friends in the entire world: One Roger Harvey. We kicked the tour off with a sold-out show at Gruenspan The folks in Spanish Loves Songs are a great group of people and they killed it. It was amazing to see Mannequin Pussy again and they crushed it as well.
I actually took some time to explore the rather geil tourist trap Gogo bars of the Reaperbahn this time. A couple of us found ourselves taking the steps down into Titty Twister, which is either the inspiration for, or inspired by From Dusk til Dawn. It was a thick-smoked, lazer-lit gogo bar with male and female dancers full of international tourists taking shots and dancing to Schlager remixes of American songs. Doe and Stag parties decorated in Midsommar head gear kicked it up to a whole new level of strange. I’ll be back again some day.
After that I took a walk down an alley with a little less neon to a gogo bar. I popped in and sat next to a mixed group of younger British tourists and got a beer. The bartender only spoke Spanish and German so we went back and forth in beginner Spanish. She’s got a sister in Michigan. The British kids kind of awkwardly left while the dancers looked at their phones. I finished a beer while the middle-aged Polish woman in charge told me about how much she loves Las Vegas. She knew Jarochin festival (link), which will no doubtedly be included in some future collective memoirs. I walked back to the hotel around the Doe/Stag parties, drunk teenagers, and roving groups of Poleizi. On to Berlin.
