“Out of chaos comes order” – B-Day & TRAINSPOTTING FESTIVAL
“out of chaos comes order out of chaos comes order out of chaos comes order… fake niggas run for the border! lalalaaaa…” (S.Williams)
Pheeew, another year older and this actually is the first birthday on which I’m really flirting with ‘feeling old’. I put GUN CLUB on my record player instead of JASON FORREST in my cd player. Waking up with sticky mascara traces round my eyes cause I had been too lazy to clean my face last night didn’t help. Neither did scuffling through my flat answering phone calls and making lazy efforts to clean my kitchen so that when I finally sat down to sip my cup of earl grey it had gotten cold. Yuck. Time for the birthday cake and cheering up now! Thanks for the birthday wishes! 🙂
Oh, grant me one last complaint: Aren’t you supposed to first feel grown up before you feel old? Get rid of spots before you get wrinkles? Yes, and being able to enjoy the pleasures of being grown up, like getting a well-regulated way of life, feeling confident and self-assured and experienced, or – dare I say it? – even: starting to learn from your mistakes? Feel safe and secure about your future for once? “Out of chaos comes order” – as if! I fear I have to go on in those immature ways that sometimes make me feel as if I managed to trick life to grant me some Peter Pan sphere of neverending excitement. I’m happy that I haven’t lost that excitement, or my curiosity and enthusiasm – as long as I have that I’ll gladly pay with a bit of anxiety and with constantly living on the edge of being broke. 🙂
– – – sloppy interlude – – –
DIANE: You’re not getting any younger, Mark. The world is changing, music is changing, even drugs are changing. You can’t stay in here all day dreaming about heroin and Ziggy Pop.
RENTON: It’s Iggy Pop.
DIANE: Whatever. I mean, the guy’s dead anyway.
RENTON: Iggy Pop is not dead. He toured last year.
(Trainspotting, 1996)
– – – sloppy interlude emerging as even sloppier transition – – –
Next stop: TRAINSPOTTING festival. It’s a super nice annual 2 days festival at the Stattbahnhof in Schweinfurt that is organised mainly by Zistl and Andi of MCCARTHY BLACKLIST who sadly played their final show there. This year they also had lots of bands who cancelled (I think 6 or 7) but it was a nice line up anyway. We arrived on Saturday in the afternoon when ENDSTAND were playing. They don’t really reach me, too average an approach to hardcore. So we rather enjoyed some café au laits and chatted. For me TRAINSPOTTING, like every other enjoyable festival, is as much about hanging out with friends as it is about the bands. That’s why a perfect festival line up always has to have at least 3 or 4 band I’m not really interested in. SHOKEI, who played next, where none of those. They are an awesome noise punk / posthardcore threepiece that added a great portion of humour since I had last watched them live. It fits them well as did the satin leggings, and the “kids are united” cover version made me laugh out loud. SHOKEI are so energetic and fast, with lots of breaks, only sparse shouting vocals, and a hint of melody every now and then. Lovely!
After that I missed a couple of bands while talking and drinking outside. And eating of course: there was great vegan food!
A.M. THAWN was the next band I watched. I had last seen them live in November when we played together in Bochum. Since then they were joined by a new guitar player and exchange instruments every now and then. They are the best Q AND NOT U since Q AND NOT U aren’t Q AND NOT U anymore. Or think of a mixture of !!! and FUGAZI. They are a great liveband to dance to. Hard to find more words about them. They definitely are not simply a rip off, not at all. Go watch them yourselves if you get the chance!
The next band I tried to watch were IRA but didn’t like their music at all. Metalgrungehippiehardcore? I don’t know. So we waited outside for YELLOW PRESS to start playing and that was a duly great final band for TRAINSPOTTING. Two of them played in the middle of the audience and people went wild, the usual weird dance moves I love about the Würzburg/Schweinfurt crowd were even more over the top than usual, and someone threw flyer confetti and YELLOW PRESS played a hell of a show – cheerful postpunk at its best, I’m in love! 🙂 I hear the most catching traces of bands like JAWBOX or even AGAINST ME in parts of their music if you’re in need of a comparison. I saw them for the second time and each time I was rather tired and exhausted before they started playing and they kicked me awake within a fracture of a second. I’m really curious about their album on Day After, I hadn’t had the time to give it a listen yet.
After their show we quickly drove back to Nuernberg cause there the BUCOVINA CLUB partied at K4 but when we arrived it was far too crowded and too hot to be much fun for us latecomers. I’m still surprised that this Balkan / Gypsy music mixed with electronica still works for so many people. It’s really fun but I wouldn’t have expected it to keep the masses dancing for more than a year. DJ SHANTEL definitely found his magic in that music, he’s a true master of ceremony.