Barrier breaking Marionette headline an evening in Berlin dedicated to Swedish electro bands, end up playing in front of five people and yet manage to greatly impress yours truly.
When Live Nation Sweden arranged this evening I suspect their idea was to show off up and coming Swedish music export in the electro-orientated Hauptstadt. Only something went wrong. The whole evening felt a bit like a business party full of Swedish thirty-forty-somethings scratching each others backs, telling themselves how great they are. The true Germans were few, far apart and not looking too impressed.
Here’s what the evening sounded like:
Theatrical disco duo Zeitgeist gives us swinging electro, cool vocals and impressive choreography. It is refreshing and fun to see a so well thought trough show. Although I suspect that the crashed lamp due to a badly aimed party popper was not part of it.
Juvelen, a trio with some kind of Swedish The Strokes-look going in, deliver falsetto song on top of lounge music –something which lasts for about 30 seconds. Not 30, excuse the language, fucking minutes. I fell asleep and the people who were swaying along to the way over-hyped monotonous sound looked like they were faking it just to look cool. Juck.
Apollo Drive play a short set of Bon Jovi-smelling rock n’ roll. The singer has a great voice and something tells me this band will do well at European dance parties aimed at an older crowd with low standards and eighties nostalgia.
After this to me rather disappointing showcase of Northern music, most business people and what few others there were seem to have left the building. By the time Marionette go on stage there are 20 paying people left in the place. And by the time they leave there are 6.
I just don’t know how someone was thinking when they put the programme together but I do know that these guys deserved a much larger crowd.
Well, I guess the people who were left after Juvelen & co were expecting something as lame as what they had seen up until then. But that’s not what they got.
The fact that there was hardly anyone there did not stop the sextet from Gothenburg from delivering a set suited for stadiums.
It is a great shame that not more people got to enjoy this gig and I couldn’t help but feel a bit sorry for the guys. (Just getting ready for the show, with all the make up and hairspray that would have required, must have taken a lot of effort.) But it is clear that these guys enjoy what they do and that stardom has not gotten the best of them, even more so when singer Axel tells us “you may not believe us but we are actually having a really good time up here”.
And somehow, for Marionette to play in an old theatre in the ruins of a disco party felt just right. With the vain disco glitter stomped to the ground under our feet they delivered songs about fire, hell and revenge and to me and my four German fan friends it made more sense than ever.
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