Category: Gigs Abroad

Gigs Abroad Part 6 – Hamburg

The annual lad’s trip in March 2011 returned to the fair country of Germany, this time to Hamburg. The city has had its fair share of travails over the centuries, great fires, cholera outbreaks, carpet bombing in WW2 and even a significant flooding in the 60’s which took many lives. It is now a modern cosmopolitan city that it is probably the most touristy place we have visited on our trips.

As we boarded the plane, there was a huge group of lads dotted around in the seats heading out on a stag day, I can’t remember the chap’s name so for simplicity let’s call him Smithy.

We arrived about mid-afternoon on the Friday and passed through the Hauptbahnhof main station en route. Much to our infantile amusement there were posters for Shaun Das Schaf (Shaun the Sheep) and Rory das Automobile (Rory the Racing Car) which we chortled about over the weekend!  

Directly from the hotel we bounced into the first bar we passed whilst heading into the centre of the city. The mein host, on hearing our accents smiled and proceeded to open a back room and ushered us in for us to discover that it was full of dubious war paraphernalia.  

To increase our discomfort, he then proceeded to boot up the jukebox and put the ‘Sink the Bismarck’ track on! We made plans to escape after a quick beer, but due to a communication breakdown we ended up having to have another drink there. It was rapidly turning into a strange start to the weekend.

The centre of town was a little tacky to be fair and Smithy’s stag boys were spotted in the Reeperbahn area. Within that area was the Hamburg Reeperbahn Academy situated on Hans-Albers-Platz.  

Hamburg Reeperbahn Academy. Image Credit www.hans-der-kanns.com

We wandered in and discovered that were was a function room behind the bar which served as a disco, nightclub and live venue and stayed open to the eye-popping time of 7am. They regularly have original or covers bands playing. The place had a decent vibe to it and a band called Darryl and Pals were on stage when we attended.

Directly next door was another bar called the Hamburg Ranch House which we pottered into and saw an act called Wild Touch who were apparently a regular band on the local circuit since 2004.

The overriding news story of the weekend was the disaster at the nuclear power plant in Fukushima in Japan. Around this time, I kept harking back to the prophetic line of Billy Bragg of ‘And the incident at Tschernobyl proves the world we live in is very small’ from his 1986 track ‘Help Save the Youth of America’.

On Day 2, we made a visit to one of Europe’s most famous football teams St Pauli’s stadium, located in the dock area of the city. They are arguably recognised more for their unique social culture than their football and they are quantified as one of ‘Kult’ clubs. They generate a strong affinity from supporters far and wide due to their commendable left-wing politics and have distinctive skull and crossbones on their merchandise.

St Pauli Stadium. Image Credit portalsinfoblog.blogspot.com

Nearby to the ground we found a superb pub, arguably one of the best bars I have ever been into which we christened the ‘St Pauli Bar’ as I cannot recall the actual name. The nearest musical comparison to the St Pauli ethos would be punk and ska and this was booming over the sound system and the clientele had such character and there was a nice modicum of ‘edge’ to the place.

St Pauli had just recently managed to gain promotion to the Bundesliga, the highest division, where they were now playing their city rivals Hamburger SV in the Hamburger Stadtderby. I was chatting to a genial local lad who had attended the derby only twenty-three days earlier where they had remarkably beaten their much bigger rivals in their home stadium, this was locally such a big deal that he was almost in tears while reciting the memories of the match.

To grab a local comparison, it would be on the scale of Stockport reaching the topflight and going on to win at Man City or Man United. We spent a terrific couple of hours in this establishment. When we boarded the flight home the next day, it was abundantly clear that Smithy’s stag do crew had been pushing the envelope all weekend and they were literally shells of their former selves!  

Gigs from Abroad Part 5 – Australia Part 2

When in Melbourne I embarked on some research regarding gigs in the city via a conversation with a friendly local record shop owner near our digs in St Kilda. He referenced the Corner Hotel as a potential venue, and this was a location that Mogwai had played twelve months earlier, oh to have undertaken the trip a year hence! There was a band playing that Friday, so plans were summarily hatched for us to make an appearance.  

However, those plans were scuppered for a very good reason. The England cricket team had been battered in the Ashes but had woken up from their slumber in the subsequent one-day triangular series resulting in playing the home nation at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) in a day/night match that Friday. We managed to purloin some tickets and were blessed with excellent weather and good seats protected us in the main from the sunshine. The ground got busier post-work resulting in approximately 50k in the ground by the end of the game.

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Melbourne Cricket Ground. Image Credit mysporttourist.com

There was a highly humorous advert showing on the screen displaying the disparity between a Pommy backyard (dark, monsoon conditions, 1930’s slum) and Brett Lee’s backyard (beautiful huge expanse of sun kissed Wimbledon quality grass) – they are such wags!

However, we had the last laugh as we won a very tense close match in the last over, though probably the overriding highlight was Glenn McGrath in his last ever Melbourne appearance dropping an absolute dolly of a catch right in front of me. I very nearly spilt my ice cold Tooheys Extra Dry in celebration! In the interval between innings there was a short set from local grunge legends Something About Kate.      

Much to my chagrin, there was a music festival scheduled in St Kilda on the day we left, however Melbourne is a city of four seasons and the event was marred by extremely strong winds and ended up being abandoned early. As we had rescheduled the Corner venture, I obviously had to identify an alternate gig outing and lined up a local gig on Thursday 08/02/07. 

Prior to the gig, we went on a random excursion of penguin viewing which was arguably a bit of a sham and was bloody freezing on the boat, resulting in Gill contracted a mean head cold as a result. We christened the wide boy skipper as ‘Captain Shane’ due to his likeness to the recently departed Shane Warne and his propensity to say ‘No Worries’ at regular intervals.

We wandered past the picturesque historic Palais Theatre located right on the sea front, which with a capacity of nearly 3000 is the largest seated theatre in Australia. There was a huge younger crowd queuing up for a band playing that night.

Our destination, just across the way was the Esplanade Hotel, known locally as ‘The Espy’. Built way back in 1878, it sits proudly on the Upper Esplanade overlooking Port Philip and has a commendable musical heritage. Beyond the live gigs it was also apparently the filming location of a live music trivia program Rockwiz.      

It is a four-storey building with many of the rooms being used for different purposes over the years and the future of the hotel was in doubt a couple of times in the 21st century prior to an extensive refurbishment. It subsequently reopened in November 2018 with three live music rooms and bar and restaurant areas contained within the hotel.

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Melbourne Esplanade Hotel. Image Credit photos.melbourne

On our visit we were housed in the large front bar called the Nimrod Room. There was a stage in the right-hand corner of the room, behind which was a decent sized pool room where I was amused to witness our very own Captain Shane persevering with his patter and endeavouring to chat up the local St Kilda ladies.

The support band was a decent local act called Jim’s Eyes who said towards their end of their set they were selling merchandise. However, I was therefore somewhat perplexed when I approached them immediately afterwards to be informed, they had sold all their tapes! The support outshone the main band who were a combo called Outrage. I thought it was a terrifically atmospheric venue and I glad that 15 years on it still appears to be thriving! 

By completing this very article, I have traversed past 80k words in total, which is the word limit for a PHD. Thus, an open question from me is by passing this landmark can I now validly rechristen myself as ‘Doctor Jimmy’?