Katzenjammer

The Norwegian band Katzenjammer (Wikipedia) was in town and celebrating their 10th birthday, so WiseMan organized tickets for us to attend the concert with some friends. I don't remember now how I happened upon a video of these four very musical women, but it was so cool to see how they could switch instruments in the middle of a song! They also sound faintly like Dixie Chicks, a group I like very much, so I got their CD Le Pop.

They were playing at the Tempodrom, which is easy to reach, but on the tickets there was a disturbing little notice: Freie Platzwahl, free choice of seats. That meant we had to be there as the doors opened at 6:30 pm to have a chance at good seats. We were pretty proud of ourselves to have scored pretty good seats (even if they are painfully uncomfortable) and waited until 8 pm. The evening began with a guy on guitar (Sivert Høyem) who had a good voice and played well, but I wanted folk-rock and not this melancholic singing. Oh well, it passed the time. It took another half an hour until the stage was set up and the poor security people had shooed everyone from the stairs and found (bad) seats for them.

They started rocking at 9 pm, but oh my, who did the light "show" for them, some 14-year-old who just discovered that he can turn lights on and off and move them? They were constantly blinding us! We wanted to see the artists, otherwise we could have just bought 2 CDs apiece for the price of the tickets. Oooh, the lights could go blue and purple and yellow and blind us in any color! And they could move, not in the rhythm of the song, you understand, but in some crazy pattern that gave me a headache.

There was quite a wild mix of music and styles, not to mention the array of instruments that must need their own truck or two. I like the country/folk rock, some of the more metallic stuff was not my cup of tea. But there was always a surprise coming in the next song. So from a musical point of view, it was an interesting evening. 

The "experts" sitting behind us who just loved every single song that was better than the ones before were kind of irritating, too. I did find it amazing that so many men were in the audience (about half!) and they were rocking away! There were also a lot of grey-haired people like us, as well as many twenty-somethings.

Do come back, Katzenjammer, but hire someone else to do the lights. I want to get a good look at that contrabass balalaika with the cat face and see which of the artists is behind the drums on each song.