• achtergronden
• DE 7EVEN
• video's
• agenda

ernaast

NTS / Beatsteaks / Bad Religion: Thank God For The Euro

Not much in musical content here. Sorry.
31 januari 2002, Stahlwerk, Düsseldorf (D)

Tekst: Martÿn ter Haar

Beeld: Jeroen Leclercq

Publicatiedatum: 18 februari 2002

If you are reading this you are probably wondering how the reborn Bad Religion played. Or maybe you are even a Beatsteaks or NTS-fan. Both bands seem to have quite a following in their home country. I'm sorry to inform you I can't really tell. There's two things to blame: some virus and Stahlwerk. Tuesday and wednesday I was ill. Thursday I felt much better. Not great, but good enough to make the trip to Düsseldorf. Bad Religion would play there and Brett Gurewitz had invited all employees of his label Epitaph's European HQ in Amsterdam to admire their boss. Some journo's were added to fill up the empty seats in the bus. Getting there was easy and Epitaph even had arranged free food and drinks. So much for independent journalism. And all the while I was feeling ok-ish. A little tired maybe.
The Stahlwerk turned out to be a huge hall with all the atmosphere you expect from something called Stahlwerk. When opener NTS started to play another problem of the hall surfaced: echo. Despite this the Karlsruhe band managed to get quite a response from the already well filled hall. So well filled actually that I considered it best to move a little to the back to avoid the mosh pit and crowdsurfers. Next act Beatsteaks created even more of a roar, even though the variation that made their last album 'Moving Targets' so interesting was somewhat missing from their set. The still growing crowd liked it enough. When near the end of the concert singer Arnim Teutoburg-Weiß went crowdsurfing on a guitarcase the Stahlwerk almost exploded. At least, that is what I thought at that time.
The crowd, now grown to "sold out and then some more" capacity, only really exploded when Bad Religion came on. I thought I had positioned myself in a safe position at about 2/3 of the length of the hall from the stage, but I found myself to be in the middle of the pit. Amid all those packed together bodies the temperature soon rose to inhuman heights. It seemed that if I would remain in the same place I could choose between dying from overheating or from getting crushed. To avoid the loss of talented young life I struggled towards safer places in the back, together with an entire exodus of other people, some of them with the look of frightened animals running away from a forest fire on their faces. When the adrenaline levels were back to normal I really didn't feel all that well and had to sit down for a while. Before the struggle for safety I had seen one Bad Religion song, 'Suffer', and sitting on the floor I couldn't see anything and only hear that fucking echo.Time to stand up and watch the band again, this time more from the back. Because Stahlwerk has a complete flat floor there wasn't much to see besides the back of other people's heads and the sound was even worse here than more towards the front. What remained was the heat. Maybe a glass of water would help. But it didn't. Even worse: I could definitely feel that my body protested against being bribed with free food from the record company. A rush to the bathroom followed. I made it there in time only to discover all toilets being in use. The 20 second wait turned out to be just too long. No damage done yet though: I had managed to keep my mouth shut to unload in the toilet bowl... with such force that half of the puke went over the rim. Great. So this is how foreigners get the reputation of being filthy: they just can't handle the local food. What do you do in such a situation? Rinse your mouth, pretend nothing is wrong and give 2 euro to the still blissfully unware toilet lady with a big smile on your face. Thank God for the euro: just imagine that in such a situation you would have to do calculations with foreign exchange rates. "How much pesetas would mopping up vomit be worth?"
When I joined the tail end of the crowd again the concert was almost over. I had just enough time to use my tongue to remove the last pieces of puke from between my braces. When we left the Stahlwerk for the clean (although "clean" is a relative notion in the Ruhr area) Düsseldorf night air two ambulances were standing outside.

http://www.kindamuzik.net/live/bad-religion/nts-beatsteaks-bad-religion-thank-god-for-the-euro/1316/
Meer Bad Religion op KindaMuzik: http://www.kindamuzik.net/artiest/bad-religion