Artist: Girls
Venue: ORWOhaus
Location: Berlin,
Germany
Date: 26 January 2019
Admittedly, this show
came up in my radar via Facebook. The tagline was "GIRLS - the
reincarnation of a forgotten all-female-proto-Krautrock-showband from
Southern Germany (1967-71). GIRLS - die experimentelle Tanzkapelle
(1967/2019). GIRLS - the female source of Krautrock?" This is
the power of well-targeted marketing: I was hooked immediately. I
barely looked into the details beyond noticing that information about
the original incarnation of the band was extremely scarce and that
the show would be taking place in Marzahn, an outlying part of Berlin
mostly known for its drab Plattenbau.
Finding the venue was a
challenge in itself. After a seemingly endless tram ride, I exited
into a massive yet deserted street in the rain and set off in what
seemed like the right direction. A well-placed sign guided me to the
rear of a building (on Frank-Zappa-Straße), but upon entering, I was
left to wander the halls and stairs until I found the commotion and a
person taking money.
When the band came on
stage after an uncharacteristic 35-minute delay from the scheduled
start time, I was given my first surprise: only one of the members
was a woman, and none of them looked to be old enough to have been
performing in 1967. However, as they lurched into their first song,
"Nicht anfassen" ("Don't Touch"), I stopped
worrying about the backstory and just got sucked in.
Of all the words in the
tagline, the only one that was inarguably true was "experimentelle".
The music was disassociative, noisy, and heavily influenced by dada.
There were some bits of early Can-like
Krautrock, although very little of the steady driving rhythm á la
Kraftwerk
or Neu!
that one might expect when hearing that term thrown around. (Whether
it counts as "proto" anything is debatable.)
Instead, drummer "Moon
de Marzan" (Maurice de Martin) was fierce and dynamic. The bass
of "Stella Mars" (Susanne Sachsse) was minimal and
primarily purely rhythmic. Her vocals were mostly spoken or shouted
with bilingual lyrics confronting commodification, societal norms,
and gender roles. She competed for space with the trombone, trumpet,
melodica, recorders, and various effects of "Vally Cloud"
(Hilary Jeffery). These same effects often merged with the guitar
effects of "Ida van Selbst" (Dirk Dresselhaus) to build a
pulsing wall of sound. At other times, the music became sparse and
scattered, with bursts of percussion or noise punctuating the tense
silence. One song was basically doom. Another was a funk rip. Some
bordered on free jazz. Their playfulness and unconventionality
recalled Kleenex/Lilliput, and I was also reminded of the
noise scene I used to see all the time when I lived in St. Louis.
[With the "Man with the Gin" on guest vocals. Note Sachsse's plastic bag on her microphone, used to simulate a shaker.]
I thoroughly enjoyed
the music I was presented with, and yet part of me also felt duped.
On one hand, if they hadn't promoted themselves so deftly, I would've
missed a delightful and unique concert experience. On the other,
their presentation is a farce. Apparently Maurice de Martin is the
son of the original band's drummer, and when she died at age 23, the
band disintegrated. Their legacy supposedly consists of a badly
damaged 20-minute cassette, a few reviews in local papers, some notes
and journals, and the drumset that de Martin played on. While de
Martin claims to have been heavily influenced by those remnants and
the stories of his family, the rest of the contemporary band has no
such connection. In fact, Sachsse claimed to know nothing about the
original band's music except for what de Martin has told her. While
I'm impressed that the band wanted to keep alive the memory of a
fascinating historical oddity, their claim to be a "reincarnation"
of the same band is rather tenuous. Myth-making is no joke, and the
only reason I can't be mad about it is because it worked.
Score: B
References:
Local
promotion of the band with most of the same information (German)
A
taz article that actually digs quite a bit deeper and includes a
photo of the original band (German)
P.S. Thanks to John!
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