60 years part zwei

So after the dinner I made for myself, which we will never speak of again, I headed back over to the Brandenburger Tor to see how the festival had progressed. When I arrived I noticed that the number of people had increased rather dramatically. So much so that walking a distance of 20 feet took about 20 minutes. I really had to pee too, so it felt even longer. Afterward I went over to the south stage and saw Udo Jürgens perform. He's huge in Germany, like fans numbering in the millions and here he is performing for free. Pretty crazy.


Next up was Otto Waalkes, who is said to be the biggest comedian in Germany. Apparently being a comedian in Germany means you sing with a full band. They opened with the star trek theme. The rest of his set included such hits as:
A German version of We Didn't Start the Fire
Born to be Wild
We Are the Champions again in german
Highway to Hell (in german)

and many more that were apparently huge hits in Germany.

After his peformance the host asked Otto if he considered himself to be more like Mick Jagger or the White Obama (?) to which Otto enthusiastically replied, "Mick Jagger Mick Jagger!" He then launched into a really terrible (awesome) version of I Can't Get No (Satisfaction). All in all the performance was just bizaare and really words don't do it justice.

Next up was 17 hippies. They were an acoustic group that did Eastern European folk songs. Musically they were the best of what I'd seen so far, which of course meant that they had no kitsch value at all. They were fun though, unfortunately they were not allowed an encore, as the BossHoss were clearly more important.


The BossHoss, for those of you who don't know, are a group of Berliners who decided that Berlin didn't have enough country punk so they decided to fix that. The whole thing is rather hysterical to watch, mostly because they sell it really well. Though they're all Berlin natives, yet they adress the audience in exagerated country accents in English. They all wear cowboy hats and dance around lewdly to the enjoyment of pretty much everyone. On the surface level at least, their music is completely brainless and mostly a poor imitation of American country music. However that's sort of the point I guess. They did a country western version of Hey Ya by Outcast and a cover of Ça plane pour moi that was pretty exciting and very unexpected. Again words don't really do it justice, and unfortunately I was too far away and it was too dark to really get a lot of good pictures. I'll post what I have though.

That was the BRD's 60th birthday, it was incredibly peaceful and surprisingly easy to leave. Germans are just efficient about filing out I guess.


Bristol to come soon I promise