Pagan, out of Melbourne, which is a place I really wanted to visit even before I knew about this band, put their first, stupidly exciting and catchy single from their Black Wash album on YouTube at the end of spring / beginning of summer last year, and started appearing in international publications soon after.
I looked, and am honestly astonished that it still only has 30K views. Hannes, Lars, and I all instantly liked them. Like, a lot. As Lars put it, "there's something for everyone in this band".
And so, well, Lars and Solvig gave me/us tickets for my birthday for their show here in Hamburg on the first of December. Y a a a s s s s s
Molotow is one of the most popular venues here; it's right on the Reeperbahn.
I hadn't been there until this show, which was in the smaller, upstairs portion.
Obviously the band as a whole is great, and Nikki, their frontwoman, is one of those people who's more like a force of nature than a people. She's pure expression, energy, and goodness. I add 'goodness' not just because of her talent, sexy dancing, willing to experiment, or full-on femaleness, but because she's also extremely nice.
She thanked us all deeply and genuinely for coming to "mass" - they're all really chill, grateful, down to Earth people - and invited those front and center to take libations in this house of worship.
She also said, "Oooohhh, it's getting spicy in here!" which was absolutely the best word for it. It was steamy as fuck, for real.
What a great show. They're absolutely one of the best and most fun (which are different) live bands I've ever seen. In fact, they're right at the top of my upcoming belated Best of 2018 roundup.
I was pretty excited about my first legit paycheck in literal years and decided to buy two, count 'em two shirts, because I had already seen a tee I wanted before going, but fell in love with the Black Wash longsleeve once I saw it. It's a good thing, too: their merch is expensive as fuck when you buy it online! I paid 25 for that longsleeve, but if you want to get it from their site, you'll pay 40! Ouch.
Anyway, Danny, their bassist, went down to their van to find a medium for me. At the merch table I had excitedly, sweatily, and slightly drunkenly (re: drunkenly. Just drunkenly.) rambled to Nikki - who with exactly the right level of flattery clearly recognised me from the front of the crowd when it was my turn with, "Hello, beautiful!"- that this was my 30th birthday present, and that it was such an amazing one. Oh - but no, sorry! I quickly added when she rang out a very genuinely glad, "Aww, Happy Birthday!" in her charming Aussie accent. Today isn't my birthday! It was two months ago. But I've really been looking forward to this show since before then, and my husband and friend have too! We love you guys, you're so great, etc. etc., you know, the standard fangirling-after-the-shots-are-already-well-underway niceties. All good things. All true.
We went back to the bar and Lars bought us another round. Danny came back while we were talking and came over to us to give me my shirt. He had also heard it was my birthday (honestly like he probably heard me from the street) and gave me one of their pretty upside-down cross enamel pins for free. Eeee!
I invited him to have a shot with us, which means that I lowkey commanded Lars to get him one, which means that I lowkey commanded Lars to buy us all another round.
Sorry. I was just excited.
We were drinking kümmel, which he didn't recognise at all. I told him it was a regional thing, basically ice cold cumin vodka. Actually, I'm pretty sure it was their first-ever time in Germany.
They were loving it, he really liked the new liquor, and I told him that they were going to blow up for sure, and that the next time they were back - because they were pretty floored by how successful their shows had been, both in the UK and Germany, and he said that they would definitely be back - there's no way they would be playing a venue this small.
(Fast forward only 4 months, and they're playing again at Hafenklang soon. That venue is too big for me; I don't even like it. Intimacy like what I'm describing is my jam. But we all knew where this was going, and are thrilled for them and their success.)
When he mentioned looking into a North American tour and focusing on the Pacific Northwest, I also embarrassingly mentioned that I knew someone over there who might be booking shows, in reference to Matt. Eesh. Oh well. I'm sure he was glad to have fans tossing drunken support and maybe-contacts at his feet either way.
The last thing about our little chat with Danny: he told us that one of the things that brought Pagan together was the fact that they're all ethnically Italian. In Australia I guess that's a distinct and kind of unusual thing, and it made me wonder if the Croatian Aussie and Bosnian Aussie I know of felt the same way when they were younger.
I had just assumed the St. Peter's cross and church references and motifs were connected to the band's name and black metal influences, to which I got a "well, that too", but I guess I would have connected the dots a lot sooner had I seen this press photo from a year ago before the show:
lol
"So yeah. Anyway, that's an interesting piece of trivia about us."
I hadn't had pure energetic fun and moshed like that since Double A in Seoul. I was exactly as sweaty and spicy as the windows. My Firefly button came off my vest and got stomped a lot, but thankfully Lars noticed it before we left and picked it up, not even knowing it was mine.
<3 font="">
Lars, Daniel, Solvig, and their large circle of friends are pretty used to being out drinking, dancing, and otherwise partying for the entire night on the Reeperbahn and in St. Pauli, so naturally, there was something on after the show: a solidarity party.
Oh, and not just any solidarity party: it was the Christmas drag variety show spectacular.
People on the left here in the city of Antifa's global headquarters are massively paranoid about being identified through photos and videos, to the extent that they insist on no photography, even in public places like city festivals full of thousands of people who can see them just fine, and also to the extent that many of them have no photos of themselves and/or friends having fun. This is pretty ridiculous considering the ubiquity of smartphones, CCTV, and ever-improving facial recognition technology, but either way, that's why I'm only posting pics with this light censoring or that are cut-off, obscured, profile, or costume ones.
It's a damn shame too because the eye sparkle really makes this one.
For all I know I'll be asked to take this down altogether, though, which is way worse.
Yes, this totally happened lol
I had an increasingly debilitating headache and Hannes was pretty much kaput too, because I guess once you hit like 29 the hangover starting while you're still drinking is a thing, which I'm sure I've mentioned before. It's like a system upgrade you never asked for and that is actually worse, but that can't be uninstalled.
We stopped at some nearby place for kebab (and falafel) and ended up in a heated discussion about Israel and Palestine that I won't describe in detail here. As a result the night did a faceplant right at the end of a lengthy and spectacular routine right at that last moment when it was riding high, home free, and just had to stick the landing, but either way, it was amazing. We had a great time, and that was a perfect gift.
No comments:
Post a Comment