We are Scientists Live¶
631 words on Live
To Finish off my stay in Berlin I went to see We Are Scientists play live at Magnet Club just around the corner. The brilliant plan was to go there with Jörg, but he couldn’t make it because of some problem involving the word diarrhea. That was a shame and also meant I was left with a spare ticket. So I went to the club a bit early to sell it to some other punter.
And while this worked as smoothly as you could have hoped for – with the second person I asked (the first already had a ticket) – it did feel very strange. While I suppose that doing this is perfectly OK, it made me feel a bit like a hawker and their trade, in turn, isn’t considered to be the most respected one in general. After that worked out smoothly, I still had enough time for some spring rolls in the Asian food place next door. And that was where going on my own turned out to be a bit of a pain. As much as I love eating, I am much better at it when in company. Whenever I have other things on my mind, I’m just not hungry and will either forget to eat at all, or eat in a hurry because just sitting around eating with no chat (newspaper, telly) to go along with it, is a bit dull.
Yikes, no business sense, awkward at dealing with people, slight eating disorder… too many psychological problems revealed in that single paragraph! That boy needs therapy!
It turned out that I could actually have had a complete three or five course meal instead of just some spring rolls, because it took ages for the band to come on. They must have started playing about an hour later than they were supposed to. Which surprised me, because they started exactly at the announced time when we saw the Shout Out Louds in the same place. So I had more than enough time to be a bit bored, get a reasonably good place in the fourth or fifth row, and see all the young people (and hear the young American people) attending.
When finally the band came on, they immediately started to make a lot of noise. Which was mainly caused by the distortion on their instruments rather than the band members working excessively hard. Generally I find their music to be quite friendly. Just with extra distortion in this case. Which isn’t to say that they played badly. They played well. They played a friendly gig to a filled room, the front part of which was quite enthusiastic.
While the gig was good, the commercial side of it put me off a little. The band is largely unknown around here. Thanks to the genius of their record company, their album which has been available in the UK for months isn’t even released in Germany yet. But still they charged the same price for the gig as Clap Your Hands Say Yeah did (in a bigger venue and with a rather good support band). Even worse, they charged €20 for T-Shirts (which are $12 on their web site. In contrast CYHSY charged €15.) and €2 for posters (€1 for signed posters with CYHSY) which I considered to be a bit steep, so I only got a button with a kitten on it. Which is a shame as thought their ‘i are scientists’ T-Shirt is quite funny and the other ones looked quite nice as well.
Oh, and be sure to visit their website. It’s quite funny. Actually it’s so well done in places that I wonder whether they do it themselves or whether it’s just PR dribble. But if it is, it’s still exceptionally good PR dribble.
