Music in Berlin and Hamburg, March 2012

-- I considered going clubbing on the Reeperbahn in Hamburg last Friday (Ewan Pearson was the headlining DJ at Baalsaal) but I needed to check out of my hotel the next morning and didn't want to be dead on my feet for the entire day.  My "threshold" for hitting the clubs is a lot higher than it used to be.  This just in: you can get into a lot of trouble on the Reeperbahn.

-- Almost every time I wanted to hear a song and searched for it on Youtube, I got a "GEMA has blocked this content in your country" message, or something to that effect.  Unless a song is hosted through VEVO, it was blocked, so I had to search out a live version if I wanted to hear something (which isn't so hard, of course).  Streaming restrictions must be tough in Germany, I don't think I'd noticed this before. 

--We joked about going to Berghain on Saturday night.  This was a joke because nobody seriously wanted to head down to Berghain in the middle of the night only to be rejected at the door for the n'th time.  The lineup featured, among others, Fiedel, Luke Slater and DJ Pete. We were slightly more serious about going there on Sunday morning or afternoon instead, but didn't.  The Sunday lineup featured Boris and Joy Orbison.  Yes, we've basically reached the point where Berghain's Sunday lineup for the stragglers and supernarcs is better than any other club's Friday or Saturday night lineup.  Berghain completely dominates the Berlin club scene these days.

--  There are so many clubs and parties in Berlin that I didn't even find out about this one until I'd already missed it -- the Emptyset record release party at Horst Kreuzberg featuring Emptyset and possibly my favourite DJ's at the moment (based on their podcasts), Ancient Methods.  Even though I was dead on my feet on Saturday night and was in no shape for clubbing, I still felt that I blew it by not going.

-- I went a bit crazy with CD shopping, dropping money on stuff without bothering to listen to it, buying stuff unheard from artists I like, etc.  Most of the damage was done at Spacehall.  I checked out Real Deal (a really cool punk/metal/hardcore shop) although I didn't buy anything there, and went back to Hard Wax for the first time in almost nine years.  By the time I got to Neurotitian I was too exhausted to sample the anonymous local experimental/noise CD's that I usually buy when I'm there.