Ralphy's Concert Reviews

11-05-2002 Die Toten Hosen -

Concert at the KölnArena in Cologne (Germany)

Most non-Germans who are reading this are probably asking themselves "Who or what the fuck are Die Toten Hosen?" Well Die Toten Hosen (literal translation The Dead Trousers, but a more meaningful translation would be The Deadbeats) are a German punkrockband founded in 1982, who are the absolute top of the bill in their home country, where they can fill up entire soccer stadiums on their own. Over the years The Hosen have also made some English-language albums (their lyrics are for the most part in German), some with the help of punk legends like for instance the late Joey Ramone, which have been released abroad. They already toured South America 5 times, but also did regular tours in Eastern Europe, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand and The States and have opened shows for acts like The Rolling Stones, U2, Green Day and AC/DC.

My girlfriend Monja is a huge fan of the German punk scene, in particular this band and her absolute favorites Die Aerzte (The Doctors). In a table foosball tournament I had won a free night and breakfast in a German hotel and since Die Aerzte weren't on tour, it was decided (by Monja) we should use this right to visit a concert of Die Toten Hosen. Through the internet we were able to score some tickets for this gig in Köln (German for Cologne) on this tour named after their latest album, the Auswärtsspiel-tour (Auswärtsspiel = away-game). The fact that the concert was on a Saturday enabled us to combine the concert with a city tour of Cologne.

What is your opinion about the CD's I reviewed? Vote for your favorite CD in this booth! You can only vote once a day.

Ralphy's CD Review Voting Booth

Monja and me both had witnessed a Hosen-concert once before as part of the Pinkpop 2000-festival. Incidentally that concert was their last on the Unsterblich-tour (named after the previous album, translation: immortal), because singer Campino (all the band members use alias-names, because 4 of them are named Andreas) had torn the crucial ligaments in one of his knees the day before at the Rock am Ring-festival. Campino had not been diagnosed yet at the time of the Pinkpop-festival, so he was still jumping around on his one good leg at that time, but a day later when he heard of the nature of his injury, The Hosen were forced to cancel the rest of that tour.At that concert in The Netherlands we were able to get really close to the stage, since it wasn't that crowded at their performance, so we could get a good look. The Hosen aren't too popular or known for that matter in the most parts of The Netherlands neither, only in a small part around my hometown Bocholtz, where we speak a dialect that is a mix of Dutch and German. Tragically in 1997 a young Dutch girl, who came from a town near here, died at a Hosen-concert due to the crush in front of the stage. At the Pinkpop-festival, also held in this area, The Hosen thanked the parents of that girl for coming to the show, it had obviously been a dark period in the lives of the parents, but also the band who were also crushed by that unfortunate event.

The performance of Die Toten Hosen at that show had been OK, but not super remarkable (although Monja would disagree with that), but you really can't compare a concert abroad with a concert of The Hosen in their native Germany. That's the first conclusion after watching this show. The venue were The Hosen played tonight was the KölnArena (see picture), Germany's largest and most modern indoor hall, opened up in October 1998. It is besides concerts primarily used for ice hockey and handball-games. The KölnArena is 83,700 square meters big and has 18,000 seats. The Hosen sold out their show easily (as a comparison the concert of Destiny's Child a week later was not sold out). I had never been to this venue and was quite impressed by it, our seats were in the top ring, so we had a good overview of the place. I told you before that this tour was called the away-game tour and in this instance this was particularly true. You see, Die Toten Hosen originate from the city of Düsseldorf, which is about 20 miles from Cologne, but Cologne and Düsseldorf are very competitive neighbors. They are rival cities and the inhabitants of both cities often make dumb jokes about the citizens of the other city, a thing which Die Toten Hosen have also used in their lyrics in the past. The Hosen are also big soccer fans, which has also become part of their songs, and became the shirt sponsors of their favorite club Fortuna Düsseldorf, when that club was on the verge of bankruptcy. You might think why is he telling all this, but it will be obvious later when I go into more detail about the concert, which is now.

The opening act of the evening was a band called The Beatsteaks. Hosen-frontman Campino announced them as the best thing that Germany had to offer as the next generation of punkrock. The Berlin-band, which I had never heard of, gave a good show and got the crowd going. I don't know any of their songs, so I couldn't give you a complete set list. I do know that they played 2 covers, one from those other German punk idols Die Aerzte (obviously Monja recognized this song at once) and the other cover was a song from their third roll models (besides Die Toten Hosen and Die Aerzte) Nirvana. The performance of The Beatsteaks, who sing in English, lasted for just over half an hour and the funny highlight was the last song, where the singer brought out a surfboard on stage and went "crowdsurfing". All in all a band to remember for the future.

A while after that it was time for Die Toten Hosen. In a completely darkened KölnArena except for the stage The Hosen started furiously in front of an anxious crowd. The band members of Die Toten Hosen are the before mentioned Campino (real name: Andreas Frege) on vocals, Breiti (Andreas Breitkopf) and Kuddel (Andreas von Holst) on guitar, bassplayer Andi (Andreas Meurer) and on drums Vom Ritchie, who took over the drumsticks in The Hosen in 1999, filling in for Wölli (Wolfgang Rohde), who had to quit with a lumbar disc problem. As far as I know this also must have been the band line-up for this evening. As I stated the band just started rocking when it came onto the stage and although the first 3 songs sparked some recognition in my mind, I couldn't have named them for you. The complete set list that you will find at the bottom of this page can be credited to Monja, who much more than I has the expertise on The Hosen for this kind of thing. The fourth song "Schön sein" (To be beautiful) I did recognise as the first single of the previous album "Unsterblich". Before its release it had been available as a download on their website "www.DieTotenHosen.com" for 2 days and they got over a 100,000 hits in that time, just another way to illustrate the popularity of this band in their home country. "Schön sein" was followed by "Call of the wild", as you can already guess by the title an English song. Ever since 1991 when they released their first English album "Learning English: lesson I", a compilation of 23 classic punk cover songs in co-operation with punk legends, the band has stayed in touch with TV Smith (the former singer of The Adverts) and he regularly contributes some lyrics to the material of The Hosen and that has also been the case with "Call of the wild". The next song was the first single of the latest album called "Was zählt" (What counts). At that time the band and the public were totally in sync, especially when another recent single "Kein Alkohol is auch keine Lösung" (No alcohol is also no solution) followed. That song was the first one to give me Goosebumps this night. From the top ring were we sat/stood you had an excellent overview (see picture) of the action/reaction between the band and the incrowd on the floor. These guys were totally flipping.

Any comments you might have on these reviews

Visit my message board: Ralphy's Music and Stuff Forum

Next came an older song followed by a ballad and then came "Paradies" (no translation necessary I think). This one stayed with me all through the night, the lyrics just kept coming back to me. After that they played "Hier kommt Alex" (Here comes Alex) one of their bigger hits. The next 4 songs were another climax of this evening. The first one being "Wünsch DIR was" (Make a wish) from the ironically titled album "Kauf mich!" (Buy me!). Second "Venceremos ... wir werden siegen", this song was a reaction of The Hosen on their Cuba-trip. Venceremos means something like 'we will win' (as does 'wir werden siegen') or ‘we will be victorious’ and as I gathered it is the propaganda-slogan of the Castro-government to keep the hopes up of the Cuban population. The song is a bit sceptic about getting that final victory. I bought Monja a T-shirt with the title of this song and the skull of Che Guevara on it after the concert, the skull or the skeleton are the trademark of Die Toten Hosen, it's also used on the shirts of the soccer team that they sponsor. The third song of this climactic quartet was a cover from The Clash: "Should I stay or should I go?" and the fourth song of this climax was "Steh auf, wenn du am Boden bist" (Get up, when you're down) and for the second time this evening there were Goosebumps. Usually I am not a very emotional guy, but in the last couple of years I notice that I react more intense on well-played (live) music. In the time after that they played among others a cover of Dillinger's "Cokane in my brain" with the classic question "How do you spell New York", "Niemals einer Meinung" (Never the same opinion, good song), another ballad (dedicated to Jennie, whoever she may be) and another English song "Pushed again" (a protest against police violence).

After that song Campino started joking around with the audience. He told them they had made a boattrip on the Rhine-river with some fans from Cologne and also 2 Africans. It was a remarkable journey, he said, one the one hand you had these people without any culture, education and social skills and on the other side you had the 2 Africans :-). After a bit of booing, he than announced a song, which was according to him very popular in the most part of Germany. Everyone expected the song "Bayern" now, which is a song describing the dislike against the most successful and therefore most hated German soccerclub Bayern Münich, and everyone began to cheer, but when they actually started playing it was a song called "Ich bin froh das ich kein Kölner bin" (I'm glad I'm not from Cologne). Ofcourse the native part of the audience did not agree with that song, but when they during the song switched over to "Bayern", the hateful remarks were forgotten, and "Bayern" became the song that the crowd sang along with the loudest that evening, definitely another highlight. They ended their regular set with the songs "Zehn kleine Jägermeister" and "Schönen Gruss und aufwiederseh'n". The first one is a drinking song (10 little Jägermeister being the translation and Jägermeister is a German liquor), which back in 1996 was the first number 1 hit for Die Toten Hosen. Picture: Monja before the concert at the KölnArena

After a short break The Hosen came back for their first encore and we’re starting of with a bit of international music Campino announced, they played their cover-version of the Mexican classic “Guantanamera”. What followed was for me the best of the 10 (!) encore songs. It was another cover, “Hang on Sloopy” originally from The McCoys. Campino stated that he had been crazy about this song as a very young boy and although the world did not know about such a thing like punkmusic at that time, to him it was the first punksong ever. The third and last song of the first encore was “Bis zum bitteren Ende” (till the bitter end), a track of the live album with the same name. The crowd couldn’t get enough of The Hosen this evening and demanded another return onto the stage. The band willingly gave in to that and played another 3 songs, starting of fittingly with “Mehr davon” (More of the same). The following song was a Hosen-classic “Alles aus Liebe” (Everything out of love). According to Campino it was the last time he would be singing this song in German, because some Polish band had translated and covered it and it had become the biggest hit ever in Poland, so next time he would be doing the Polish version. Next came another Hosen-anthem “Wort zum Sonntag” (Sunday sermon) and again the band said goodbye.

But it wasn’t over yet, as the other bandmembers entered the darkened stage once again the attention went to the roof of the KölnArena from where Campino started singing, while coming down on a rope, again making the crowd going frantic. The song they played was “Graue Panther” (Grey panther) in which they state that they are really getting a bit too old for all this punk shit. They ended of the evening with 2 older songs and as an epilogue, they played a punkversion of Gerry & The Pacemakers-soccer anthem “You never walk alone”, with the recommendation that if you ever have the chance, go and watch a game at Liverpool’s Anfield Road.

For more cool (music) sites go to Ralphy's Page

So what’s the conclusion to be drawn of this concert. Well one thing is for sure, Die Toten Hosen can set a room/hall on fire. Their music isn’t subtle (when has punk ever been), but gets straight to the point. I was a bit disappointed that they didn’t play “Sascha – ein aufrechter Deutscher” (an upstanding German), probably my favorite Hosen-song. It is a song that is often been interpreted in the wrong manor. It describes the actions and thoughts of a young fascist/neo-nazi, but in a way that explains the stupidity of his beliefs. Ironically enough some of those idiots did and do not understand that the song is out to mock them and think it supports their cause and by this underlining their simplicity. Maybe this was the reason it wasn’t played, I don’t know, but that was my one regret for the evening. Otherwise The Hosen laid down a perfect show for a dedicated following and I rate this concert with an 8.0 (Monja would probably give it a 9.0 at least).

The complete set list:

Back to Ralphys Music Reviews Main Page

Back to Ralphy's Cool Music Site