Reading between the lines

So, I revived my “business relations” to the Hamburg Express, simply because they opened a blog-section and I am always eager for more readers. Wagging tongues might even claim that there is a connection between the switch of this blog to the English language and the outlook of blogging there…
But let’s not get into that again…
In any case it only took a few hours after my first post on The Hamburg Express until my former boss and chief editor of the online-publication approached me with the invitation to a concert he was supposed to attend and write about and wasn’t going to be able to. So here it was, my first official writing assignment again after more than a year’s journalistic absence. Too bad, the concert didn’t particularly correlate with my own personal musical preferences and writing a slating review after getting invited to the concert wasn’t really an option… Oh well, I guess you simply have to read between the lines then…

A charmer and a gent (okay, lets stick to the visual, since the acoustic wasn’t my cup of tea): Duncan Townsend and his band performed at Hamburg’s “Uebel & Gefaehrlich” on Wednesday night, and the handsome lad (many, many pretty young girls in the front row with stars in their eyes) from Nottingham (funny… wasn’t there a character in the Robin Hood movie called Duncan, too… it’s all connected: Sheriff of Nottingham – Duncan… can anyone think of a Townsend connection here? The Who and Robin Hood? … am I making sense?) had all of Hamburg at his feet.
It was the first major gig for Duncan Townsend and his “Townsmen” and yet it would have been difficult to squeeze in any more people into the slightly downsized room of the “bunker-club” (partially explicable by the five-page long, single-spaced guest list).
The story Duncan Townsend tells about his journey to Hamburg is almost as romantic as a fairytale (sigh… and from a marketing point of view this makes a lot of sense since a lot of the cute front-row girls might like that type of thing…): It was love that brought him here. He bravely followed the woman he loved to a foreign country. But “stranded on the German shore”, his good fortune failed him, leaving him love- and penniless (sigh the second… I wonder if there is any special point to the emphasis of his single status…). He started playing in bars in St. Pauli, earning some money and soon also a reputation as an excellent musician and songwriter (from rags to riches, if you will). Today, five years after his original arrival in Germany luck seems to be on his side again. His first album “Out of the Red” is about to hit the stores and his first single “Go! Go!” suspiciously sounds like it might be this summer’s radio hit (and I mean it. Sounds like the perfect radio hit. Actually I have to admit that some of the more speedy tunes aren’t bad… just the love songs are awfully cliché – just like the entire “poor love-seeking boy stranded in Germany to become a star”-story).
The concert, in any case, forecasted a great career (if my review wasn’t the only one about it that might actually be true). The audience was enthusiastic, singing and dancing along (apart from at the back – where I decided to hide after the third song, sipping beer, folding flyers into small ships models and then ripping them into neat triangular pieces…), and even calling for a second encore, which was gladly given by Townsend and his four-piece band (all very friendly Hamburg folk). A great show that left little to wish for and plenty to look forward to (I am sure Duncan would look nice on the tube, he’s a friendly lad). One better keep an eye – and an ear - on that charming gent (did I mention his remarkable inclination to wear a bit too formal clothing? Maybe some sort of reference to the singer /entertainer tradition of the 50s – almost Sinatra-style…) from Nottingham. (It’s all marketing. Wonder where it gets him…)