once more with feeling

Yesterday, someone asked me what the first concert was I ever went to. Of course there were a lot of bands I saw that I can’t really remember – especially when my mum took me somewhere, or some tiny band that played at my town’s local festival. However, the first gig where I at least still have some memories is the one of the Backstreet Boys back in 1997, where my mum had to go with me because I was too young to go alone. Already a year later I went to see Die Ärzte (nice change of my taste in music, eh?), but those are pretty much the only two bigger concerts until I started to attend festivals. This shouldn’t surprise anyone who knows that I grew up in a town with 15.000 inhabitants somewhere in Tyrol, because there just is no possibility to see an international band unless you drive for an hour to the next bigger city.

So when I moved to Vienna, a new world opened itself to me. Concerts every day, sometimes leaving me unable to decide which to go to. Especially the autumn and early winter always proved to be the best time of the year for my obsession with live music. And next week is going to be one of those weeks where sleep will be not allowed, where coffee and beer will be my best friends and where you will have to endure one fangirly tweet after another. Why? I can tell you 7 reasons:

1. Einar Stray @ WUK, Monday
Einar Stray from Norway is one of the most talented musicians I know. Everytime I hear him playing the piano, my heartbeat slows down and I have to close my eyes. It’s magical.
Einar will be supporting Hundreds at WUK Foyer.

2. Team Me @ rhiz, Monday
After letting myself be enchanted by Einar, the next Norwegians are waiting to steal my heart: Team Me, who have been supporting the Wombats on their tour for quite a while now and will finally play their first show in Vienna. If you’ve been following my crazy writing here for longer already, you might have come across the name Uno Moller once or twice – he is part of this team together with four other boys and one girl and together, they will bring their indiepop charm to rhiz.

3. destroy, munich @ Chelsea, Tuesday
The loveliest chaos-troop in the world will bring some happy-time with them, to put a smile on our faces and warm our hearts in those pre-wintery days. The band will share the stage with the trio Robotra, who will present their 7” single for the first time.

4. Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs @ Fluc Wanne, Wednesday
After all the cute and happy and lovely music, it’ll be time for some electro-house and dancing on Wednesday. And how to combine this better than with a dinosaur? Yeah right, I couldn’t think of a better combination either. TEED is finally coming to Vienna after he had to cancel his gig at the Waves Festival. He will be supported by the locals Agent Cooper and there will be DJing from Laminat, Moogle and Temporary Secretary.

5. Portugal. The Man @ WUK, Thursday
It’s no secret that I’m totally and madly in love with John Gourley. After the FM4 radio session in April, he is now coming back to present the latest record of his band called “In the Mountain in the Cloud”. As I learned at the past concerts of Portugal. The Man, their psychedelic soul is live even better than on CD, with John’s fragile and tender voice moving and touching you in a way you never expected.

6. Likewise @ B72, Thursday
How good that WUK tends to end its concerts quite early and B72 tends to start its quite late, eh? Because Der Gute Club is inviting the indie-folk quintet Likewise and the singer-songwriter Philipp Szalay for the last date before the end of the year. Likewise is just recording the first album and I’m excited to see and hear in what direction that might go.

7. Antlers & Dry The River @ Szene, Friday
The spectecular finale of this music week will be provided by two bands every indie-lover should have seen live. The Antlers from Brooklyn released their latest album “Burst Apart” earlier this year, which has since then run on heavy rotation on my iTunes. Dry The River from London have been considered as the new Mumford & Sons from day one, even though until now, they didn’t even release a longplayer yet. As the biggest Mumford & Sons fan on this planet (uhm, slightly exaggerating here of course), you can imagine how curious I am to see what this is supposed to mean.

Dear Vienna people: I hope to see you at one or the other concert. You will recognize me as the person with the biggest dark circles around the eyes, holding a coffee in one hand and a beer in the other.

In case you didn’t notice it yet: I am from Austria. It’s that tiny country in the middle of Europe, the one without kangaroos. We are famous for: Mozart, The Sound of Music, Hitler, yodeling in leather trousers, Falco, allowing extremely right wing parties in the government, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Swarovski, Freud, Schnitzel, not knowing how to play football and recently also Ernst Strasser.
Even though we had our (classical) musical peaks in the past, we didn’t manage to keep up with… well, everybody else. However, that little country of ours is not giving in. In the past couple of years, especially the indie music scene has seen the popping up of new bands, competing for recognition inside and outside the country’s frontiers. I have already presented many of them here – not because of my national pride, but because I truly believe in them. They might not be the next Arcade Fire or Kings of Leon or Bright Eyes, but they keep the hope alive that music in Austria didn’t die after Out of the Dark, that copying Germany with their casting shows isn’t everything and that playing music you love is more important than commercialization (did anybody of you read that interview with Christl Stürmer years ago, where she said her music is not the type of music she’d actually listen to? Sad but true.).

Well, enough with praising Austria’s indie bands. It’s time for some music. Today, I have two videos for you:

The first one is from Francis International Airport. It’s quite a hipstery kind of video, one of those kinds where you can’t really see the story behind it, but the colours and the shots are all so pretty that you just wish life would really have a bit of that beau teint. Also, put some animal masks and a cute little princess in a video, and you’ll win.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eObTfOQ7GxA

The second video is not just a music video – it’s a short story by Sebastian Kraner for and with destroy, munich. Some parts of it are in German, but even if you don’t understand it, you should still keep watching.
Some trivia:
- I love that the one guy has “Friday I’m in love” as his ringtone.
- Did you realize that they’re watching Californication? It’s one of my most favorite shows at the moment.
- The place where they meet at minute 7 is just some hundred meters away from my flat.
- That lovely girl singing with them on stage is Anna Kohlweis aka Paper Bird.
- The other girl, the one playing the guitar, quit the band a while ago and is working in the office where I’m doing my internship.
- There should be more gorillas handing out bananas at concerts.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILNlw63Q5pI

Napster. Do you remember it? Napster was the first program I had for downloading music. Illegally. I stopped buying CDs, because (nearly) everything I wanted was available for free, and only one click away from me having it. In my hometown Kufstein, the only record store we had closed in my early teenager-years. There was no Saturn or Media Markt, and I was still quite suspicious of ordering records via the Internet.
However, I always wanted to also have every record physically. This is why I burned everything, and even created the cover exactly like the “real” record looked like.
Then, I moved to Vienna. I started going to concerts, and I started to buy CDs again. I realized that buying music gives you a good feeling, because you know that you’re supporting the artists, because it tells the artists that you appreciate their music, that they should keep going.
What makes me happy is when artists take their records as serious as I do. When they put hard work in the creation, when the whole thing is more than a 2-sided leaflet with some “Thank you” notes and a disk with a couple of songs on it. When you have the feeling that it’s worth every cent. Austrian bands are quite good in that. Just think about Toph Taylor‘s amazing CD-book or Destroy, Munich‘s latest release full of pictures and the images of handwritten lyrics. And on Wednesday, I found another piece of music no one should be missing in his record collection.

It’s the first EP of diver. Remember? Yes, it’s the band I’ve been enthusing about since last summer. I promised you to be hearing more of them. And I was right. After having played as support for Trouble Over Tokyo, they now opened for Francis International Airport. I was standing in the second row (as usual) and overheard some girls talking about how amazing they are, that the cute singer is Wolf from Deckchair Orange, and they even knew some song lines. Yes, diver are on their way to Austria’s indie-elite.

Their EP is a masterpiece of self-made artwork. A retro-style cover that has been sewed together by a friend of the band and a CD in the look of a vinyl disc. The 20 copies they brought to the concert on Wednesday were sold out in about 5 minutes, but they are already producing the next edition. So you can either write them an e-mail (wearediver (at) gmail (dot) com) saying that you really really have to have the record as soon as possible or you come to one of their next gigs (28.2. Scherbe/Graz, 14.3. rhiz/Wien, 20.3. Flex Café/Wien) and get it there. And until that, you can always listen to the songs on their Facebook page and take a look at the amazing pictures of the gig on Wednesday at the gap.