Although the presence of women in the music industry has increased considerably in the last decade, a larger percentage of bands are still lead by men than are lead by women. This, however, was not the case tonight.
The first band who appear on the stage were Canadians known as Controller.Controller, who were visiting for the first time Germany to promo their first LP X Amounts, a succession of rhythms mixing post punk sounds with a touch of dance music. Unfortunately this positive disco aspect of the music was not really perceived in the show which, together with the fact that the album doesn’t really have an obvious hit or catchy tune, made the gig a bit monotonous and lacking in interest after the first couple of songs. One almost got the impression that they were playing the time the same song over and over with just minor variations. Therefore, the attitude of the crowd was not altogether positive, they refused to move their feet despite the effort made by the singer Nirmala Basnayake, who tried to liven up the crowd with her sexy dancing accompanied by claps and suitable, stamping heels.
Controller.Controller eventually came to an end and left, all that was left on the stage a bunch of kids building their instruments. I soon realized that they were the members of Be Your Own PET, the next band to play, and I began to mentally overestimate their ages in order to try to deny how insultingly young they are.
The show was started by the bass guitarist, who show us his orthodontic work while shouting something in front of the microphone before giving it to the singer Jemina Pearl, a skinny, small girl who surely would go unnoticed if she was travelling by your side on the underground or waiting next to you on the queue at your local supermarket, but once on the stage she becomes a real whirl from which you cannot look away. She expends so much energy in each song that it seems that she is going to fall on the ground at the end of each one, and not be able to stand up in time for the next one, but she does, and how! Her shouts and dancing-spasms remained with the same intensity since she opened her mouth until she left the stage to go to yawn at the merchandising stand.
The band finished their show with an encore, playing the same song with which they began the gig: the second track of their LP, Bunk Trunk Skunk. They repeated the theme with the same force, ease and confidence they showed throughout all the concert They have an uncanny ability have fun naturally and willingly that it left us wishing we had more of it ourselves and thinking that we should not have spent so many time doing serious things when we were young, in order to have had more time to dedicate to the punk way of life.
