A debut guest posting by Jim from Dubai
Jim from Dubai here.
I had recently written an article about life and the music scene here in Dubai over at Rol’s blog “My Top Ten” which JC kindly commented on and mentioned if I ever wanted to write a guest posting on Vinyl Villain just to reach out.
I recently had an experience (well more my wife Jude did) which included a trip to Berlin, The Dandy Warhols, The Woog Riots and a real bit of bad luck I thought I would share with you.
Living in Dubai for over 20 years as you can imagine we have been starved of good music, although over the years we have had our fair share of older bands / artists which I must admit have been pretty decent and some great nights although nothing too Indie or alternative.
Because of this, over the last few years me and Jude have compiled a list of bands / artists that we like and keep an eye on where they are touring, ideally in Europe and if it works out we take a trip, normally a long weekend so we get the chance to see a city and a band at the same time.
This year we saw The Dandy Warhols were touring Europe, we always fancied Berlin so last month we set off to Germany for a 4-day trip.
We arrived in Berlin on the Wednesday afternoon, The Dandy Warhols were playing on the Thursday night. We decided to head out Wednesday night for some food, drink and to see the city. We had just left the hotel when Jude tripped on the pavement, had a bad fall and smashed her wrist (not even a beer at this stage !). We knew it was bad, we went straight to the hospital, she had two broken bones and a dislocation, she had an operation immediately that night and had no chance of getting out soon.
Ended up 8 days in hospital and 2 operations so we had to change the flights and move hotels due to the Berlin Marathon being run that weekend and almost every hotel room booked that weekend.
Jude obviously missed The Dandy Warhols gig, to be honest I didn’t really have the appetite to go myself, however I had to leave the hospital around 9pm each night, the gig started around 10pm so it was either go to the gig or back to the hotel myself, so off to the gig I went.
The venue was great, Huxleys Neue Welt, a great old venue, reminded me a bit of The Barrowlands in Glasgow. Support band was a band called The Black Angels, I caught the end of them, not really my thing.
The Dandys were decent enough, my only complaint was they didn’t sing enough of the hits or the songs I know. I am not their biggest fan but I do have 5 of their albums including their new one.
They did sing the best song from their new album which is great:-
mp3: The Dandy Warhols – Summer of Hate
Jude didn’t know when she was getting out of hospital and only found out around 5pm the following Thursday. Although well looked after, it was great to be out, and we had a couple of days to see a bit of Berlin.
However, the real highlight of the trip was we got to see another band.
We had read that the Woog Riots (a synthy indie pop band from Germany) were playing in Berlin, we hadn’t planned to see them originally but as things panned out we realized once we knew Jude was getting out of hospital on Thursday we could go and see them that night. By luck the venue was relatively close to the hospital so we went to check out the venue, a great little place called Schokoladen. We arrived around 6pm; the place was empty, we got speaking to the Manageress and explained what had happened with Jude and if we could find somewhere to stand or sit so that she wouldn’t get into any more trouble, she was very helpful and confirmed we would be fine. Just then who walks in the door but the Woog Riots, i.e. Silvana and Marc, so we had a good chat and got photos with both of them, told them the story of how we got here, they were very charming indeed. (We had previously met and had a chat with them at the Indietracks Festival back in 2013 so it was great to see them again).
We went and got some food and came back in time for the gig starting. We had a great and safe standing place and watched and boogied to a great gig.
So what was obviously a bit of a disastrous start to our trip ended on a real high and seeing the Woog Riots really made the trip, love these small intimate venues especially when you get to meet the band.
This is one of the songs from their new album.
mp3: Woog Riots – Who Makes The Stars
Here is another two of my favourite tunes:-
mp3: Woog Riots – Astronaut (a great song from the days of Indietracks and my personal favourite)
mp3: Woog Riots – Too Funk To Drug (they sang this on the night, another older tune).
We did get to enjoy a couple of days in Berlin and even got the chance to visit The Ramones Café / Museum called 1977 which was pretty cool, we then safely flew back to Dubai on Sunday and Jude is now well on her way to making a recovery.
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 