Day two

Monday February 28

Mark:

Almost everywhere is still closed. Still. This has gone from excitement to mild frustration to perturbance bordering on actually quite annoying by now. What’s going on and when  will places be open? 

But today we take a walk to the far end of the main strip for the first time and in a bar called Cowboy Und Indianer we are greeted by the owner, Sven, who is very enthusiastic when we introduce ourselves. He says places are still waiting for the weekend and the relaxation of Covid restrictions before they open. Makes sense and we kind of knew Hamburg would be quiet enough this week but that doesn’t massively help our levels of slowly mounting impotent frustration. This comes again when, after saying, yes, we could play in here, like the guy yesterday, he brings up the three hour thing. Oh dear. When we tell him a bit more about what we do, he says he could be open to our suggestion of maybe playing part of a night and leaving the rest of it to someone else. So OK. Another tentative lead. Let’s see. 

Another place we think we might just have a lead, or at least a chance to network, is a  cool looking nightclub type live music venue at the end of our street called Molotow. It’s advertising a show tonight by a guy who plays more or less in our ball park. Could be cool to check out. But when we get there it is, yes, you’ve guess it, closed. However, there are some people inside painting and organising and we get the attention of one of the girls. At first she’s like, go away, we’re closed. But we’re insistent that we would like to talk, so she agrees to come to the door. Once she’s opened it and is face to face with us and we’ve told her what we’re about, she’s all friendly smiles and is very happy to help. She tells us that this place is closed for a little while longer yet but she does give us the names of a few places we could try. We’re very grateful and let her get on her way but they don’t seem right for us. They’re more venues for established acts to play. But still. You never know. The right email to the right person and we might just be able to rustle up a support slot one night which, apart from anything else, could open up a contact or two.

Maja:

We’re just walking. Back and forth. Up and down and the right way around. How long can you even walk trying to hustle gigs? My feet hurt and our mood just keeps on getting worse and worse. We can’t even talk to anyone, everywhere is completely closed. At least we’re building up a view of which venues where it would be possible to play in once they open up. Often we take a look inside a venue, a bar or a restaurant and we’re able to screen the place even if it is closed. Our screening often goes like this. ‘Oh Mark, look at this place.’ ‘Yeah.’ And we go lean forward to look inside the window. ‘Too small.’ We say pretty much simultaneously. Or it’s the wrong feel of the venue or something else. Like if we get a really bad feeling about the place or the clientele there’s no point trying to get a gig there. So we walk around and build ourselves a picture of where we’d like to come back to once they’ve opened, and if there’s anything remotely interesting we go in and ask them if we can play there. 

This is how we hustle. Until we drop from exhaustion.