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‘The night economy’: how even conservatives are trying to protect Berlin techno

Berlin’s music scene is in danger of becoming a victim of its own success. Party tourism fills up the clubs but leaves locals seething at the noise. Can Berlin city hall help keep the peace?

‘The night economy’: how even conservatives are trying to protect Berlin techno
Photo: DPA

It's a familiar story across the Western world: a heated property market and complaints from the neighbours are squeezing nightlife in the big city.

But in Berlin – known for its nightlife and understated cool – the town hall is stepping in to defend its legendary techno scene.

“Techno culture has given so much to Berlin, using some taxpayer money to support it is the least we can do,” says local Greens party lawmaker Georg Kössler, the initiative's most ardent supporter.

City representatives are set to approve Thursday a million-euro fund to cover soundproofing and additional staff to cool partygoers' exuberance, a big gesture for the chronically indebted administration.

They hope the cash can help put the brakes on a wave of closures that have struck in recent years.

Since 2011, 170 clubs have shut down their lasers, sound systems and smoke machines for good.

That leaves some 500 for the 3.5 million people of Germany's largest city and the armies of tourists disgorged from trains, planes and buses each weekend – more than 12.7 million in 2016 according to official statistics.

“Politicians used to talk about Berlin clubs as something nice on the fringes,” 32-year-old Kössler – who still calls himself a dedicated clubber – points out.

“But very surprisingly, even our opponents in the CDU are suddenly very passionate about this subject, which they call the 'night economy',” he adds.

Late-night lobby

Many clubs sprang up after German reunification in 1990 in derelict or abandoned industrial spaces in the once-divided city's east.

Now with 30 years of experience, club owners won't limit themselves to waiting around for one-off handouts from city authorities.

“We're aware of the power we have, so we press home the benefit the city draws from us, from tourism to the property market to startups,” says Lutz Leichsenring, spokesman for the “Club Commission” which counts some 220 of the city's best-known establishments among its ranks.

The latest campaign is for recognition as artistic venues, which could grant techno havens a seven percent VAT rate rather than the 19 percent paid by bars and restaurants.

Such cash incentives underpin noble sentiments about keeping the sacred techno flame alight.

“We want to stay on the sharp edge of contemporary music culture,” says Leichsenring.

“If you're offering 'free entry for ladies' or 'buy one get one free' on beer, we're (Club Commission) not going to spring to your defence.”

Techno pilgrimage site Berghain was the first to talk its tax rate down in 2016, convincing the state that clubgoers came for its line-ups of star DJs rather than booze, sex and drugs.

But Leichsenring argues that securing a tax break would be even more important for smaller venues without thousands besieging their doors each weekend.

“Big clubs like Berghain, which employs 200 people, are at least profitable, they can rely on their box office and the bar,” he says.

Nurturing art means clubs “have to take risks, also musically speaking, and taking risk is always an economic question” that's especially off-putting for those only just clinging to life, Leichsenring said.

Without the economic security to test out exciting new musical departures, the edgy, avant-garde feel that made Berlin nights out legendary across Europe and beyond could disappear.

Squeezed out?

Both supply of and demand for world-class nightlife remain in abundance in the city on the river Spree for now.

But the Club Commission worries that mass party tourism, insistent noise complaints and inexorably rising rents will push the city past its peak and into terminal decline.

The gathering pace of gentrification in the capital could be “the death of clubs”, Leichsenring fears.

Families on the balconies of their new-build apartment blocks are often loath to endure the beats pulsing endlessly into the night from graffiti-spattered former warehouses or factories.

Politicians should, however, remember the economic contribution that partying makes to the cash-strapped capital, the Club Commission insists.

“Let's be honest, young people aren't coming to Berlin at weekends in such numbers because there are nice shopping centres,” Leichsenring points out.

CULTURE

New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday’s death

Fans of the late Johnny Hallyday, "the French Elvis Presley", will be able to commemorate the sixth anniversary of his death with two songs never released before.

New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday's death

Hallyday, blessed with a powerful husky voice and seemingly boundless energy, died in December 2017, aged 74, of lung cancer after a long music and acting career.

After an estimated 110 million records sold during his lifetime – making him one of the world’s best-selling singers -Hallyday’s success has continued unabated beyond his death.

Almost half of his current listeners on Spotify are under the age of 35, according to the streaming service, and a posthumous greatest hits collection of “France’s favourite rock’n’roller”, whose real name was Jean-Philippe Leo
Smet, sold more than half a million copies.

The two new songs, Un cri (A cry) and Grave-moi le coeur (Engrave my heart), are featured on two albums published by different labels which also contain already-known hits in remastered or symphonic versions.

Un cri was written in 2017 by guitarist and producer Maxim Nucci – better known as Yodelice – who worked with Hallyday during the singer’s final years.

At the time Hallyday had just learned that his cancer had returned, and he “felt the need to make music outside the framework of an album,” Yodelice told reporters this week.

Hallyday recorded a demo version of the song, accompanied only by an acoustic blues guitar, but never brought it to full production.

Sensing the fans’ unbroken love for Hallyday, Yodelice decided to finish the job.

He separated the voice track from the guitar which he felt was too tame, and arranged a rockier, full-band accompaniment.

“It felt like I was playing with my buddy,” he said.

The second song, Grave-moi le coeur, is to be published in December under the artistic responsibility of another of the singer’s close collaborators, the arranger Yvan Cassar.

Hallyday recorded the song – a French version of Elvis’s Love Me Tender – with a view to performing it at a 1996 show in Las Vegas.

But in the end he did not play it live, opting instead for the original English-language version, and did not include it in any album.

“This may sound crazy, but the song was on a rehearsal tape that had never been digitalised,” Cassar told AFP.

The new songs are unlikely to be the last of new Hallyday tunes to delight fans, a source with knowledge of his work said. “There’s still a huge mass of recordings out there spanning his whole career,” the source said.

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