Christof Jessen has been working in the record store Michelle Records at Gertrudenkirchhof, a Hamburg institution, since 1986. In 2000, he and two colleagues rescued it from bankruptcy and took it over. Jessen is also the lead singer and guitarist for the band The Weeth Experience, who have been making records since the early 1990s and have toured with the likes of Yo La Tengo, Giant Sand and Calexico. When Michelle Records was forced to close during the first lockdown in Spring 2020, the band streamed one song live from the store each day.
An initiative that shows that a record store can be more than a meeting place for connoisseurs, nerds and hipsters – a social place that cares about the mental balance of its customers and an important part of a city’s cultural life. “I’ve never felt part of the Hamburg cultural scene in my life, regardless of whether it concerns my band or my shop,” says Jessen. “There was no point of contact. Culture and politics have only had a different relationship to each other for me since Carsten.”
“Carsten” is Carsten Brosda, SPD politician and since 2017 Senator for Culture of the City of Hamburg. “I find it really amazing that he pays attention to everything from the state opera or theater to the Pudel Club or any metal rehearsal room, gives everything a voice and takes everything equally seriously. When we were in the first lockdown and no one had any idea how to deal with the situation, I sent him an email at twelve in the morning and had an answer at half past midnight. And I thought: what kind of freak is that? And it wasn’t just an answer, it was a serious engagement with the subject.”
And that’s how Jessen came up with the idea of winning the Senator for Culture, who had been his customer for a long time without knowing it, for a cooperation. “We were working on a piece to set a longer text to music. And then I asked Carsten if he could imagine taking part in our lockdown concerts.” In the first lockdown it didn’t work out due to time constraints, but in the second Dirk Matzke, the booker from the Hamburg club Knust, asked if she could did not want to implement the project on his premises.
A few days later, on December 18, 2020, The Weeth Experience and Brosda took the stage. The performance was streamed live as a benefit concert for the DeinTopf food distribution point in Hamburg’s Karolinenviertel and recorded by producer Tobias Levin. The 48-minute piece is now being released by the new record store label (available via michelle-records.de and inde and in selected record stores) strictly limited to 25 LPs on “Willy Brandt red vinyl” (Jessen). And the title is also a quote from the ex-Chancellor: “Nothing comes by itself and little lasts.”
“Art becomes too often a superficial one politicization expected”
The Culture Senator reads to The Weeth Experience’s electronic and Americana-informed post-rock track, collaged from his books The Art of Democracy, in which he elaborates on his understanding of culture and cultural politics, and State of Emergency, a short early reflection on the effects of the corona pandemic. The text certainly has pop-cultural references, reflecting on Leonard Cohen’s song “Democracy” and the country supergroup The Highwomen with Brandi Carlile, for example, which gives a feminist view of common macho country stories. He is interested in artists who tell “quite popular, archaic stories that open up politically relevant spaces of resonance,” says Brosda. “It’s not primarily political, but it has an incredibly high political relevance. I think we too often expect a superficial politicization of art today. According to the motto: Now behave yourself … I find that totally boring. But of course the fact that art can create a world that is not, but could be, is an eminently political experience and also an eminently political resource. And to reinforce and point to that experience of art, that’s what I’m trying to do.”
According to Brosda, he is not an artist, “but of course I move into spaces shaped by art with what I do there. And I found that exciting. To look: What actually happens when you take a rather political, analytical text and bring it into an artistically designed space? And at such a moment, when contradictions become obvious, I have fun. That’s the beauty of it.”
One contradiction is that art, with its utopian potential, questions the state of the system that Brosda represents as a politician. The fact that he gets involved and enjoys it shows his openness and probably also explains his popularity in the Hanseatic city. As a politician, he can only talk and write about the possibilities and relevance of culture, says Brosda. “But that cannot be experienced as emotionally as art can perhaps do. And then to add that and see what happens then, I find it very exciting. Even if I stick to the dilettante dimension, then others have to bring in the professionalism.”