When Casper, Kraftklub and KIZ invite you to ring in the upcoming festival summer, so to speak, Berliners also go out to Spandau. Or maybe it was the charity idea of the event that moved the crowds to the outskirts of town that evening? According to the artists, all proceeds from “Reunification 2.0” go “to the people who are otherwise sometimes overlooked on such an evening: the crews and helpers.” experienced the first festivals and survived the first heartbreak with the Casper album XOXO. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that all the fans sing along to Wheatus’ “Teenage Dirtbag” just before the start of the mini-festival.
BACK TO NORMALITY
Casper will start shortly after 8 p.m. – and he will hit the hit single from his current album right at the beginning. As soon as the first notes of “Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt” sound, people jump, dance and sing as if the pandemic had never happened. With “Im Ascheregen” and “Auf und vom” the 39-year-old then picks up all those who count themselves as fans of his early works. It gets really emotional and nostalgic when Felix Kummer from Kraftklub comes on stage to perform the song “Pretty okay” from 2013 together. On this gray Saturday in May, two years after the start of the pandemic, the lines “Despite all the clouds and rain, maybe the summer of life after all” take on a very special meaning.
Casper, as far as we know, delivers live. Not just vocally. The crowd also loves him for his performance that evening. Because Benjamin Griffey, as the rapper is called, jumps and dances merrily across the stage as if there is no tomorrow. After a colorful grab bag of works, including a piece from his 1982 album with Marteria, Casper ends the show with what is probably his most suitable song for festivals, “Jambalaya”, which again leads to a proper escalation in front of the stage. The set is over in just 50 minutes. A bit of a disappointment though the show must go on. The next act is supposed to be on stage at 9 p.m. sharp: Kraftklub.
Anyone who thinks that Casper’s show was too short will probably need a sedative in the form of a hard liquor after Kraftklub’s performance. The band from Chemnitz – or Karl-Marx-Stadt, as they call it – is quick on stage and quick off again. The set lasts just under 40 minutes. So if you wanted to see the band with a K that night and shelled out 65 euros for the ticket, you must have gone home dejected. That’s a pity, because the band around Felix Kummer put on a performance that has washed up, as always.
A CATHARSIS IN SPANDAU
After the first song “Unsere Fans” no one is standing where he or she was three minutes ago. The muscle memory of the Kraftklub fans still seems to work well, because no song is committed without a mosh pit and loving shoving around. Out of sheer euphoria, however, the band has to remind them again at the beginning: “If someone falls, you help yourself up. Let’s do it in such a way that everyone really feels comfortable in the mosh pit.” After the short safety instructions, the program continues.
The band will also have a world premiere: they will play their new single “Wittenberg ist nicht Paris” live for the very first time that evening. And although the song doesn’t directly invite you to pog at first glance, the party-mad audience does it anyway. Reunification doesn’t happen every day. When “Randale” sounds, a song that can only be heard in the live version on Spotify, it shows: Kraftklub have trained their fans well. Without any instructions, thousands of Berliners get on their knees, jump up and throw hundreds of cups and objects in the air. For once, Felix Kummer didn’t call for this catharsis this Saturday, but die-hard fans know that it’s part of “Randale”. For the closing of the set, Casper returns to the stage and quickly turns the all-time favorite “Songs for Liam” into a duet.
After a short break, the absolute highlight for many of the evening follows. KIZ come on stage to the tunes of “Everybody” by the Backstreet Boys and the crowd goes wild. At this point, the alcohol level has also peaked for many people. While Casper is about mental health and Kraftklub instigates social resistance, KIZ strikes a different note. RAP ON HASS – the band’s latest album out in 2021 – describes their performance at the citadel only too well. With the first song, the Berliners make it clear what will happen now: “I fuck you (all)”. In “VIP in Psychiatry” everyone goes down on their knees again. As the crowd jumps, the ground in the historic fortress on the outskirts of town trembles like it hasn’t seen all evening.
KIZ bring “a good portion of fun after the pandemic” that has washed up. With the song “Bier” by Maxim and the Drunken Masters, it briefly feels like you’ve actually ended up at a Ballermann party, which is probably not too surprising, after all the crowd is still partying this Saturday in 2022 ” Fuck your mother rap”, as KIZ call it themselves. As escalative as their lyrics – here they rap shamelessly about molesting corpses – the audience is now on the move. Barely 40 minutes after the start of the show, the first Bengal fire burns amidst the crowds.
“TIME FOR FRIENDS”
For the grand finale, KIZ bring Casper and Kraftklub back onto the stage shortly before 11 p.m. Together, the three acts of the evening perform the song “Born because you live” under the ingenious stage name “Achtzig Thousand Millions”, which they seem to have written without further ado for this event – with unspoken greetings to Max Giesinger, Unheilig and die Onkelz. The schlager-esque anthem, which from then on is probably sung by men with beer bellies arm in arm in a corner pub in Berlin at 3 a.m., forms a surprisingly tame end to the evening. But maybe that’s not so bad, after all, the Berlin party people still have to make the tedious journey home from Spandau on this Saturday night. Conclusion: reunification successful.