Rock concerts are about music, it’s about girls and boys, and of course it’s about beer. Especially beer. Do you need beer? Well, you can do without. “We’re in space, there’s no beer there either!” exclaims Björn Dixgård. Invited by the Berlin radio station Star FM, he and his colleague Daniel Haglund completed a Mando Diao set in the Berlin Zeiss Planetarium. In the foyer roundabout it’s still rock’n’roll, with a fog machine and fuel. There, where the advertising posters announce interstellar fantasy journeys or radio plays from “The Three ???” under the starry sky, around 300 ticket winners, including hardcore fans, bring the Mando concert experiences from a number of cute-sounding Swedish cities can report, in the right mood.
However, the cupola hall, the showpiece of the “Science Theater” in Ernst-Thälmann-Park, is sacred – drinks must stay outside. They could, for example, drip onto the carpet once Beatlemania erupts around the world. On stage are an electric guitar, an acoustic guitar and a keyboard. And yet: two open beer bottles! “But they opened our roadies for us!” Dixgård says almost apologetically. “But that’s the way it is: Rock is always about coincidences.” The audience takes their forced abstinence with humor, according to the motto “You can be in a good mood even without drugs.”
The approximately 45-minute, sovereign set of the duo Dixgård/Haglund consists of classics such as “Dance with Somebody” and “Gloria”, but also new material that is to be released on the Swedes’ next album, planned for April. The (artificial) sky tent invites you to wander, a nocturnal open-air feeling sets in. The seats recline wonderfully far, almost to the level of a dentist’s chair, and where else can you find that – a concert where you can’t decide whether you’d rather be looking at the firmament or on a stage where musicians are working their magic?
Time flies by in the planetarium – in the truest sense of the word – and announcements like “We dedicate this song to the universe” (before “One last Fire”) don’t sound cringy at this place, but appropriate. It’s not the first concert that the Zeiss Planetarium team has organized. Tocotronic were already there, and – of course! – The stars. This can go on like this, the concept is ultimately ideal: fill up in the foyer, spin up the spiral staircase two floors, then good behavior in the planetarium hall.
A bit of beer was spilled after all. Daniel Haglund made the same mistake we all do over and over again: If you lift the beer bottle off the floor too quickly, it gushes out at the top, at best just over your hand. Or, like here, on the carpet.
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