Berlin may be the place to see Baxter Dury perform live. (It is a toss-up between Berlin and Paris, but I am currently leaning towards the former.) It is a city of heartache and bombast, intense disco and total alienation, sophistication and wild excesses. It is a city of many moods and complex history, and it is a place where Baxter Dury feels right at home. As he himself swears and confesses, breathes out and screams (quite orgasmically, no doubt), it is the only city that matters. And I guess this is true. When you are in Berlin, there is only Berlin.
As I approach Columbia Theater later in the evening (there is a distinctly old-fashioned sign that I shoot in faded black and white), I notice a long queue of kids aged from 18 to 20. They all look different and yet completely the same: black T-shirts, dyed hair, New Balance sneakers. I admire their discipline and their patience, and I have a very hard time imagining that they have all come here to see Baxter Dury. They have not. As it happens, they are queueing up to get into the nearby building (Columbiahalle) for a concert of their own.
Quite honestly, I get into it, too, as the opening act is genuinely, irresistibly good. The band is called Ttrruuces, and they sound a lot better than their name. They play a rough mix of discoed-up indie pop that comes with charisma and strong hooks. They look confident, too, and their songs have titles like "STFU" and "Sensations of Cool". The singer is so full of swagger that we all just throw our hands up in the air and admire the cheek. At one point she asks the German crowd to cancel her, and at another shouts 'Meet your new favourite band!" Well, they are not quite there yet (not with Baxter Dury performing later tonight), but they certainly have the tunes to back it all up. "Disco" is a certified banger, and "Sensations of Cool" is one of the best pop songs I've heard in a while.
Half an hour later, Ttrruuces join us in the audience and get humbled, so charmingly and with such suave professionalism, by Mr. Dury. He arrives on stage after the elegantly dressed young bassist ('the prettiest, the most talented of us', as Baxter claims towards the end of the show), the keyboard player / backing singer in a striking bearskin hat (she looks so French that everything else that happens in Columbia Theater feels like some sort of barbarism) and the big drumming guy who will keep the perfect beat all through the night. Baxter Dury's sartorial sense is impeccable, obviously, and coupled with his expressive moves (which will get very expressive at some point), it creates a unique atmosphere that presents him as this off-kilter poet, both sensitive and low-key thuggish.
The first song he does is "Leak at the Disco", and it remains one of his greatest songwriting achievements: subtle, mysterious and utterly gripping. It is a perfect introduction, and the audience goes crazy as the intensity increases and the song breaks into its anthemic final act. Throughout the night, he will be choosing songs from nearly all of his albums (favouring his latest LP, obviously). There will be elegant, introspective stuff ("Happy Soup", "Palm Tree"), and there will be more harder-edged songs from the second part of his discography ("Slumlord", "Leon"). Berlin crowd will go insane during the relentless groove of "Miami" and will be genuinely moved during the closing, inevitable "Prince of Tears". Baxter Dury is big in Germany.
He leaves us after an hour and a half, with the intense and club-like "These Are My Friends" that could seem too straight in the face and just too fucking much - but not after a night like this. Because, and he repeats it again and again, this is Berlin and we are his friends. And there is no questioning his words. Outside, meanwhile, the kids are nowhere to be seen. Instead, there are lots of disorganised middle-aged couples, tastefully drunk and buzzing with joyful abandon.
