JAN PLEWKA & MARCO SCHMEDTJE Between The 80's

For many years, the duo Jan Plewka and Marco Schmedtje has been a guarantee for intense musical moments. With Zinoba they had a joint band from 2003 to 2005. With the now two-part series "Jan Plewka sings Rio Reiser", they set an unusual memorial to the band Ton Steine Scherben and the songs of their late frontman Rio Reiser live and on record, complemented by a great live band and an audiovisual realization that is as much modern theater as it is a rousing live concert. This was followed by an approach to two other artists, Simon & Garfunkel, no less appreciated by either.TICKETS:https://www.tixforgigs.com/Event/46771https://nochtspeicher.reservix.de/p/reservix/event/2048800 With all these encounters of these great artists from the past, they also went on tour again and again, resulting in another program entitled "Between the Bars", in which the two now fully open to reference no longer only presented their finely chiseled, quiet and acoustically reduced, yet so urgently intense cover versions, but also their own songs from the catalog of Zinoba, as well as the respective solo albums of Plewka and Schmedtje. Now and then another cover version was mixed into the program, mostly songs that told about the youth and musical socialization of the two. And so the idea for another cover album was born: "Between the 80's", a collection of highly successful songs - one may say: classics - of this decade, completely new and interpreted in their very own way. From "Smalltown Boy" to "Billy Jean", from "Wild Boys" to "The Power of Love", from "Hello" to "Material Girl", from "Africa" to "Ain't Nobody" - you only have to name the titles and you immediately have the melody in your head. But then you listen to these new versions - and really discover a new song in them, in between and behind. "I wanted to finally make an album with a few hits on it," Marco laughs, but Jan, who usually laughs just as much, remains serious at this point: "These are all songs from our very personal past, and there is a lot of emotionality connected with these pieces. Our personal lists of potential songs for this record were correspondingly long." And Marco adds: "Of course you have to see if such a song works in our sound world. Some songs can be broken down to this minimalist arrangement of one guitar and two voices, but for others there's just too much missing. "It's remarkable that many songs not only got a different vibe and a fresh, highly authentic atmosphere during the transformation into the Plewka/Schmedtje world, but also a completely new groove. "That was also an important part of the process of making these songs 'ours', not just copying them, but interpreting them in our own way. Or maybe the way they were originally written, before they were loaded with kitsch and pomp by the typical 80s sound aesthetics. If you reduce these songs to the maximum, you realize very quickly how much substance there is in these compositions," says Marco. And this is partly also in terms of content. Of course, there are the songs that stand in their personal memory above all for long car trips with canned beer, for the first kiss at the bumper cars or, on the other hand, the first heartbreak - and generally for a, as Jan finds, "very colorful youth in the 80s, which we paint again with golden brushes". But others, on the other hand, took on a completely different form of timelessness for them as they grappled with it. "Just take 'Forever Young' by Alphaville, this supposedly so corny song, but whose content deals with nuclear war. I think a lot of people are not even aware of that. "The recordings themselves were also intense for the two old hands, who have recorded so many records together and separately. The entire album was recorded last winter in Marco Schmedtje's kitchen: a small room, reduced but high-quality recording equipment, and the two musicians in it, very close to each other both spatially and emotionally. A process that has only further welded these two friends, already very long connected through music in the closest way.Now that this so intimate and personal album is there, but it goes from the inside out into the world again: "We want with these songs on the stage," explains Jan. "And just like that: as a couple, with a guitar and our two voices." There will be many a song surprise on these evenings that has not yet been heard on this record. Just as they have surprised themselves time and again when recording these songs: "That I would ever record a song by Toto with such dedication and enthusiasm is about the last thing I expected myself," Marco laughs. A lot of laughter is guaranteed at the live evenings that will follow this album, if only because they unpack some stories from their own youth, which offer wonderful images to the music. And already one feels that these two profited musicians after their cycles to Ton Steine Scherben/Rio Reiser and Simon & Garfunkel have found a new, wonderful playing field, whose musical framework as well as the way, how they make these songs their own, seems to know hardly borders.

Admission: 21:00