Crocodiles
Crocodiles
Endless Flowers, out June 5th, 2012 via Frenchkiss
RE: CROCODILES, Endless Flowers
In Germany we refer to it as Pech für Egon, an approximation of the English shit happens - the understanding that every action one takes towards greater happiness has an equal chance of resulting in trouble. An afternoon snooze may result in a terrifying dream; a delicious sandwich could lead to a crippling stomachache and long hours wasted on the Kackstuhl. Over the course of my two month friendship with Crocodiles I encountered this phenomenon of Pech für Egon time and time again. It started the day we met.
They were noisy moving into their flat at #5 Gaudystraße that July morning. As I prepared my breakfast next door, I overheard loud swearing and arguing. It seemed one of the boys had accidentally spilt beer on organ player Robin Eisenberg’s worn but much loved copy of Roxy Music’s For Your Pleasure, an album she revered with near religious devotion. Pech für Egon, little girl, I thought to myself as I chewed my eggs. But all the same, with these smelly, seemingly permanently intoxicated miscreants moving into the flat next door, Pech für Egon, myself. I chuckled and decided that perhaps, by introducing myself and inviting them into my world, I might find some common ground and turn our proximity into a kind of adventure.
Anna Schulte, the group’s drummer, answered the door. Her Frankfurt accent was as strong as the stench of Apfelwein on her breath. “Sind Sie Deutsch?” I asked her. “Römerstadt born and raised,” she replied in perfect English as she waved me in. I surveyed the room. Marco Gonzalez, the group’s bassist, was hanging a Ramones poster by a large window. Handing me a cup of coffee, Anna invited me to sit down. I introduced myself: Helmut Katzenflugen, 43 years old, employee of Mr. Hasir, who they would soon come to know. Mr. Hasir owns a string of nightclubs in Berlin including the one I manage, Ficken 2000, on the infamous Oranienburger Straße. He has a shadowy reputation, though I know him only as fair, if firm.
Anna introduced herself and gave me a brief history of the group and how they had arrived in Berlin. They had existed in various incarnations since 2008 – starting with the core duo of Brandon Welchez and Charles Rowell and expanding to the five piece now scattered about the room. Finding themselves on the wrong end of a case of mistaken identity involving four stolen kilos of 2XB-27, they were unceremoniously run out of their hometown of San Diego the previous spring. They expatriated to Europe, settling in Berlin to rehearse and record their third album, Endless Flowers, which Brandon and Charles had written the winter before.
“So that settles it!” I exclaimed. “Settles what?” Anna asked. “It’s perfect – you need a place to rehearse your new material, I need a group to fill this month’s residency at Ficken 2000. Those bastards Iron Merkel cancelled on me at the last minute! Five nights a week, four hours a night, Mondays and Tuesdays off; you get a free place to rehearse and as much free – ahem – stimulation as you desire. What do you say?” Anna paused and considered her group’s dire financial situation. A studio to rehearse in would cost money, money they didn’t have. Refreshments would cost money. “Five percent of the bar’s nightly takings and you have a deal,” she replied. Knowing I could not find another band on such short notice I quickly agreed. “You’ll start tonight,” I said, “11PM.”
They showed up early, their five bodies moving en masse across the dim red-lit room, towards the bar. Marco stopped at the jukebox, slid in a euro and selected the Modern Lovers’ “Government Center”, to which the nude dancers on stage preceded to sway vacantly. After passing out a round of beers, Charles repaired to a booth where he alternately thumbed through a brittle copy of Illuminations and scribbled furiously in his notebook. Anna and Robin danced sloppily near the bar, apparently already drunk. Brandon seemed already to have fallen into the good graces of a group of local rough kids who called themselves Liebe Untergrund and frequented the bar. They were showing him a pair of handcuffs they had just robbed from a policeman they said was too fat to give chase. The clock above the cash register flashed 10:55. “Five minutes till showtime, boys and girls!” I yelled towards the band.
The house’s equipment was already on stage: battered amplifiers, a comically mismatched drum set and an out of tune Farfisa Fast. Within minutes the band was kicking into their opening number, a spirited, if sloppy cover of Teenage Head’s “Picture My Face”. The room was empty save a few patrons seated at the metal cocktail tables which lined the room’s perimeter. Towards the back of the room, a woman with five o’clock shadow held a cigarette in her left hand as she applied lipstick with her right, no mirror in sight. To the right of the stage, a haggling session was taking place over the cost of a Schneeball.
Gradually, the floor in front of the band began to fill up, first with the rough boys Brandon had befriended, who spilled beer over one another as they danced (though to my eyes it looked more like Greco-Roman wrestling). The group were now crashing through “My Surfing Lucifer”, an original which went down well with the rough kids and also the dancers who had congregated near the backstage door, smoking cigarettes in their bathrobes as they bobbed their heads. The song seemed to conjure up the spirits of Gary Glitter and Thurston Moore, two artists who got a lot of traffic on Ficken 2000′s jukebox. The lyrics told a tale of legendary boredom. “Welcome… Trouble…,” Brandon slurred into the mic as Anna counted into the next song – a warped California song with a melody which was all sunshine peaking out from beneath pounding Monks drums and Micheal-Rother-With-A-Toothache guitar.
The group played four or five more originals – “Bubblegum Trash,” ”Sunday,” ” Endless Flowers” – all pop nuggets disguised in heavy cloaks of noise and/or echoing weirdness before launching into their second and final cover song of the night, the Velvet Underground’s oft-overlooked “I’m Not A Young Man Anymore.” This song excited the dancers, who all practice a quasi-religion which holds Lou Reed – “Uncle Lou” as they call him – as the Father in a Holy Trinity that includes Diana Ross as the Son and Tammy Faye Bakker as the Holy Ghost. They were so excited, in fact, that they were ignoring their usual workplace responsibilities. I walked over and reminded them, “If you’re not dancing on stage, you’re flirting at the bar.” They rolled their eyes and sneered as they bobbed and gyrated their way through the crowd to seek out sleazebag customers to buy them the most expensive drinks on the menu. Though I was enjoying Crocodiles’ set – their brand of weirdo pop music was thoroughly listenable – my managerial duties called and I, too, made my way back out through the crowd.
Before I had even got across the bar, a very angry Mr. Hasir was growling in my ear. “Mr. Katzenflugen! What in the hell is going on here? We don’t pay these kids to watch whatever that goddamn racket you have on stage is! Do you think I shit rolls of coins? IF THEY’RE NOT UP ON STAGE, THEY’RE BACK HERE FLIRTING. And if they’re not flirting, throw their ass out in the goddamn street!” “Yes sir,” I said meekly. “Oh, and Mr. Katzenflugen – ” (He always called me by my last name.) “Whatever this trash is on stage, get them off! They’re awful!”
Mr. Hasir stormed out of the front door and sped off angrily in his silver Mercedes. I allowed the band to finish their first set of the night before breaking the news to them that the residency was off. “I’m afraid Mr. Hasir didn’t like you,” I said, apologetically. “Everyone’s a critic,” Brandon sneered. “He just didn’t get it. Pech für Egon, Pech für Egon.” I poured the band a round of shots of Kräuterlikör, which they wolfed down.
Though our professional relationship was cut short, my friendship with the group blossomed over the summer. We were, of course, neighbours and they were a constant presence at Ficken 2000. They started work on their album in a small studio in Prenzlauer Berg, and they were always excited to share with me each day’s progress. They slid into Berlin life easily, and the gang of rough boys from Ficken 2000 had become close friends to the band, hanging out with them in the studio, showing them new homemade weapons and supplying a stream of chemical inspiration. Matthias, their leader, even gave Brandon the gang’s notorious tattoo: “L.U.” in a heart on his right arm.
They brought me the finished Endless Flowers on the day they were to leave. While they packed up their apartment, I listened to their album in mine. Immediately I was struck by the songs. No two were alike, though all were held together by strong hooks and strange layers of floating atmosphere. You could almost smell through the speakers the spilled beer and illicit bathroom of Ficken 2000. Charles’ guitar playing alternated between lost-in- space weightlessness and jagged brush-strokes of aural violence. He seemed to strike the perfect balance between his intellectual and more primal tendencies. Marco and Anna cut a strong figure as the rhythm section. Her love of Klaus Dinger (“Mein Klaus”, she called him) was evident in the motorik march of “Dark Alleys,” while her affinity for Robert Wyatt and Tommy Ramone, two of her other drum idols, was showcased elsewhere. Marco’s prowess on the bass was demonstrated in the fluidly melodic runs of some of the album’s poppier moments and the thuggish minimalism of some of its more experimental ones. Robin, the group’s secret weapon, held the album together with her mastery of the organ, contributing moments of Modern Lovers-esque sublimity on one song then swathes of dreamy murk the next. In many places on the record she sang harmony with Brandon, the group’s singer and occasional rhythm guitarist. While her voice provided an ethereal relief from the distortion, his varied from a trashcan croon to pure adolescent snot. I was sold on the album immediately – it satisfied my pop desire while retaining an oddball down-to-Earth grit.
I finished the album and walked next door to congratulate them on the results of their hard work. But the apartment was empty. The Ramones poster was missing from the wall and the bookshelves cleared. They had left a note:
“Dear Helmut,
I’m sorry we could not say goodbye. You are a true friend and any attempt at a goodbye would certainly have devolved into tears.
We hope you liked the album. A time will come when the record company will ask us for a biography to tell the story of our time in Berlin. Somehow we know we wouldn’t be able to get it right. Helmut, unser Freund, would you write this for us? You will tell the story better than we could. You know us better than we do. And besides, wouldn’t we sound like such total Dumpfbacken trying to do it ourselves? Please do this for us.
It’s a shame that our time together was so brief. You understood us and we understood you. But as you told us so many times: Pech für Egon!
XO
P.S. Please do give our regards to Mr. Hasir.”
