A good few years ago I was on a business trip with my mate Peter. Anybody observing from a distance would have assumed that the business was beer. To a casual outsider it seemed like laughing and getting shit faced and making friends with Germans was our job. We had already run into the last great French Revolutionary in Paris and having learnt french in 48 hours we were trying hard to make the transition to German. It took us about 25 hours to master German and one of the things that really helped was Die Toten Hosen.
I have mentioned what I call ‘rock and roll instinct’, I have this and it is my one great talent. This is how it works: If you can go into a record shop in Berlin and spend a few hours trawling through your favourite metal bands but you find yourself drawn to an obscure (to a south african) band called Die Toten Hosen when no-one has said a word to you about them, then you have rock and roll instinct.
I don’t often listen to stuff before I buy it but because the Germans make it so easy and because it could be ooompah music for all I knew I listened to the first track. After 20 seconds I knew immediately that I had struck gold, I didn’t even bother to listen to the rest because when you know you just fucking know. I went Toten Hosen befok and spent the next few years bombarding my friends with this fantastic band. It is my duty as custodian of this site to expose you to some seriously good German rock and roll / punk stuff. I fucking love this band, Hier Kommt Alex and all the droogies can march .