The Bosnian dangerman

Now then, in a night of party filth, my first impulse was to walk away from the pop tunes and head off to the AK*47 squat venue to go watch a Swiss surfpunk band called The Lombago Surfers. And despite having a lead singer who looked like Rod Hull, they were pretty darned good.

on my way home I thought I’d pop into the Greek fanclub bash at the Rex club by the HBF – but despite pretending it was free earlier on, they tried to sting me for a fat 8€. So I politely declined and made the short dash to a club called Ko for the Dino Merlin show. At first the portents weren’t good.

As discos go it was a very nice disco – but you wouldn’t have expected these young twenty-somethings in shiny fabrics to have given a jot about some old boy shuffling out some pasty old time pop tunes. How wrong could I have been.

The second he bounced onto stage the place went absolutely bonkers, and every last kid in the crowd sang along to every last word is if their life depended on it. I knew the old boy was a big deal out his way, but didn’t imagine for a moment that the adulation would be quite so intense. And if that transfers across the continent we could well be battling for hotels in Sarajevo this time next year.

Opening party tonight – although I rather fancy avoiding the whole slightly tawdry bunfight and head off to Monchengladbach for a football match…