Playing bass in my wild student days, a band must not be missed. And it wasn’t.
The story behind “Bravourstück” is as ridiculous as our songs: I met our lead singer at a lecture on Lie groups. Tradition and necessity had it that all students met at the institute’s café (“Café Pi”, even featured in our song “Käse”, cheese). “Coffee?” “Hm” “Rumor has it you play bass?” “String bass.” “Amazing, my band is looking for a bass player!” “Not the same instrument, I never played bass guitar in my live.” “Don’t be an idiot, the strings are the same.” Turned out the jokes about bass players are almost true. (My superpower was to keep the pace no matter what.)
Bravourstück was featuring Martin Wermer (Lead vocals and rhythm guitar), Martin Benning (lead guitar), Thomas Husemann (drums), and me. Our rehearsals were dominated by the stale air of our institute’s bunker-like basement and jokes flat enough to slip through the slit underneath the heavy metal door. We played self-written pop rock songs with all kinds of distortion effects. A close friend summarized it well: “Your songs are nice, there are just two problems: They are all about food, and whenever you think they are over, there is another three minute guitar solo.”
We played five concerts: The first one at a bar in our university’s canteen. The title gave proof to our fondness of our jokes: “Viva la Diva” – as the bar’s name was “Viva” and we are a band of divas. (You can imagine the quality of the other suggestions given that this one stuck.) Despite all our friends coming we still had to pay extra for the rent. Our second concert was a charity concert for a group of kids with trisomy 21 – our most ecstatic fans ever. Our third concert was a spontaneous unplugged jam session in a park; our fans were basically one excited father trying to convince his bored kids to stay. Fourth, our institute’s summer party. Aforementioned friend spilled his beer on our mixing console, ruining the sound a bit, but apart from that it was a great success (and super fun of course). Finally, our reunion concert at our drummer’s wedding.
Good times.
