Cherrypicker  The Essence Of It All

"Rural punk" Rocko Schamoni delivers the second part of his autobiography in his familiar anecdotal style, in which he gains a foothold in the Hamburg music scene, tries his hand as a rock star and eventually becomes co-founder of the Pudel Club, a beacon of Hamburg's nightlife.

The glimmer on the horizon

With his eighth book, Rocko Schamoni, the all-round artist from northern Germany, continues the biography he began with Dorfpunks. The year is 1986 and Pudels Kern tells the story of 19-year-old Tobias Albrecht (later Rocko), who is drawn away from his home in Lütjenburg:
  So begins a story that reads like part of Hamburg's cultural history, so closely does the youngster associate himself with a small but influential part of the Hamburg scene at the time. From his first day, or rather his first night in his new home, Tobias roamed the bars of the Hanseatic city, through punk pubs and sleazy dive bars, curious and tireless, and soon gathered an illustrious circle of friends around him: his heroes from the world of German punk were now sharing the bar with him. Local heroes, renegades, bon vivants - and he fits right in. He invents Rocko Schamoni, the international star from Las Vegas, goes on tour with the Goldene Zitronen (translates as "Golden Lemons", a notorious, but smart and political local punk band) and soon signs a record deal with the Hamburg record label Polydor. Rocko experiences the highs and lows of show business. But his career as an artist doesn't quite take off, his humor is too unique, his image as "King Rocko Schamoni" too edgy, his semi-ironic songs with trashy punk attitude and very little technical prowess prove to be a difficult sell. He becomes the eternal opening act, the intermission clown. The punks find it too conformist; the mainstream audience doesn't get it. His career as a musician stagnates, self-doubt sets in.

"Am I on the run or on the hunt?"

But Rocko doesn't let it get him down, continues to write songs, plays the lead role in the completely broken road movie Rollo Aller! (and the no less weird sequel Rollo Aller! 2) and continually moonlights as a barman in various trendy Hamburg bars. One could assume that his true talent lies not in his art, but in his personality. He doesn't belong to a particular gang; he belongs to everyone. He connects with people and makes friends with them. As a barman, he transforms the run-down (to put it mildly) Sorgenbrecher bar into a trendy hangout, and from the remains of an used clothing clearance sale, he and his friends create the Pudel Boutique, a kind of second-hand art space with a "dance room", where they also put on shows, including one with a certain young comedian called Helge Schneider (years later a well-known trademark for absurd humor), who becomes an important source of inspiration for Rocko. But when this place had to be torn down, Rocko and his friends, including Goldene Zitronen singer Schorsch Kamerum, discovered another derelict building at the harbor, which in 1991, the year the book ends, became the later world-famous Golden Pudel Club, a guarantor for rampant party nights and the undisputed nexus of Hamburg's nightlife.

You will fall and die

Unlike the other seven Schamoni works, or the first part of the autobiography, in Pudels Kern the person Rocko Schamoni is not hidden behind his typical ironic jokes (although of course there are plenty of them). His story is characterized by recurring self-doubt, a lack of drive and purpose, panic attacks and depressive phases in equal measure. The "King" falls into mood holes, speaks of "self-loathing and regular suicidal fantasies", which he has to have treated by a therapist. This often-unsparing openness adds another valuable facet to Schamoni's latest work, giving you the feeling that you are following not only the artistic figure Rocko Schamoni, but also Tobias Albrecht, who is no more than 24 years old at the time of the book’s closing. Towards the end of the book, it becomes clear that he was only searching: he hints at his next artistic steps, namely the very successful collaboration with Jacques Palminger and Heinz Strunk as the telephone joke trio Studio Braun, and not only a spatial but also a literal arrival, the finding of the “Pudels Kern”, the “poodle's core”, his personal center, the opening of the aforementioned Golden Pudel Club: Anyone familiar with the Pudel Club knows the magic that this shack on Hamburg's harbor could develop at night, with its DJ booth equipped with just one turntable and a microphone, its self-built bar and broken fridge, the tiny exhibition room and the stairs leading up to Hafenstraße. More on this can be hoped for in the next installment of Rocko Schamoni's biography.

The King is dead, long live the King!

July 2024