Triumph: rock bands come and go

http://www.abendblatt.de/daten/2008/11/08/967798.html

From their hometown paper, the Hamburger Abendblatt. This is the Google translation; a better one would be great! If somebody will do a better translate - I will change it here send it here or send me PM and I will change it

Triumph: rock bands come and go, but a Tokyo hotel as there's never been - even experts puzzle over the phenomenon

Dear parents, it could take longer ...
In her concerts teenagers sometimes lose the mind, abroad fans storming the Goethe Institute, to learn German. Now the MTV group to Bill Kaulitz as the world's best live band crowned. Such a success is not calculable. He also has something to do with the fact that the younger generation Internet with their idols at eye level feels.

By Heinrich Oehmsen and Tino Lange

Hamburg's Color Line Arena, 2 May 2007. The concert of Tokio Hotel has just ended, as it happens: drummer Gustav Schaefer vollgeschwitztes throws his towel into the first row and a bunch of girls who have recently moved posters with slogans such as "Bill, you're sweet strawberries, like any" high have crashes on the piece of cloth. At least 20 pairs of hands claw into the coveted shreds, the teenagers jostle, screech, pull each other by the hair. The hall folders are helpless.

Outside the arena before hundreds of parents waiting for their children, some of which 20 hours before the entrances campiert had a place in the first series to get. At the end umherwehende shreds remain of heat foils, which Rettungssanitäter in the cold night on the fans had spent.

There are silent witnesses of a German pop phenomenon that is like a monsoon in recent months also over Europe, the USA and South America hinwegfegte. This year alone, hostels Tokyo hotel, inter alia, a Golden Camera, an echo, VIVA Comet and numerous North and Latin American and European MTV Awards On. Not only music experts, parents and TH-hater "(fan slang for the opponents of Tokio Hotel) puzzle over and over again, as the phenomenon to explain. It was all so simple. Or not?

The system Tokio Hotel begins in 2003. Since discovered the music producer Peter Hoffmann SAT.1 in the casting show "Star Search" the 14-year-old Bill Kaulitz. While the flies early from the competition, but Hoffman looks Kaulitz 'school band in their rehearsal room in a village near Magdeburg - and is thrilled. He invites the four guys who were still Devilish mention in his studio and makes them demo recordings. The SonyBMG Music Group includes newcomers unfamiliar with the band for a contract much money because it recognizes the potential. But when the debut album is ready, get the manager, given the high marketing budgets and get cold feet from the treaty. 2005, the competitor Universal four of Tokio Hotel under contract and start the project with great promotional effort and the massive support of the magazine "Bravo". The makers of the youth magazine had recognized that after the successes of the groups in July and silver moon with Tokyo hotel is also in the rock generation of eight to twelve year olds in the child can bring. Already on 3 August 2005 published "Bravo" a story under the title "Tokio Hotel - the new super band." The first single "Through the Monsoon" will be released until five days later.

In the previous two years, Hoffmann and another team of producers, including the current manager David Jost heard the band with music and singing lessons gedrillt order to prepare for subsequent flight. "Through the Monsoon" will run on all video channels, "Bravo" thinks that every week a new story about Bill, his twin brother Tom and the other two band colleagues and Georg Gustav and his condition improves. "Tokio Hotel is the best newcomer band for decades been. Tom and Bill Kaulitz had star appeal, they were designed, and therefore we have the band from the beginning heavily pushed" says Christian Schommer, deputy chief editor of "Bravo". And Alex Richter, the world-wide tour organizers Tokyo hotel, enthused: "I have worked with any group, the so diligently and so disciplined."

Nevertheless: A success like the Tokyo hotel is despite all the market power of the strategists in the background is not calculable. The Universal in 2006 and 2007 into the field skillful Tokyo hotel derivatives Killerpilze and Cinema Bizarre were from a commercial point of view a flop, because the audiences through the game quickly. For the fans, not the "Bravo" or the PR departments of record companies, are the ones who have created what Tokyo hotel success, perhaps the most reasonable: the community. Like never before in the history of pop their movements are driving worldwide over the Internet on Myspace, Youtube and other networked communities and share there. The Myspace page of Tokio Hotel recorded in two years with eight million visitors twice as many as the Rolling Stones, the video for the song "Scream" was on Youtube nine million times.

Who Bill, Tom, Georg and Gustav loves, so who knows that he is not alone. Because of the pressure on teenagers who are in pop music uniquely positioned, is as old as pop itself. Beatles or Rolling Stones? Prince or Michael Jackson? Take That or Backstreet Boys? Tokio Hotel Tokyo hotel or not? The dividing lines in the school are clearly drawn. The "From the Deppe fan are you?" one hears again and again how the Öjendorfer schoolgirl Bianca B. Beam Feldt Abendblatt for the project "make disciples newspaper described the dilemma.

And yet today it is easier to find passion as comrades, for example, still in the 90s, when Take That or the Kelly Family is highly divisive "Bravo" thing of the hour was. The school comrade blasphemed? The parents have no understanding? No matter. That makes the loyalty of the fans only stronger. In the Internet forums to Tokyo hotel news, look at videos of concerts and arranged for concerts.

And then, when the concerts are all united: "This feeling, when the light runs out, is simply indescribable - pure adrenaline" wrote Franziska Kruger and Janina Hünerberg from Blankenese for "make disciples newspaper." Rock riffs and girls shriek create a phon-hurricane, which can suspend the mind - pure emotion. The fans and peers, the band sing about feelings, love, love, sorrow, rejection and rebellion and are one - at least until Gustav throws in the towel.

This momentum overcomes everything, even language barriers fall, whether that Tokio Hotel songs English to be revisited or fans in France and elsewhere, the Goethe Institute storming to some German quickly to swot. Abroad was the first hype about the look of the band, with its mix of androgynous diva manga (Bill), Skater Boy (Tom), Rocker (George) and Knuddelbär (Gustav) in France or in the United States as previously Germany is still unknown in the mainstream niche occupied. The rest was rock about feelings that young people around the world are identical. That the songs come from foreign feather and the PR mill and the euro last herausholt is minor matter, as long as the guys credibly create with their fans at eye level to communicate.

But how long will Bill, Tom, Georg and Gustav still stay up? First signs of decreasing popularity in Germany as the recent tour sold out not by the enormous pressure abroad over, but provides for many local fans for the feeling to be neglected.

And the band itself? A crash, said the four "Bravo", they would not cope, we have everything for the band abandoned - a normal life is hardly possible. "

And it wants to establish Tokyo hotel, a third album, New dare. And prove that they are not, as stated in one of their songs is called, "totgeliebt" are.