Zat the boiling point of the party, Mr. Alien spins Can’s “Mother Sky” at 1:30. The piercing guitar, the pulsating bass, hypnotic drums and spacy keyboards take the club on the edge of the Reeperbahn on a journey through time. Red bulbs in vintage lights. Before that, his DJ partner Starlight Steven had played The Velvet Underground’s drug-hunting anthem, “I’m Waiting For The Man.” It’s the last hours of the Flower Power Space Rock Party, of this series that has been advertising itself on posters since 1990 with the attribute “Mind Expanding”.
Three legendary party series with handmade music have survived many fleeting music trends in Hamburg. The Black Dance Temple, which celebrates the nineties indie culture and its roots, the Soul Allnighter with unknown Northern Soul and Soul Jazz singles and the hippie series in the “Molotow”, this battered pearl of a music club that is after reinvented the forced move from the east to the west end of the neighborhood.
Mr. Alien is the rigors of 33 years of DJing psychedelic classics. At the beginning of his seventh decade, he no longer has any desire. His partner, who is five years his junior, would have liked to continue, but the series only exists with the duo Mr. Alien/Starlight Steven, that was always clear.
Gladly obscure like Krautrock
The rule is simple: the evening should sound like it was in any underground village discotheque in the early 1970s. Don’t shy away from long guitar or drum solos, like something obscure like krautrock or the space rock style promised in the title but hardly ever lived up to except by Hawkwind. Even supposed taboos (Scott McKenzie, “Light My Fire”, The Mamas and the Papas) are not dogma.
For the last time on the podium: Hamburg DJ legends Mr. Alien (left) and Starlight Steven are DJing at Flower Power Space Rock.
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Image: Jonas Wresch
Two hours before the German Krautrock classic, Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze” fills the dance floor. The ages range from early 20s to mid 60s, the style of movement from seventies expressive dance to the Instagram-adapted pattern of our time. Songs like “Suzie Q” by Creedence Clearwater Revival or “I Say Yeah” by Ten Years After awaken the air bass faction. Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd are honored twice. A dancer with a gray original braid from that time swings his imaginary foil on the small stage, sandals and hippie linen pants as a reminiscence of the incense stick era.
Flower Power Space Rock was one of the first parties when the “Molotow” started. At the beginning of the 1990s, a time came to an end in which shallow electronics and superficial pop dominated. The neighborhood was run down, the premises were cheap. “Shortly before grunge, weird guitar music was on the rise again,” says Mr. Alien, whose real name is Andreas Schmidt and who runs the club today. Although the span of time between the mid-’60s and mid-’70s is limited, they kept discovering music they hadn’t played before.
“It was a no-go to throw in new stuff”
At the end of the 1980s, St. Pauli’s party mile began to rise again. DJs started spinning vinyl records in the bars. “Hippies have always existed,” says Starlight Steven, Steven Spyrou in civil life. “Every sixteen-year-old would look through their parents’ record collection,” he recalls. He’s into The Grateful Dead, but also the contemporary XTC and The Dukes of Stratosphear. But anything from that period is not allowed at the party. “It was a no-go to throw in new things because we were puristic and unmodern,” says Spyrou.
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