The Happiest Girl Alive

Last month I saw The Whitest Boy Alive at Astra, which had its grand opening that night and is my new fave venue in Berlin. In fact, besides Cupcake and Monster Ronson's, it's the ONLY reason for a Mitte-Fuzzi to venture into Friedrichshain.

The Norwegian band The New Wine opened up for Whitest Boy. Erlend Oye's musical legacy was noticeable (but luckily not overbearing) in their sound. I was actually thinking their music kinda sounded like the love child of The Whitest Boy Alive, Cut Copy and Phoenix (minus any homoerotic undertones that might have possibly been evoked by that analogy).

The Whitest Boy Alive were as amazing as ever. Throughout the entire gig, Astra was filled with this incredibly warm, glowing and happy energy bouncing to the band's pop disco beat. I even feel like all my blurry, slow-flash pictures of the crowd accurately embody what it actually felt like to be there.

Highlights included (but were not limited to):
- Erlende jumping into the crowd with the cow bell,
- the keyboardist wailing on his keyboard like it was a guitar,
- and all the covers of my old school faves from back in the day (in addition to the usual suspect Robin S., The Prodigy's "Out of Space" and Daft Punk's "Around the World" also made my techno/house heart go pitter patter).

This was without a doubt my feel-good gig of the year. And it's seriously no surprise I left Astra the happiest girl alive.

How Saturday Showed Me Love

The past year or so I've been complaining about The Whitest Boy Alive not showing their hometown of Berlin enough love. So imagine my supreme surprise when Saturday, taking a detour on my way home from buying miso paste at the Asian supermarket at Alexanderplatz and walking down Weinmeisterstrasse towards the U-Bahn stop, I glanced down Max-Beer-Strasse only to notice a huge crowd gathered in front of some shop, prompting me to take off my headphones only to hear an unmistakeable beat. I had "celebrity spotted" the guitarist in the neighborhood before, so I knew it could only be you-know-who.

As I approached, I only saw speakers but no band, so I almost thought it was just a random DJ set. But then I got up close and realized The Whitest Boy Alive were actually playing in the store window of ic! berlin! I only caught the last song and an encore, but that was enough to turn my shopping trip from mundane to magical! Unfortunately, I had neither my phone nor my camera with me, so I couldn't capture any of the cuteness to share (like how the keyboardist and the drummer accidentally banged their heads on the store window while taking a bow or how the grafittied window shutters slowly dropped down on them like a curtain fall).

So instead I'll just share a little video from this year's Melt! that I never got around to posting before. By the way, the entire gig they played at the festival was so amazing, it was worth the two near-death-experiences I suffered in order to witness it. I guess they do know how to show me love.