Having been an admirer of their work for sometime I decided to make a pilgrimage to German in order to at last watch their famous live show. The concert took place in the Westfalenhalle in Dortmund.

Views outside of the aeroplane.

More shit for lens flare addictz

Can you belive these horror_style shots of us?

"Fuer Sie" the ruling in flight women's magazine with fashions and recipes!!

Just before we landed in Dusseldorf we flew over the Rhine

Advertising poster for Kraftwerk!

I thought that seeing a poster advertising Kraftwerk in the home of techno - Dusseldorf - was the coolest thing ever. Perhaps I was even walking on the same street where Ralf and Florian first had the ideas for tracks like 'Home Computer' and 'Space Lab'.

Dusseldorf as a city was extremely cool, it had a chilled out vibe like many German cities. The shops on the main street were pretty upper class, but down side streets it was more normal. There were even shops where people could trade in their old unfashionable happy hardcore CDs for the latest happy hardtrance soundz. We stopped for a local beer in a little brewery:

The local beer - similar to an English bitter, but with a big twist!

The area by the Rhine was pretty cold and windy... Some lonely rockerz played heavy metal in the river side bars, but it was not the time for touristic crowds yet. Most people, I think, were resting for North Rhine/Westfalen Carnival, which would happen over the next days.

We arrived at Dortmund as dusk was falling, but there was still time for a visit to an Eiscafe to top up our ice cream levels. After that we boarded the city's tiny underground system to the 'Westfalenhalle' which was a little way outside the town center.

We put our things in this locker at the train station to save effort

The train was full of mad German ravers! Just like going to a Motorhead concert, you could see the band's fans everywhere - guys of all ages sporting Scooter t-shirts, and the girls with shirts, short skirts and trainers, dressed to dance.

The part of the Halle where the concert was had huge queues outside, but no security checks at all! I thought this was incredible, it would have been the easiest thing to smuggle weapons or drugs into the venue. But the crowd was very peaceful - and actually there were not so many mad German ravers after all.... Just normal everyday people, aged between 12 and 50 (i guess), who were fans of honest commercial techno music. I was happy to see that there were many families in the queue.

Outside the Westfalen Halle

My local supermarket had better security... but at least they checked my ticket.

A large stall inside was selling Scooter merchandise, which was t-shirts, CDs, concert photos etc etc. I would have brought an orange t-shirt, except I had ran out of Euros. The stall was constucted from what looked like an old lighting rig, and it looked very underground.

The doors to the actually room where the party was held had these warning signs:

It basically says that if the sound is too loud for you then tough shit, and you dont get any money back.

The concert hall was a massive warehouse style space, so massive that I thought that it would be almost impossible to fill it. This proved to be correct, and in fact the venue was only about 1/3 full. The walls of the venue were decorated with advertising drapes for Roland Musical Instruments, and in fact all of the logos visible on the equipment on stage turned out to be Roland. I guess Scooter has some kind of sponsership deal with them.

These Powerbooks get everywhere

The first real support act was 'StarSplash'. They were pretty shit, DJing bad hardtrance remakes of happy hardcore classics. They kept stopping the music for crowd interaction, but it was done badly. Their attempts to get an atmosphere actually insulted the intelligence of the crowd I thought... Although many people were happy to get one of the many 'StarSplash' t-shirts that they threw in to the crowd. No one was really dancing to their stuff, but it was hard to do so with the music stopping every 30 seconds, and with low volume levels. Luckily they stopped :)

StarSplash doing what they do

Then there was a long wait until Scooter took to the stage. People were shouting the riff to 'Maria (i like it loud)' and the stupid chant 'StarSplash' had taught us. Of course I joined in these activities... The latest Scooter album, The Stadium Techno Experience, is a great work.

...and finally they came on stage!! The sound system was astouding. With Motorhead I had experienced a loud sound system, so loud you could feel it. Scooter was the same, but in a more controlled way. Everything was so clear, and there was enough headroom left in the system to give an extra kick were it was needed.

Thousands of crazy German ravers!! (with their Mums and Dads)

Scooter started their set with 'Maria' and then proceeded to play much older material, from the happy hardcore days. I thought this was a bad move - the songs are much faster of course, and I think many people peaked too early on in their set. The famous Scooter dancing girls were not that great. I thought they detracted from the show and gave it trashy, non-serious overtones. I wanted to see HP rapping, and not some too-thin girls with less clothes on. If another classic band like Black Sabbath can do without dancing girls, then so can Scooter. Perhaps it relates to their raving past.

Scooter live!

One important point to mention was the light and pyrotechic show which was just as amazing as the sound system, and was obviously also well thought out - with moving lighting booms, and a variety of sparks and booms. I noticed that the band members (especially Rick) were also able to control many of these effects with controls on their instruments.

The amazing light show confused my Gameboy Camera

Most of the set remains a blur inside my memory, but there are some points that stand out... HP used a variety of microphones during the set, including normal microphones, a CB radio style microphone and the trademark megaphone... The moment that the band played 'Break it Up' was very touching, HP played a double neck acoustic guitar for this track - really..! Scooter lost the crowd a bit during a long instrumental, although I actually thought this was a strong track. In general the music seemed to be almost identical to the studio versions, although it was obvious that the band were at least adding minor embelishments to the songs using their phatt keyboard setups. HPs vocals were completely live, even down to the mistakes. Westside!

The crowd response did not really warrant any encores, although of course Scooter played two, which I was happy about :) During the recital of 'Fire' HP used a Flying V which was modified to spit fake fire effects out. There is absolutely no way HP was playing this guitar - he played the wrong notes, out of time, and the sound suggested a tremolo effect, which was absent from the guitar HP had. However it was worth the fake for the fire effect, and HP had already played guitar for real on 'Break It Up' earlier in the show.

It was only on the second encore that Scooter really came into full effect. Up until then their show was good, but it didn't really get my arse moving. But they lauched then into a quick fire recital of their latest hardtrance hits, like 'Ramp!' and 'Posse' and so on. The crowd went wild for these hits. In the middle of it all the band played a fun cover version of 'Nelly the Elephant', which was amusing. To finish the show, what else could they play but their beloved hit 'Hyper Hyper'. After that most people left the venue, but some die-hard fans stayed on to collect autographs. I used the chance to take some Gameboy camera images.

The phatt 'Crest' amplifiers used to power Scooter's impressive sound system.

The stage after the show - check out the banks of equipment, and also the Scooter drape which flashes in a similar way to the Motorhead one.

This security guard was there to stop crowd trouble - of which there was none, not even any moshing.

I spotted a guy who customised his bomber jacket with an upside down cross... This was similar to the customised leather jacket I saw once at a Diamond Head gig.

Customised jacket, playing with Satanic imagery

On the underground people (including me!) used whatever they had to beat out four-to-the-floor drum patterns on the metal rails:

Maria belive me I like it loud, Maria believe me I like it hard. Yeah!

We picked up our things from the locker at the station and proceeded to the place where we were staying for a little holiday. I'd already used most of my snaps up at the Scooter gig, but I had two spare places left. Heres what I got with them:

Excellent value - feed the animals for just 1 Euro!!

The plane home

gwEm 2004
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