It's a spectacular story - in the truest sense of the word 'history' - because it happened: Lou Reed's concert in Offenbach's Stadthalle on April 6, 1979. However, the whole thing ended in disaster, which is why the Offenbach Post headline read: "Stadthalle in Trümmer gelegt! Concert hall turned into a cauldron - riot caused over 30,000 marks in damage."
Oliver Augst, who grew up in Offenbach, and the pop eclecticists Françoise Cactus and Brezel Göring from Stereo Total have dedicated a radio play to the evening together with dramaturge Charlotte Arens.
Augst experienced the concert as a teenager, for him "a salutary shock. There was never a better way to explain to me what rock could mean." Dr. Ralph Philipp Ziegler, Head of the Offenbach Office for Culture and Sports Management, can also take positives from Reed's performance. "Anyone who saved his entire hall furniture through the seventies was definitely unimportant in the age of sex, drugs and rock'n'roll."
Augst and Stereo Total present a performed concept album, a feature fiction performance, a homage and fabulation about Lou Reed and being a fan. 12 songs - new compositions, interpretations and a cover, which portray and comment on the star from the perspective of his companions and other contemporary witnesses (true to the structure of most of his own songs) and also present a very subjective view of the wider world from the post-war German province.
At times uninhibited, at times virtuoso, he makes use of everything; the musical and biographical material, the instruments and the costumes. The show is an appropriation, quotation and satire of two genres - rock and theater - and an original concert performance of the personalities Augst, Cactus and Göring.
The record of the same name "Lou Reed in Offenbach", 12" LP soundtrack incl. program booklet & MP3 download, is available from 10.03. on the Offenbach label unbreakmyheart.de.
