Die Toten Hosen

Coming together at the Ratinger Hof, a Düsseldorf bar notorious for being one of the premier hang-outs for punks all over the city, Die Toten Hosen formed as a six piece and in true punk rock style, played their first show barely a month after they formed in 1982. So new were they that when they were introduced on stage the compere got their name wrong. However, the band weren’t to be deterred and soon got enough of a cult following around their local punk scene that they could record and self-release their first single “Wir Sind Bereit” (We Are Ready). Although they lost their guitarist Walter November in 1983, the rest of the year was very kind to them, as thanks to the success of their single Eisgekühlter Bommerlunder (ice-cold Bommerlunder schnapps) on German radio, they signed to EMI Records in the summer of the same year and released their debut album “Opel-Gang” soon afterwards.

For the remainder of the decade, the band were one of the most outspoken and controversial names in German rock music. Never afraid to puncture the egos of their paymasters whether it was EMI or Virgin Records, who they signed to in 1984, or take a stand for what they believed in as a band. By 1989, the band were big enough to sell out the cavernous, 16,500 capacity Westfallenhallen in Dortmund and the album that they released afterwards, 1990’s “Kreuzzug ins Glück” (Crusade to happiness) would go on to sell over 150’000 in its first week of release. Ever since then, the band have managed to do the impossible in the world of punk rock, which is to have a lengthy, succesful career in mainstream rock without ever capitulating to anyone else’s idea of what they should be as a band. They remain punk rock heroes to this very day, releasing the most vital material of their career over thirty years after forming. For that, Die Toten Hosen come highly recommended.

But their musicianship and menace transcended the genre, creating a sound unique to themselves. With their first three albums (Rattus Norvegicus, No More Heroes and Black and White) being released within an astonishing 13 months of each other, scoring hit singles with ‘Peaches’, ‘No More Heroes’ and ‘Walk On By’. Further success was to follow with ‘Always The Sun’, ‘Strange Little Girl’ and the mercurial ‘Golden Brown’, amongst many others, earning the group 24 Top 40 singles and 19 Top 40 albums in a career spanning six different decades.

With this unique Stranglers sound, combining a brilliant melodic touch with a dark aggression and effortless cool, The Stranglers are now recognised as one of the most credible and influential bands to have emerged from the punk era. In 2024, the Stranglers celebrate their 50th anniversary with a sell-out tour of the UK including the prestigious Royal Albert Hall and headline slots at festivals worldwide.

The band’s 2021 UK top 5 album Dark Matters was their highest charting album for 38 years showing The Stranglers are still a creative force to be reckoned with. Dark Matters achieved wide critical acclaim and was described by many music mags as ‘their best album for forty years’.

Dark Matters also became the swansong of Dave Greenfield, Stranglers’ keyboard player of 45 years who performed extensively on the record before his sudden passing in 2020 due to CoVid-19. Dave was a highly acclaimed keyboardist whose unique approach and instantly identifiable playing style massively contributed to the group’s inimitable sound.

You’d probably be forgiven for not having an encyclopaedic knowledge of the history of gypsy punk; after all, it’s hardly the most mainstream of genres. In truth, though, it’s difficult to know if that’s even the most appropriate tag to apply to Gogol Bordello; they certainly take plenty of influence from gypsy music, not least through their incorporation of the accordion and the violin, and the energy that they pour into their live shows and rigid adherence to their own aesthetic means they have the punk side taken care of, too. It’s just that Gogol Bordello, often, feel utterly uncategorizable.

Led by irrepressible frontman Eugene Hutz, Gogol Bordello had slowly begun to carve out an underground reputation for themselves by the mid-noughties, mainly thanks to their raucous gigs and apparently never-ending touring schedules. Rapturous critical acclaim for their fourth album, though – 2005’s ‘Gypsy Punks: Underground World Strike’, as well as a series of incendiary television appearances helped expose them to a wider audience; in terms of the latter, a riotous rendition of ‘Not a Crime’ on Later…with Jools Holland was surely the highlight. Since then, they’ve been staples of the European and North American festival circuits, and they recorded a song for Coca-Cola’s Euro 2012 advertising campaign, entitled ‘Let’s Go Crazy’.