Pop Up

4th Pop Up in Leipzig, Germany between May 19th and 22nd, 2005

The third visit by DisAgreement Online members to the Pop Up fair in Leipzig took place on the third weekend of May. The less commercial Pop Up is an alternative to the PopKomm, the world's biggest music exhibition which is now held yearly in Berlin. Each May, there are about 120 exhibitors who present their products in Halle A, a large venue of the Werk II. Luxemburg was presented this year by an group consisting of Noiseworks Records, the Schalltot Collective, DisAgreement Online and Kulturfabrik's Infoladen. We at DisAgreement used the opportunity to make new contacts for our radio shows and the website.

The journey to the Eastern part of Germany was quite exhausting. Until Eisenach, a former border town between Western and Eastern Germany, there were no problems. Then the traffic became really busy and we only made twelve kilometres in two hours. The reasons were on the one hand a large number of road works and on the other hand the even larger number of Polish workers returning home for the weekend. But after eight and a half hours, we reached the hotel without a problem, thanks to the modern GPS technology. Leipzig hasn't the best political reputation and on TV, you see often reports about fascist skinhead riots and demonstrations by the nationalist NPD party. Luckily we didn't meet any of those obscurantists, but a poster announcing an Onkelz party called 'Gloreiche Halunken' certainly wasn't too promising. The road from our hotel to the Pop Up venue leads through Connewitz, a neighbourhood occupied by more alternative and unusual figures. Some creatures looked quite fearsome and lots of houses weren't occupied anymore, but any kind of trouble was avoided. [the editor wants to add that autonomous flyers and stickers were far more dominant than nazi bullshit, making us nearly feel at home].

After checking in, we went to the Werk II in order to obtain our festival tickets. Even if the main attraction is of course Saturday's music fair, the Pop Up is much more than just this. From Thursday to Sunday, there are about 50 concerts in 9 different clubs. As it was still too early for the shows, we decided to have a walk along the quite long Karl-Liebknecht-Straße. It was amazing to see relicts from the former German Democratic Republic. I think it's great that the Ampelmännchen (green and red figures on pedestrian lights), streets named after great socialists, house fronts with inspirational communist paintings and Trabis are still existing and that the past isn't denied. Normally we write about our drinking habitudes, but Pascal and I became hungry and found (of course) a really good Indian restaurant with a splendid decoration and a huge menu card including bizarre dishes like a trout tandoori or deer meat madras. After this long journey, we were quite exhausted and too lazy to go to a club which was too far away. So we chose the nearby Halle 5 to see a concert by Hell On Wheels from Sweden. Not too extraordinary, but a cool mixture of Motorpsycho, Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr.

On Saturday the fair started at 10 am, but as there weren't that many visitors yet, we decided to have a 3 km walk to the centre of Leipzig. We discovered beautiful buildings from past centuries, admired the imposing MDR TV tower and couldn't resist making some shopping and eat at one of those terrible fast-food places. The feet were hurting and finding the right tramway back wasn't as easy as imagined. Finally we managed this, but we didn't succeed in buying the right ticket. Those we bought were of course cheaper than they should have been, but being uninformed tourists, you have to forgive this mistake and what does it matter, no one caught us!

Shortly before 2 pm, Halle A was already well crowded and we had a closer look at the 120 exhibitors. Most of them were record labels, mostly from Germany, but there were also some companies from Austria, Finland, The Netherlands, Ukraine (with their typical orange propaganda machinery and refusing to give promos away for free, that's neoliberalism for you; ed.) and, of course, Luxemburg. There were also mail order companies, music magazines and fanzines, concert agents, radio stations and distributors. We definitely made some interesting contacts. A welcome diversion from meeting the exhibitors were the concerts in the neighbouring Halle 5. We didn't watch all the concerts, but here's a few opinions about what we saw: Stuurbaard Bakkerbaard from The Netherlands was an interesting combination of noise and lo-fi, reminding slightly of 16 Horsepower or the remarkable Absynthe Minded. Absolute highlight was Katze, beautiful indie pop with mixed male and female vocals. This trio with funny lyrics is lead by Klaus Cornfeld, former head behind Throw That Beat (In The Garbage Can). The most disappointing band was Palestar. They were pale musicians whose only goal was to sound as emotional as Muse. But there was no trace of originality. Much more entertaining were the Nightingales from Finland, a funny bastard between Buzzcocks, Kinks ('Mr Pleasance' was covered) and Jonathan Richman (they either covered one of his songs or played one about him, I don't exactly remember now). Unfortunately we only caught the last two songs of the Early Day Miners who played at the UT Connewitz, a gigantic gothic cinema that looked like it could break apart any moment. They don't build stuff like that anymore. The 150 people present absolutely loved it, but we missed out on this lesson in moody post rock by guys clad as if they were about to go duck hunting.

Apart from music, Pop Up is also about the business aspect. On Friday and Saturday, there were several discussion forums about topics like paying taxes to GEMA, label foundations, the future of paper fanzines, the importance of video-clips and of course music downloads. As I know from the past that these meetings are very well visited and that the air isn't so fresh inside those rooms, I avoided them entirely.

If I don't take account of the journey to Leipzig, I can't complain at all about this year's visit to the Pop Up. It is much more entertaining and vital for us than the PopKomm where you often see bored managers who are just there because they have to be. At the Pop Up, most label bosses don't earn their living entirely with their music, but do all of this because of true idealism. So it's only normal that they are much more eager about their products. And the Pop Up couldn't survive of course without the help of a large number of people working for free, real idealists. But if the Pop Up wants to keep its underground character, they shouldn't let participate major companies like V2 and Motor Music.

Luckily the way home was two hours shorter than the road to Leipzig. But traffic info on German radio stations is much more fun than in Luxemburg. They tell you to pay attention to people throwing stones from bridges, to couch parts or dead wild boars lying on the road and other unusual things.