What Falls from the Ceiling in Kreuzberg

The Groove record store in Kreuzberg is exactly the kind of place that makes you feel like you’re in the right city at the right time—vinyl stacked floor to ceiling, someone’s currywurst somewhere nearby, and a TV crew setting up lights in the corner while a nervous technician tries to anchor a lamp to a wall that clearly doesn’t want it there.

Sandra and I had been invited behind the scenes of neoMusic, a new show on ZDFneo—which existed because someone at Germany’s public broadcaster ZDF had finally noticed that their average viewer was approximately one decade into retirement. The solution was a new channel with a younger logo, a hip Kreuzberg record shop, and an invitation to the most compelling people in Berlin music. And us, apparently.

Marta Jandová from Die Happy charmed the room by mangling German with such warmth you forgave every grammatical catastrophe immediately. Then Karpatenhund took the floor—Claire Oelkers up front, unplugged, singing their new song "Notfalls Werde Ich Für Immer Warten" into a crowd that was genuinely paying attention. Claire had been in Playboy the month before, which the room was also aware of, in the way rooms are always aware of these things.

The evening’s real centerpiece was Markus Kavka—veteran German music television presenter, a man who has survived decades of the industry—nearly getting killed by a falling lamp. The technician had been trying to secure it to the ceiling and instead brought half the decorations down with it. Kavka ducked, survived, and was handed a record of his choice as consolation. A lesser man would have sued. He just laughed and picked something good.

We finished the night shouting a Christmas carol into a camera. The segment aired Sunday on ZDFneo—which, as it turned out, neither Sandra nor I could actually receive. Roughly 0.02% of the population can. Don’t say the word that starts with F.