How Much Is the Fish

Saw H.P. Baxxter in an EDEKA supermarket ad the other day. Just him grocery shopping, checking prices, nothing dramatic. Which is its own kind of funny when you’re used to thinking of him as the guy jumping around on stage in the 90s screaming How Much Is the Fish to massive crowds.

Scooter defined a specific moment—late 90s Germany, electronic and punk, that band designed to be impossible to take seriously and equally impossible to ignore. H.P. had this manic presence that somehow worked, that strange alchemy where commitment and excess created something real. You don’t get a lot of bands like that.

They’re still around, which is more than most bands from that era can say. I don’t keep up with their new music, but the commitment is clear. And now there’s this—H.P. in a supermarket ad, endorsing grocery deals, visible and working and doing exactly what aging rock and electronic musicians eventually do, which is show up in commercials.

It’s not sad the way you’d expect. It’s just true. He was famous, he’s older now, the world doesn’t need the maniac on stage anymore, so he’s here. Still the same guy who made a song about fish prices. The energy just found a different channel.

I’m not sure what it says—about time, about fame, about the people who soundtracked your teenage years. But it’s something.