But first! Let me explain a little. So, I'm moving to Melbourne in approximately one week (last minute regrets ahoy) and I'm living at my parents house while I'm in that "in-between" stage. Hilariously, my mum ordered me out into the garage to *finally* sort through some boxes of stuff I've had stored there for at least a few years now.
But it was ultimately a good thing, cos I found a transcript of an interview I did with Tibor from Kafe Kult in Munich, Germany. holy shit!! oh yeah, in case you've never heard of it, Kafe Kult is a really cool independent music venue, run by the coolest kids in Bavaria.
Sometime in early 2004, I was in Europe with a dictaphone and a half-baked (haha) idea to do a series of interviews with people about how they overcome social awkwardness at punkrock shows.
I was travelling with some of my best pals during the summer, but then suddenly all my fellow wanderers went in different directions, and I found myself alone and very much not liking it.
Well, kinda liking it in the "ultimate character-building" sense, but definitely not liking it in the immediate sense and especially in terms of how UNFUN shows in strange cities had suddenly become.
My idea was to do a bunch of interviews with people about how they deal with being alone in a crowd, or how they get/got past feelings of social ineptitude in punkrock settings.
Then I would collate all the interviews in a zine and leave them at show venues, so that other socially-awkward people sitting in the corner on their own between bands could read it and feel less alone. Or something like that.
Cos at least in my case, whenever I've been travelling and find myself alone at show, I always end up reading every single flyer/poster/zine/etc in the venue to pass the time between bands!!!!!
I only ever did one interview and it was with Tibor. Well it's not so much an interview as a "chat" really...I'm pretty sure we were hanging out in the Kafe Kult "office" late at night, after a Tragedy show, and I hit the "record" button.
If you've ever been in a DIY/punkrock band that's toured Europe, then you've pretty certainly met Tibor on the Munich stop of your tour. Here's a photo of him spazzing in his old band Schickeria Dropouts at a houseshow in Glasgow in 2004 (the night before the Tragedy club show).
PS. I don't know if Tibor is still involved in Kafe Kult, I haven't been in touch with him probably since that show in Glasgow, so Tibor, if you're reading this, hope it's still okay to use the interview after all this time!!xx
Kylie: Hey, what’s your name and what do you do?
Tibor: My name’s Tibor Kantor, I’m 26 years old. I’m setting up shows at Kafe Kult, singing in a band called Schickeria Dropouts, I have a small distro with no name yet. I’m planning to release my first zine maybe at the end of the year. And I smoke way too much weed..
Kylie: Oh yeah I heard something about you breaking the edge after one year…
Tibor: I just stopped drinking alcohol for one year and I’ve wanted to take a pause, to get rid of it for one year and I’ve wanted to see if I can make it. I made it pretty easily at the end, so I’m more confident about drinking again right now.
Kylie: This is something I’m really interested in asking you about…like, a lot of times when you first start going to shows, or when you travel to new cities and go to shows where you don’t know anybody there, you’re like basically standing in the corner like a dork.
My question is a pretty simple one: what do you DO when you go to a show on your own, when you don’t know anybody there?
In your case, even if you went to a show on your own in Munich, you would basically know everyone there, because you’ve been involved in the scene here for a long time. But say you went to a show in another town, what would you do then?
Tibor: So, speaking of hardcore shows or punk shows?
Kylie: Yeah
Tibor: Probably the easiest approach is to talk about bands and stuff like that, maybe talking about patches or shirts that other people are wearing. I try to approach people who are selling zines, not just like a merchandise stall, but single persons who are just selling one zine, their own zine. I try to approach these people because I think, as they creating some form of expression, they are more likely to communicate with me.
Because if this person is doing a zine, I suppose that this person will communicate with other people. But that doesn’t happen at every show, so I also just ask people stupid questions about bands or so, or maybe ask if anyone knows some cool places around town, stuff like that. And you see pretty quick if the person is interested in communicating or not.
Kylie: And if they just give you a basic answer, well that’s cool, and you just know that you’re not really gonna connect any further with them. But if there’s more, well that’s cool too, there is the possiblility to have a bigger connection.
So, did you ever go to shows in Munich, maybe before you knew many people, where you felt awkward or alienated or socially inept or kinda like sitting in the corner reading a zine and smoking too many cigarettes?
Tibor: (laughing)…Yeah there was a time…I don’t know, I’m doing shows now for 6 or 7 years, so it’s hard to remember the time when I didn’t know anybody. But there was a lot of shows before that time, where I tried to connect with people maybe from the club itself. And then I tried to reach other people when I saw they were regularly going to the same shows as me. So it was just a question of time until I started to ask “hey, how’s your night?”
Kylie: Staring to recognise people and seem them round and make some kinda connection…
Tibor: Yeah, in the beginning I felt too “young” to approach some people or so, but after several times, you see that the same people are basically always at the same shows. So why not just ask them about their name and what they do. And then finally my special experience now of doing shows at Kafe Kult where you know everybody!
Kylie: Yeah I guess now you’re at this stage where you’re pretty involved with shows in Munich, and the whole scene around Kafe Kult, that maybe the situation can be “the other way round” now.
As in, I’m guessing that sometimes you would see people that are maybe 15 or 16 and you recognise that they are really awkward and make an effort to at least say hi and make them feel welcome at Kafe Kult. Like, in a way, I guess you have a special responsibility to do that…
Tibor: Yeah totally. I totally try to approach those people and ask…it’s always kinda stupid questions at first like “How did you find out about the show?” or “How did you get here?”, stuff like that. And today, 3 people like that are here at this show. 3 really young kinds from the suburbs who are around 16. They were really shy at their first two shows or so, and then we approached them and it came out that because they are from the suburbs, they can’t stay til the end of the shows…
Kylie: oh right, because they can’t get the last bus or whatever?
Tibor: Yeah, so we arranged that they can sleep here and go back home the next day. So ever since, they come to shows and sleep here. It’s something that I still try to care about, to not keep people alienated.
Kylie: So like these kids that you helped out with a place to stay, were they quite new to punk and quite amazed that someone offered them a place to stay…you know, that would never happen to you at a bigger rock show, right?
Tibor: Well the kinda amazing thing was they were already here at shows with “Doom” patches all over their clothes, so they were totally into “it”, but they probably just knew it from some zines and from some local bands at their local youth centres maybe. So now they’ve reached the age where they can go to shows by themselves and well we feel it’s kinda like a duty for us…
Kylie: yeah totally
Tibor: Because we have the space to do what we wanna do, or to set up something that we want to do, and we want to show others what is possible. It’s not like it’s our space, it’s everybody’s space, we just try to “watch over it” to make sure new kids know it’s their space as much as ours.
So if we can sleep here, why can’t they sleep here? As long as they don’t break anything. This sort of situation is a special thing because it’s really something that comes from the DIY punk culture.
At Kafe Kult there is not only DIY punk shows, there’s also like more “poppy” shows, where the audience has almost nothing to do with DIY. But even then, we try to approach people and try to show them we’re just a bunch of kids like them, who happen to help run a concert venue..
Kylie: like showing by example, that anyone can put on a show, that anyone can make things happen in the DIY punk scene, that you don’t have to be extra-special or magical or a “professional” or an “entrepreneur” or anything gross like that…
Tibor: it’s like if you want to talk to the bands, go talk to the bands, they’re just normal people. A lot of people, especially in Munich, because it’s such a coke-sniffing yuppie city, are totally unfamiliar with this kind of “privacy”, ie. the band is hanging out with the audience at the bar and so on.
Kylie: Right, exactly, people aren’t familiar with the bands being normal people..
Tibor: A lot of people feel alienated and think that the bands are a total clique that they cannot belong to. We try to show those people, it’s not like we are some kind of cigar club and you’re not allowed to come in here. It’s like, we can make a really big cigar club if you want, just join us, or start your own cigar club or whatever.
[and I pressed "stop" right after that. here's a photo of Kafe Kult to warm your heart. also *some* people say that on the super-sanitised streets of Munich, this is probably the only graffiti you'll see in that town, so this picture is doubly-awesome]
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