Husky Stash @ Bad Kleinen 30.04.03 Photo © Dorfdisco 2003 Never having been there before (I usually try to avoid Mitte), I was surprised that Husky Stash had agreed to play at such a, ehem, modest venue. Having been forewarned that Bad Kleinen might be a little "grubby", I decided to leave my pink Chanel slacks at the hotel, and arrived sporting a pair of silver Gautier dog-tooth pants that I usually use for the garden. It promised to be a rare event, and the Stash, as their coterie refer to this uncut pearl of the Berlin scene, took time off from their exertions recording their number one album in the studio (this reporter has the whole story, the amps, the silly masks, the plastic tubing....) to let off a bit of their pent up steam, live in Berlin. I managed to get in to the soundcheck, past the crowds through the cellar door, to find the Neilard and the very luscious DJ Vampire Girl going through a few last-minute changes to their dance routine, with Holger the guitarist, resplendent in his royal blue spangled James Brown style outfit, looking on, vaguely amused. He's been writing trash ballads for years now, but he never thought it would come to this. A lot of people say that the scene in Berlin is truly up its own arse, brown and smelly, and lacking in the kind of intrinsic humour that makes rock and roll what it is; good fun. Husky Stash are good fun, and they were there to prove it. Onstage, the Stash smack of smack. The first bit, you know, when you're just beginning to space out. Then the 2-by-4 over the back of the head, as DJ Vampire Girl, all mouth and shouty vocals, launches into the raucous new numbers, as yet unheard. Bad Kleinen: if the stage was Wolfgang Grams, and the bar was the GSG9, then police constable Newrzella would have had a beautiful view of the band, right up DJ Vampire Girl's peach and pale green mini, bare gyrating thigh, slick black leather riding boots, with the Neilard, still thundering darkly away, but much louder now, with his new Ampeg stack. Holger, Captain Ray Gun himself, looking like a character out of a Buck Rogers strip, doing his wobbly dance, firing away on all cylinders with that scratchy, stretchy, wierdo guitar that only he can do. This is youth violence at its best, like love, only stronger.