Jacques Palminger is amazed. About himself, about the world and about the fact that he can make it happy again with pictures that you have to come up with in this nonsense-concentrated density. So, curtain up for The Kings of Dubrovnikwho emerged from obscurity again in May 2022 with “Dubbies On Top” and with the opener “Ich kann wieder zaubern” prepare that psychedelic gagaism that can drive you into laughter as well as a sweet form of foreign shame.
“I fly like a butterfly and my thought bees are sucking honey from your flower heads again,” Palminger rejoices with this slightly goofy and since the early Studio Braun prank calls and the not so early ones fractus-Mockumentary years with Heinz Strunk and Rocko Schamoni so familiar radio play uncle voice. And who would want to deny him the flower head with this happy spoken word customer.
The butterfly poet Palminger, who unlike his buddies Heinz Strunk (“Meat is my vegetables”) and Rocko Schamoni (“Dorfpunks”) has not yet published a novel, is not even the vocal focus here. He shares it with his bandmate Rica Blunck, who, together with Viktor Marek, also screwed together the dub textures of the songs with Jamaican reverberation.
This works particularly well and harmoniously in “Alle Men”, a quasi-pendant to Chaka Khan’s “I’m Every Woman”, in which the two dare to approach all sorts of toxic chasms of masculinity that lurk under all sorts of banal everyday artifacts: “On every handkerchief / is this stable smell / on every shaving / is this megalomania / in every head of foam / a battle zone is raging / in every stuffed cabbage / a hate tirade is brewing”, it always goes on merrily, splendidly connected by a subtle chorus breathed by Rica Blunck, that there reads: “I am all men / it is all in me”.
The Kings of Dubrock, Thursday, April 27, 8 p.m. Red Sun, Maximiliansplatz 5