Post-corona stress, war or the usual – there are enough reasons not to be in a good mood in the evenings. There is an antidote for this in the Circus Krone until Saturday: Helge Schneider conjures up a smile on the face of even the grumpiest. His recipe is not new, but it is effective: it’s all in the mix.
For some it’s Schneider’s slapstick, which inevitably provokes laughter. Especially when he starts out as a great zampano with a baton – with a solo by his guitarist Sandro Giampietro. Others are dismantled in the sketches with “Sergei Gleitmann”, who has to do his bidding as a mint tea cupbearer, electric bass amateur, “Katzeklo” singer or expressive dancer. Friends of word jokes ball at Helge’s language knots and inventions (“He bent himself” as the past tense of stoop) and above all at his insane stories like that of Paderborn’s “China restaurant Mykonos” with schnitzel cuisine.
Since Hans Liberg, no one has teased so much humor out of music itself
Out of nowhere he unleashes the most absurd avalanche of associations. One of the nicest things was his alleged trip to Berlin for a Duke Ellington concert in 1972, which he didn’t get to, but instead met the master in a “side-seeing bus” (because everyone had to look to one side). Closing point: “It wasn’t him at all! It was an old lady, whom I then insulted: How dare you!”
And then there’s the basis of all his improvisational flourishes. Whether cowboy song, jazz standard, pop allusions or weird own songs like the one-liner “The Pope can never leave the house (because everyone knows him)”, whether with or without Giampietro and his sovereign twelve-year-old son “Charlie the Flash ” on the drums, whether on the grand piano, the bass, the guitar or the vibraphone: since Hans Liberg, no one has teased so much humor out of music itself. Actually, the audience should counter with the old Rudi Völler song at the end: “There is only one Helge Schneider”.