The concert of the year

A spotlight shines on two square meters of the stage in Berlin's Admiralspalast. The light stretches down between two legs of a bright angle, which together appear like the top of a dome. Plumes of dry ice fog float in and out of the dome from the darkness.

Beneath it sits Danger Dan at a black-and-white patterned electronic piano with his hair slicked back, a five- to seven-day beard and a bomber jacket. As the clouds of dry ice drift past behind him, it looks as if he hasn't just sat down on a wooden pedestal on the ground, but a few thousand meters higher, in the clouds.

Danger Dan sings Run Away, the first track from his amazing album It's All Covered by Art Freedom. The song tells how someone can come up with the idea of ​​becoming a musician. For example, when he initially has other career prospects in a “hip agency” whose boss wears “Ramones shirts”. But just as Danger Dan is about to send off an "application email," he hears an inner voice that sounds like Lou Reed. He warns Danger Dan, saying, "Run away... and start over somewhere."

Danger Dan sings to solemn chords and the audience gets carried away right away. Also Wolfgang Schmidt, the head of the Federal Chancellery, who was also present. Schmidt is touched by the song, even if it doesn't have to be assumed that the politician will soon implement the demand contained in it himself. After all, Schmidt's boss Olaf Scholz has not yet been seen in a Ramones T-shirt.

Danger Dan, in turn, observed people in 2020 hoarding toiletries and food as incidences rose. The phenomenon gave him the enthusiastic idea of ​​giving up all his supplies of pasta and toilet paper for an "end of quarantine", since it enabled him to finally "take a spring walk with you through the Berlin Zoo" again. The beautiful love song with these lines has, to put it mildly, a liberating effect in the Admiralpalast. The audience cheers as if they have been waiting for this for decades.

Danger Dan uses this turbulent moment to make an announcement: "Some of you know me from the Antilopen Gang and under the name Danger Dan. Well, the other day I was sitting in a bar when an acquaintance of mine came in and called out politely across the shop: 'Hey, Danger!' All the guests immediately turned to the perceived danger. So I thought, okay, at 39, maybe you shouldn't call yourself 'Danger' anymore. So, I'm Daniel. And that pose - man at piano singing sad songs - has never been my thing. But during the pandemic I sat at home and had a lot of time. Now I could practice, I thought, to make fewer mistakes on tour with the antelopes. Instead, I started procrastinating, and that's where these songs came from."

The interim announcements by Daniel Pongratz are just as rich in content as his songs. Many people in Germany, he says, don't know what National Socialism was. This is because there is still too little talk about this German past. It could be added that some do not even want Pongratz to comment on this or on neighboring issues. An example of this was provided by his eulogy for the pianist Igor Levit, broadcast on ZDF, in which Pongratz then insulted “AfD sympathizers” as “complete idiots”. Someone at the broadcaster got Pongratz's words to cut out the "AfD sympathizers" so skillfully that the cut was not even noticed.

Pongratz looked into how songwriters dealt with National Socialism at the time. Among other things, he came across the song "My father is wanted" by Hans Drach, for which Gerda Kohlmey composed a melody. In the text, a son receives the news that his father allegedly took his own life after his arrest by the SA. But the son knows that the SA killed him. To perform this drama, Pongratz invites a string quartet onto the stage. Then he gets up from the piano.

Standing up, he thinks about people who shouted "Merkel has to go!" at demonstrations up until last year. What, Pongratz wonders, are the demonstrators doing now that Merkel is actually no longer in power? They're still taking to the streets, reports Pongratz, but now they're shouting "Freedom!".

Pongratz answers them in his concert with Georg Kreisler's “Meine Freiheit”. The poet and singer Kreisler had the ability to set reflections to music which, even decades after their creation, have not developed a patina. Which may also be due to lines like these: "Of course, freedom also has something to do with Germany / as long as you contribute to it economically."

The regular part of the concert ends with "Tesafilm". The piece consists of a list of unsuccessful attempts to get something right. The highlight is that further attempts can “at least be tried”. Which also includes Danger Dan's artistic approach. Because a lot has worked out since then.

Among other things, Daniel Pongratz aka Danger Dan brought the political song a massive comeback. It helps that Pongratz appears so charming and relaxed that his social criticism always finds devoted listeners. He doesn't have to admonish, warn or denounce something, as was previously expected of artists. He doesn't ask which side someone is on. And if.

He sings and never sounds like he's complaining about anything. After all, he doesn't have to tell jokes that only serve their purpose as soon as they get stuck in your throat. Because Pongratz is a new type of political singer. With the Antilopen Gang, with which he usually works, he pointed out the dilemma of suddenly having to realize in the fight with your determined political opponent that he shares your taste in music. A few years ago, the Antilopen Gang summed up this problem: "Beate Zschäpe listens to U 2".

Another difficulty with the political song is singing one at all. Because those criticized in it - whether they are called Ken Jebsen, Götz Kubitschek, Jürgen Elsässer or something else - always use the opportunity to play as the disadvantaged. Therefore they want to refuse to be criticized with legal and financial consequences for the critic.

But Pongratz is cunning enough, with the encore “That’s all covered by the freedom of art”, only “completely speculative” and word for word in the subjunctive, how he would “sing” about it if he “found” that this person was an anti-Semite and that one a lizard man. In this way he gave the concert of the year in the Admiralspalast.