Those were my best concerts of 2022

It's early in the morning. Berlin Schoenefeld. Everything is still dark outside. I sleepily walk onto the plane, listening to Diana Ross' "Touch me in the morning" on my headphones. Easy Jet flight to Geneva.

Two years ago, during Corona, I visited Montreux in French-speaking Switzerland. A friend had shown me this place, perhaps the most beautiful spot on earth. The Montreux Jazz Festival was canceled and I had planned to come back to see a concert at this festival when everything reopened.

Arrived in Geneva, which is still asleep, I board the train to go to Montreux. The route leads once around Lake Geneva, on my headphones the Supremes with "My world is empty without you". I look at the lake in which the sun reflects golden like a candy wrapper from Werther's Echte. The warmth permeates the train window and brightens my spirit.

When I arrive, I walk down to the beach promenade. Here they lined up the old grand hotels next to each other. Luxury cars, people with huge sunglasses. I step onto the hotel's fluffy carpet, unpack my swimming trunks in the room and run down the stairs to the lake, jump in and look over there at the French Alps, which spread out like a white duvet over Évian-les-Bains.

The water envelops my body, the sun warms me. The waves that John Bonham immortalized with Led Zeppelin in his drum solo "Bonzo's Montreux" let me slide. My eye falls on the rebuilt casino that burned down during a Frank Zappa show in 1976.

At that time, Deep Purple were visitors of this concert and stood after the fire at Lake Geneva, which was covered by clouds of smoke. "Smoke on the water". The rest is history.

Queen recorded here at their studio for the last five years before Mercury's death. For them, Montreux was a safe space from the English Yellow Press. "We all came out to Montreux, on the lake Geneva shoreline." I don't dry myself, the sun did that for me. Go back to the hotel and then to the concert hall.

The big band with background singers enters the stage and plays with a soul fanfare. The light dim. The first notes of "I'm Coming Out", composed by Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards from Chic, sound.

Her voice comes from the off. With the use of drums, she then floats onto the stage. The Queen of Soul. Diana Ross. Dressed in a black dress adorned with flowers and a huge orange silk coat, hair down, a sea of ​​lights of thousands beaming faces lit up by cellphones.

Supremes classics follow. "Stop! In The Name of Love, You Can't Hurry Love, and Baby Love. After 46 years I finally understand why soul music is called soul music.

"Ain't No Mountain High Enough" is like Diana Ross wrapping my heart in Werthers Echte candy wrapper. Costume change, delicately whispered announcements by the 78-year-old, who looks like a young woman. For the finale, she brings her entire family, children and grandchildren onto the stage in a bright red dress.

After the concert I stroll along the shore of Lake Geneva to the hotel, the moon is shining, the water is still. No fog on the water.

I walk through the rain from my hotel in Frankfurt's Bahnhofsviertel to the Festhalle, soaked, up the many stairs to the VIP area. Friends of the band and the organizer have gathered there. I had this childish dream that it could work, but I immediately gave it up. The organizer introduces himself and casually mentions that he will take me somewhere.

I nervously rush to the toilet, dry my hair under the hand dryer, stand in front of the mirror and get nervous. The organizer now says that I should come. We walk through the hall's catacombs, it's dark, and I follow his white, long hair.

Then we stand in a corridor in which the four cloakrooms of the band members are located. He tells me to wait a moment. Here I am alone in the darkened corridor, restless like a child meeting its superheroes, who actually don't exist.

A door opens and the cone of light from the cloakroom falls on the floor like a shadow of a door. Stylistics “You are everything” sounds from the room. Another shadow falls in the hallway. The silhouette of a tall man in a superhero costume. It's Paul Stanley from Kiss, he's standing in front of me now, holding out his hand and saying in that soft, soft, high-pitched voice, "You must be Oliver, the Comedian."

I'm cracking up inside with excitement. It's not just the fact that he's Paul Stanley. Also this impressive suit, the platform shoes, the make-up, this seventy-year-old man in disguise. Then another door opens on the other side of the corridor. It's Gene Simmons. He asks: "Oliver, what is twelve inch long and jewish?" I shrug my shoulders shyly and he answers his question with: "Nothing!"

Paul and Gene laugh. I ask him what the difference is between a Rottweiler and a Jewish mother. He shrugs questioningly. "The Rottweiler will eventually let go," I reply. We laugh.

Gene asks me what the difference is between Jewish mothers and terrorists. Paul and I look at each other questioningly. Gene goes on to say that terrorists can be negotiated with.

I ask him if he knows why Jewish men are circumcised. He replies "You tell me." - "Because a Jewish woman wouldn't touch anything that wasn't reduced by at least twenty percent." We say goodbye, saying "Goodbye".

Later I look at the curtain covering the stage and it has “KISS” emblazoned on it in big letters. The "SS" in runic script. A stadium announcer shouts: "All right Frankfurt, you wanted the best, you get the best, the hottest band in the world - Kiss." The curtain falls and "Detroit Rock City" crashes out of the loudspeakers.

The band levitates from the ceiling on little ufo-like platforms and everything lights up and explodes. Fireworks, cannonballs, distorted guitars. Two hours of blitz pop war follow, between Las Vegas, children's birthday parties and the circus.

"Shout it out loud", "Rock and Roll all Nite", "100,000 Years". On "Love Gun" Paul Stanley flies over the audience to a smaller stage. "I was made for loving you" makes everyone ooh in their head voices, and on "Black Diamond" they throw what is possibly the biggest disco ball in the world and make every single face that night flash.

In between, an announcement from Gene Simmons in flawless German, who asks whether he should announce the next song in Hebrew, Hungarian, English or German. After hours of sweet noise, they leave the stage, silently trudging into the dark in their astronaut-like suits and Kiss uniforms. And on the huge LED wall appears as a farewell: "Kiss loves Frankfurt". Surrounded by thousands of made-up fans staring at the empty stage. A farewell forever.

But in the end it is the one great love that always warms your heart. The heart is ensnared with soap bubbles and then coated in cotton candy.

I'm standing in front of the stage at the Backstage Club in Munich with my friends Jens-Christian, Thomas and Gerald. Three men enter the stage, which has been stunned by the hazer with fog, out of the darkness and quietly start with their first song "Taifun".

A piece that transforms itself from a quiet deer into a rock dinosaur within ten minutes. Us from the moog bass pedals with pant legs flapping, lit up by the blinders, the following three hours lets fly in a hard rock tornado. Motorpsycho from Norway. My all.

After the concert, I sit in my car and light a cigarette, thinking of Frank Giering's quote in “Absolute Giganten”: “There should always be music. With everything you do. And when it really sucks, at least the music is still there. And at the point where it is most beautiful, the record should jump and you only ever hear this one moment.”