Australasian WorldTurbojugendDays 2020
5th-8th March 2020
Melbourne, Australia.
Review by Janne Vee. Photography by Matt Gleeson.
In late summer 2003 Turbojugend St Pauli organised the first WorldTurboJugendDays in Hamburg, Germany. It was the first global meeting of a fan club that started out as a tribute to a dead band (Turbonegro had broken up in 1998) and suddenly had to deal with the fact that Turbonegro were not as dead as everybody thought.
When Turbonegro reunited and played the res-Erection shows in 2002 the handful of existing Turbojugend chapters met in real life for the first time. Up until then we only knew of each other via online message boards. Turbonegro then played the Bizarre Festival in Germany in 2002 and in the front centre was the Turbojugend. We met, we partied the fuck out of that weekend and we made lifelong friends. Half a year later the Turbojugend Muenster chapter visited the Turbojugend Oulu chapter for a big New Years Eve party in the arctic wilderness and death punk tourism was born.
At some point between the announcement that our beloved TRBNGR were coming back in early 2002 and the first WorldTurboJugendDays in Hamburg 2003 the black magic happened: that nerdy joke of an online fan-club of a dead band grew into something real, a family, a denim navy. You meet a person from the other side of the world, totally different cultural background and personal history but then you both realise that if you had grown up in the same suburb you probably would have been lifelong friends since the sandpit…
The first WorldTurboJugendDays in 2003 marked one of the defining moments of the Turbojugend. We experienced for the first time the joy of invading a city’s nightlife with a massive crowd of denim clad sailors and sailorettes and celebrating ourselves. It was glorious and the stuff legends are made of and it set the gold-plated standard that any Jugend event since has strived to live up to.
In the following 17 years the Jugend grew up. Instead of a few hundred we now have over 18 thousand members in 2500 chapters worldwide. We have brought families together – with happy marriages, kids and all – but to be fair we have wrecked a few as well. We have also lost a fair few members along the way but they are always remembered. We have created a worldwide tribe that is a lot more than the just sum of it’s parts.
Australia/New Zealand is a strange branch of this tribe. We have some of the oldest chapters in the world, but they consisted only of a handful of people and other than the two times Turbonegro came down to this part of the world in 2003 and 2012 the Turbojugend didn’t really do much other than the occasional local get-together.
The first Australasian WorldTurbojugendDays in 2012 was where we partied with Turbonegro for five days in Sydney and Melbourne then ended with a day of backyard barbeque and live music in Turbojugend Melbourne’s old headquarters. It was more of an impromptu get together of the existing chapters and was but a taste of what a WorldJugendDay could be. It fanned the embers and from the ashes of this golden age of confusion the denim recruits came to be…
In the following eight years Turbojugend Oceania travelled and made friends. We became a deathpunk tourism destination and any member coming from overseas knows to get in touch with us. Old chapters became active again and today Turbojugend Oceania is as alive and active as ever, the AustralAsian WorldTurboJugendDay there to celebrate this.
Day 1, Last Chance Rock n’ Roll Bar, 5th March 2020 (sold out on a school night)
It’s actually day two as we had a meet up/pub-crawl the night before – so when people started to arrive they already knew each other. When the first chords of Age of Pamparius by The Stripp call the Jugend to the stage the festival was off… Bek Taylor aka Alice Cooper’s daughter showed the crowd that we don’t need Turbonegro to come down to play…
The Stripp who only formed recently performed their own brand of Melbourninan action-rock. I need to digress for a moment for clarification purposes. It took me a while to understand what is actually “Australian” about Australian Rock. When I moved here from Germany nearly 15 years ago I couldn’t hear it – to me Australian rock sounded like a mixture of the classical British rock with some southern US vibes thrown in and the favourite bands of the musicians to round it up. To my ear there was nothing especially Australian, it all sounded like a mixture from somewhere else.
Then one fateful day I realised what it is that makes the Rock from here special: it’s the swagger. Australian’s swagger tongue in cheek which makes it amazing. Rock n’ Roll needs swagger to work but the moment you take yourself too seriously it doesn’t work anymore. Every great Australian Rock band swaggers like buggery, next time you listen to Bon Scott you will hear him smirking…
Anyway the Stripp has swagger. Contemporary high energy rock, awesome songs and amazing performance. They just launched their first EP.
Keggin then blew the mind of Turbojugend Brisbane with their epic songs about goon, goon and what happens if tomorrow catches up…
IhaveaGoat were up next and bloody hell they are living proof that punk still makes great songs…
The FckUps always reminded me of Turbonegro in their hayday so they were the ultimate denim fist to ram down the Jugend’s orifices that night. Bloody hell that show was the stuff of legends…
The night continued with karaoke and DJ Grandmaster Vicious.
Day 2, The Bendigo Hotel, 6th March 2020
Early evening, fresh new arrivals mingle with the slightly damaged survivors of the last day(s). 200 people and a fuckload of kuttes. Never before has there been such a gathering of Turbojugend members from Australia, NewZealand, the US, Mexico, Norway, Germany, Belgium, Japan and Singapore and the Bendi was a great location for that.
Luckily someone already wrote a decent review so I don’t have to do it. Check it out on Desert Highways.
However I would like to add that someone should book Garlic Nun to play at every Turbojugend event from now on…when it comes to homo-erotic Punk Rock they fucking outshine TRBNGR.
Day 3, Spotted Mallard/Welcome Swallow, 7th March 2020
This was the big one. One amazing location, thirteen bands, two stages, two hundred and fifty people. We have seen some amazing local bands in recent years that made our jaws drop and left us with an impression so great that we feel compelled to share this experience with our friends.
And it comes down to the Turbojugend again. While we are a very diverse bunch and probably the most inclusive bunch of people we universally share a certain socialisation in music which includes a lot more roots than just Turbonegro. Our main goal was to give bands that we love an audience that will appreciate them and potentially fall in love…
Dicklaser opened at 4pm downstairs and their take on funny, aggressive, melodic and swaggery as fuck punk rock was the perfect wake up call for the somewhat bleary eyed Turbojugend members who slowly showed up to drink their breakfast…
Thanks to DJ Bobby-Lou Hellacopter who did an amazing all day DJ-set between bands – the set changes were filled with a variety of our favourite tunes…
The Dusty Rhodes from Sydney played next upstairs and talking of swagger, just remember the Hellacopters – “well Death Metal is all nice and good but let’s play something that WE want to play…rock with extra swagger”…the members of Dusty Roads went similar ways until they came together to play what they like… the Australian rock version of the Hellacopters’ approach to rock with extra swagger but then add an additional layer of swagger…blow me backwards, they were great!
Filth Dimension played downstairs next and they are one of my new favourite Melbourne female fronted punk rock bands. Lana on bass is one of the very few people this weekend who also played on the first Australasian WorldTurboJugendDays.
Turbobelco took the upstairs stage and boy they delivered. Our own Australian Turbonegro coverband flew in from ACT and had to replace their singer Hayden (get better soon, mate, we missed you and love you). Fortunately Señor Lover (TJ Hellmont, Dr Colossus) and Two-Fingers (TJ Melbourne, Grindhouse) were there to cover for him and it shook the house. The Jugend got their fix and it was glorious…
The Glycereens from Brisbane ripped through the Melbourne and Jugend crowd like a machete though a pineapple or whatever they use up there. Punky garage rock from the tropics… swaggered as fuck…
Now those all time favourites of mine started while I was having a piss and I missed Doreen but Bastard Nörth found their audience. Those cunts deliver Australian, nay Melbournian ROCK! And swagger, you ask? Bloody oath, their mothers had swagger in their tits bro… those cunts should tour the fucking world, they are that good…
The Stripp then performed for the second time to a full crowd. Another reason why we organised this event was to bring people and bands together and the Jugend provides the musical exchange program. When the Stripp will play Brisbane/Gold Coast start of April, they will perform with Glycereens and the Dirty F-Holes and the Brisbane Jugend has seen them now live on stage twice…
Next up was Destrends. Now every once in a while The First Lady and me go out and see a band that we were vaguely aware of but then seeing them live just hits us…over the head…with an iron frying pan… Destrends was this experience for us. We saw them and were both instantly captured and mesmerised by this flaming genius that is Destrends. Post punk, nihilistic, angry, desperate, sad, don’t care swaggery that takes the best of INXS, The Birthday Party, Midnight Oil, Radio Birdman and creates perfection… I was watching for it and I felt gratified to see quite a number of people in the audience stand there slack jawed because they just got hit…over the head…with an iron frying pan…
I had a few repeat conversations afterwards which were 100% accurate replay of my conversation after I saw Destrends first. “Where are they from?…Melbourne? Nah? You joking?…Fuck me dead…And how long have they been around?…how come I never seen them?…Damn…new favourite band…”
Australian Kingswood Factory were the last to play downstairs and as the icons of the Melbourne punk rock scene also finally found the audience that they deserve. Swagger galore…
Apropos swagger, Los Amigos live such dangerous lives that they can only perform behind masks and I swear one day they’ll get killed by an angry Mexican. They decided to tempt fate one last time and perform their legendary show. They did, if you weren’t there, you missed it…
My absolute favourites from Sydney was next. As with Destrends this was a moment I did wait for as we had quite a few people who have never seen The Neptune Power Federation. The Spotted Mallard is a ballroom from the 1920 and provided the perfect ambience for the Imperial High Priestess and her band to take the audience away to somewhere…the Neptune Power Federation is probably the best live act we have in Australia nowadays. Because of the similar musical socialisation we share in the Jugend the whole audience was ready to be captured into this surreal black mass like experience that just overloads your mind until there is only sound…again looking at people who were seeing them for the first time was a real pay-off for organising this festival.
People of Europe, in June Neptune Power Federation are playing in your area, including the Freak Valley festival in Germany and Funkenflug Festival in Austria – make sure you go see them!
While people were still recovering from the cosmic trip the Priestess and her band sent them on, Grindhouse got onstage and slaughtered the stunned audience. When it comes to swagger I have to invent new leagues just for Mick. Grindhouse is the Melbournian echo to songs Turbonegro put out over 20 years ago. The Jugend and Grindhouse has been a love story from the start and it just gets better with age. Honestly someone should book them to play the WTJDs in Hamburg or Guadelajara… in case you missed this night’s awesome performance they will be touring Europe start of August.
The last performance of the night was Muscle Car‘s final show. After 21 years Muscle Car decided to call it quits and they played their last show with former members during the ages.
Day 4, WholeLottaLove, 8th March.
This was the day for the Turbojugend members who were still standing. It was also Bek’s birthday celebration so it was a private function. From 6pm the mostly bedraggled Jugend showed up for afternoon drinks. After having partied for four days already we had a quiet Sunday good-bye, see you next time celebration.
Jono Barwick opened and saddened the audience up for Suicide Country Hour. I’ve known Jono for a long time but haven’t seen him perform his solo material and fuck yeah, he writes great songs and delivers them with this other kind of Australian swagger, the beat-up survivor swagger…I loved it…
The First Lady and I had the pleasure of having Simmo perform Suicide Country Hour songs for us in his living room. We also had even more pleasure having Simmo and Cox perform Suicide Country Hour songs in our living room but we haven’t experienced the full band. Brisbane Country is best country…their rendition of Sailor Man was both genius and hilarious…but swagger I hear you asking, fuckin’ oath…
Psycho Moto (aka TJ Melbourne all-stars, in a line up with Mark Bastard on Bass and Lindsey Kingswood on lead, plus Bek Taylor) played the best I have ever seen them which is too few and too far in between…holy fuck that was thoroughly enjoyable.…and I am glad that I live in Melbourne and can see them again soon…
The band that closed the festival was the only band that has played both Australasian WorldJugendDays. Levitating Churches were already an amazing band when they hit the stage back in 2012 but they became so fucking good over the years that it was an absolute blast to see them again. They also found their audience in the Jugend and they gave us the pretty rare gift of performing “Hot Cars” from the first TRBNGR album and it just fitted like a denim fist in the ass.
While the more sensible Turbojugend members went to grab a few hours of sleep before the journey home, the rest of the gathered Jugend continued the party at the Bergy Selzer until Lock-In and further…
We have such an amazing music scene down here and I love the fact that Turbojugend has grown to be a part of that. After this four days we are still amazed how well it all worked.
Two hundred and fifty people got together and partied for a very long weekend while listening to a variety of absolutely amazing bands and everyone had a great time, the bands, the audience, the venues, the volunteers and staff.
I started this review with invoking the spirit of the first WorldTurbojugendDays in St Pauli in 2003 because like a drug addict the Jugend always chased after recreating this first ecstatic rush but never quite made it…until now.
Fuck modesty, we bloody well set the new gold standard for WorldTurboJugendDays. One reason is the not-for-profit approach and that’s huge. I mean, who has ever heard of a successful 4-day-festival, 4 venues, 26 bands, merch (t-shirts, special edition hot sauce, patches etc) that was run as a not-for-profit thing?
But again this is the black magic that is Turbojugend. We are a community, a family, a tribe and the community-approach makes this family special. Don’t get me wrong, we needed Bitzcore and Turbojugend St Pauli to get the Turbojugend started and guide them through infancy but since Turbojugend Worldwide took over the reins in 2012 the Turbojugend is a true not-for-profit organisation that runs on shared love and passion.
Thank you Turbojugend for making this happen, thank you to the bloody awesome bands who showed us the amazing diversity of Australian music, your Turbojugend audience loves you!
Thankfully Turbojugend Oceania will not have to wait another eight years for the third Australasian WorldTurboJugendDays. Plans are already underway – we’ll see you in Brisbane…
Were you there in Melbourne for this fun Turbonegro Fan Club Festival? Or have you participated in the WorldTurbojugendDays somewhere else before? Tell us about it in the comments below!
‘There Is No Such Thing As Turbojugend’ is the 3rd book of live music photography by Melbourne based photographer Matt Gleeson and captures the bands and punters attending the 2nd Australasian World Turbojugend Days festival. Only 100 copies of the 84 page book will be available for sale and can be ordered via preorder only exclusively through the 3 Chord Images website.
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