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Bambi Kino Recreate the Beatles’ 1960 Set
Before they were famous, they played in a tiny club in Hamburg, Germany
Bambi Kino (Photo: Andrew Bicknell)
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On August 17, 1960, five blokes from Liverpool came to Hamburg, Germany to play at the Indra Club for 48 (!) nights. The band—consisting of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Pete Best and Stuart Sutcliffe—was expected to play for four-and-a-half hours every weekday night (8-9.30 p.m., 10-11 p.m., 11.30 p.m.-12.30 a.m. and 1-2 a.m.) and six hours every Saturday and Sunday.
It was a miserable experience, but the boys in the then-little known band called the Beatles learned a lot from it, and less than three years later, they would record their first album, Please, Please Me. They would even go on to record some of the standards they perfected in Germany, including “‘Till There Was You” and “Kansas City/Hey Hey Hey Hey.”
Fifty years later (wow), Bambi Kino is paying tribute to these shows that were then mostly seen by prostitutes and drunks and now would be sold out in seconds, if not quicker. The group, named after the movie theater near the Beatles’ residence in Hamburg, is made up of four members from four very famous bands—Mark Rozzo (Maplewood), Ira Elliot (Nada Surf), Doug Gillard (Guided by Voices) and Erik Paparazzi (Cat Power)—and they’re playing the exact setlist the Beatles played in 1960, with the same amount of energy and (hopefully) less prostitutes.
Tonight, September 2, Bambi Kino is playing the Bowery Electric at 8 p.m. More information can be found here.