Reeperbahn Festival 2011

The buzzword at Reeperbahn Festival, a music conference with live music in the evening, is 'gentrification'. Held in the wretched red light district of Hamburg, which is also the city's live music quarter, the festival is awash with the German interpretation of rock 'n' roll. To be polite: it's not the most progressive reading of the genre. Patronising I know. Sorry Germany, Angela Merkel, David Hasselhoff, punctuality and who/whatever else I may have offended with that comment.

That said, rock and roll is embedded in the lives of the Reeperbahn's inhabitants. With a tradition of live music, we were shown all the old haunts which The Beatles played when they came to learn their trade. The festival provided a lot of things, mostly beer and food, flights and accommodation, but on top of these essentials, we were taken on a tour of venues The Beatles played. To give you a précis, "The Beatles played here; they weren't very good; locals complained; here's a Beatles song performed on my ukelele." There's even a museum of The Beatles.

What has happened in the area is that after years of neglect by local authorities, an underclass of citizens have moved on in: in many ways the quarter is one huge squat. These inhabitants cultivated a space with excitement, politics, the greatest football club in the world in F.C. St. Pauli. There's truly some magic to the area. Now the government have realised that there is money to be made with tourism, in a scheme that probably involves stag do's. However, marching in on horseback, constructing concrete and glass monstrosities which resemble dystopias and kicking out the people who have invested the area with love and care, has provoked much criticism.

With this in mind, the government have been able to subsidise the festival, bringing in fancy foreign bands, such as Souterrain Transmissions stalwarts in Moon Duo and EMA, and City Slang's Herman Dune (both labels work out of the same Berlin office) and The War On Drugs (who were mind-blowing thanks to some Swiss friends). The Ravonettes pulled out for health reasons so besides the brilliance of the aforementioned bands who I'm sure you're all too familiar with, there are slim pickings to take back from this reccy.

It isn't until the last night, the last band, where the festival starts to make sense. The Lanskies, a group from Normandy with a Scouse lead singer perform in the town's Number 1 indie venue. They are a long way from changing the game but they certainly captured the zeitgeist of the town.

With the bar packed out and a very stern German bouncer keeping many onlookers at bay, they brewed a sweaty mess: the lead singer transformed a tiny stage into the Palladium and the crowd gulped it down like a toilet. As much as authorities and residents battle for the area, all trying to create a utopia, the crude reality is that artists such as the Lanskies are the only people who can provide the synthesis required. A truly lovely moment.