Last night I had the rare treat of being able to see LaBrassBanda perform live at Strathmore, in Bethesda, MD. It was a typical sultry summer evening, and this was a free outdoor performance with the audience casually lounging on the grass mere feet from the band, but all of this helped to contribute to a very festive and relaxed evening with the band. The crowd was an interesting mix of older Strathmore "regulars" who show up for all of the venue's free concerts, families with young children like my own, employees and friends of the German Embassy that hosted the concert, and 20-something year-old Germans who were obviously already familiar with LaBrassBanda and were there to dance the night away.
Those of you who have seen Labrassbanda's performances on YouTube, or on their recently released video "Live im Circus Krone München" will have a pretty fair idea of what the show was like. For over an hour and a half, the increasingly energetic crowd was treated to lots of raucous horns, a spectacularly tight rhythm section, and the kind of high-speed Bavarian German rap vocals that leaves your head spinning and you gasping for breath. The older people in the audience enjoyed the virtuoso musicianship, while the kids and the young adults enjoyed the opportunity to work up a healthy sweat by dancing like maniacs.
As lead singer Stefan Dettl told us at the beginning of the show, this was LaBrassBanda's first ever performance in the United States. I am incredibly happy that I could be there to welcome them. If their reception on the other two stops on their brief U.S. tour is as warm as it was at Strathmore, I hope that they will return for many more performances.
BTW: If you want to see more of LaBrassBanda playing live (in addition to seeing my earlier post on them from a few weeks ago), check out their songs: Des konst glam, Aussenriess, or I Like da Butty Man.
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