Depending on what source you trust, at least 500.000 thousand people yesterday celebrated at Brandenburg Gate.
As some veteran of loveparade and the “fanmeile” who has been there for nearly all the last year’s football worldcup matches i would trust the estimates which see 700.000 visitors. As you might remember the Berlin Fanmeile (fanmile) whas the area between Brandenburg Gate and Siegessaeule where up to one million people gathered during each day of last year’s football fiesta.
[...] The event, powered by Coca-Cola and MTV, saw some of the most popular german bands on stage. As we previously reported back here, the 10 finalists of the Coca-Cola Soundwave Discovery Tour had become the chance to perform live on the big stage before it was time for the top acts which are all nominated for the MTV European Music Awards, to show their skills. The lineup included “Die Ohrboten, Ich + Ich, Juli, 2raumwohnung, Silbermond, Sportfreunde Stiller and the Die Fantastischen Vier”.
Due to the great weather, the perfect organization and the headlining bands which you can rarely see in such concentration the mood of the audience was high. After some perfect performances, the surprise act of this day, the Sportfreunde Stiller appeared live on stage, the band who did last year’s summer hit “54, 64, 90, 2006”, some song about germany’s world cup team. Naturally the boys performed their german superhit - this time to honor the german female soccer team who just became the new world champion.
Shortly after 9pm one of the most sucessfull german bands of all times started their show. “Die Fantastischen Vier” also known as Fanta 4 is a German hip hop group from Stuttgart, Germany. The members are Michael Bernd Schmidt alias Smudo, Andreas Rieke alias And.Ypsilon, Thomas Dürr alias Hausmeister (janitor) Thomas D and Michael ‘Michi’ Beck alias Dee Jot Hausmarke. They made German hip hop, or Deutschen Sprechgesang (German spoken-song) as they called it, popular in Germany.
The show of the “Fanta 4” was one of the main reasons why many fans had travelled to Berlin from all over Germany and it was worth it. In some one hour show which had to follow some tight time schedule as it was aired live by MTV, they presented many of their hits and made the crowd sing along to their well known tunes. Some of you non-german electronic music afficionados might at least know their song “Krieger” from Aphex Twin’s 26 Mixes For Cash album.
After some more political gatherings during the previous years, this entertainment highlight called Coca-Cola Soundwave was some event worth being the main attraction during this “Tag der Deutschen Einheit 2007”.
Source: Berlinista
