Free jazz trio Lytton/Moberg/Wachsmann ("The Punk & The Gaffers") on Oct. 24 at the East Passage Theater.

The free-jazz trio Lytton/Moberg/Wachsmann ("The Punk & The Gaffers") makes skulls roar at the East Passage Theater. 

My grandfather had a favorite phrase: "The head hurts, the feet stink - high time to drink a beer." That with the feet one has yes even in the hand. But the head and the beer not necessarily. So I found myself at the concert of the two old and the one young gentleman quite soon at the bar with a beer in the hand - precisely because the head hurt. 

The audience of the Ost-Passage Theater was similarly distributed in terms of age as the artists on stage: one third young people, two thirds older. The motto "Talkin 'bout my Generation" was really lived up to here. The "Gaffers", the two aged jazz veterans Philipp Wachsmann and Paul Lytton, were in no way inferior to the 27-year-old "punk" Kalle Moberg in their performance. After the lights were dimmed, things got off to a fast start. 

Drummer Lytton first put a few empty plastic bottles and tin cans on his toms and energetically pressed them together or hit them with his sticks. Eyes closed, head down: if you hadn't seen his hands, you would have thought he was defusing a bomb. I imagine I also saw a cheese grater on the drums. In the course of the concert, a spatula was used to scrape the cymbal. Perhaps the remaining plaster on the arch could have been scraped off with it - the soundtrack for a stressful job was provided by the three musicians. 

Wachsmann sometimes plucked at the strings of his violin, sometimes slapped the wood with the flat of his hand, or scrubbed the bow crookedly across the strings without regard for loss. There was no lack of creativity in producing the weirdest possible sounds. In the meantime, there was also a groan from a small electronic device underneath the microphone (or was it Wachsmann himself? Hard to say.) Accordionist Moberg tortured choppy tones out of his instrument, reminiscent of kicked dogs. It felt like landing on the soundtrack of an expressionist silent film: At any moment, the shadow of a killer in a coat and hat could be silhouetted against the screen. In the semi-darkness of the hall: a few affected faces. In any case, boredom did not arise. 

The thought with the beer for the head had probably a few other people. Disgruntled pensioners got up in the middle of the concert and pushed their way through the rows towards the aisle. Whether they wanted to get a beer against the headache, hoped for a better view at the edge of the room or simply left, I can not say.

After about half an hour the concert ends with a veritable bang when Lytton stopped rustling around and started banging on the drums. This time actually with drumsticks and no rolling pin. Now everyone was awake again and the applause was sometimes frenetic. The reactions in the re-lit hall can be broken down according to the trio's formula: two-thirds enthusiastic, one-third horrified to relieved-serious. I clearly belong to the minority.