Who would have thought that this particular gig we played on October 20th, 2012 would produce our most viewed video to this day – our cover of Drive My Car, currently at 3.3 million YouTube views!
It was the opening song of our third and final set we had played that night. In total we had been on stage for nearly 4 hours and our setlist was 42 songs long! Thinking back, this must have been the longest single gig we ever played.
Uploading “Drive My Car” was a pretty spontaneous decision. One week we needed a new video for YouTube and on a whim decided to pick that song out of the entire setlist. We are glad we did because we know that many of you stumbled across our music because of it!
That particular show was memorable for many reasons, not only for the length of it. It was the only time we had ever performed at this particular venue, and here in the Club we’ll share with you why.
The “Saloon” is a restaurant/music venue in one of the big shopping/entertainment malls in the part of Vienna that we grew up in – the “Donauzentrum”.
Everyone we knew has had at least a few meals there and it was well liked for its food and convenient location. We knew they had regular live bands there, so when we were in the midst of heavy live performing, we thought it was a great venue to add to our live calendar.
The show went fab. The atmosphere was lovely and the crowd was in great spirits, attentive and delighted. When we came off stage that night, all happy and bouncy, we were quite surprised though to meet a slightly disgruntled bar manager. How come?
Literally the first thing he said was that, musically, we were one of the best bands he had ever perform at his place. Well, thank you!
But then he had to add that he was used to people standing on their tables on Saturday nights, chugging beers whiles singing their heart out to (Austrian) country and party songs. He had expected that instead of melodic 60s pop, folk and rock’n’roll songs. It’s still beyond us why he booked us in the first place but it’s something we joke about to this day. In a way he was the Austrian version of Bruno Koschmider, the guy that had told the Beatles to “Make Show” when they were playing in Hamburg in their youth, to cater to a drunk crowd who would leave the most money at the bar.
Kind of ironic that the same night our biggest YouTube hit got created.
And since this is already becoming a longer post we also want to address something that has come up in the comments of our “Drive My Car” video on YouTube every now and then:
Yes, there is a confederate flag on the wall behind us, and no, we didn’t know what it represented back when we played that venue. The first time someone pointed it out in the comments we actually didn’t have a clue what they were talking about. After googling and reading up on the complex history and symbolism connected to the flag, we are now very aware of the controversy and connotation surrounding it. It’s a part of American history many Europeans didn’t necessarily know much about. We doubt that even the restaurant’s owner himself knew about the flag’s history (although we don’t know that for sure) but that it’s been a rather clueless attempt put some “Wild West” looking things up on that wall.
We just wanted to clarify that our playing there was by no means a political statement, so next time you come across an angry comment about the flag, please feel free to share this ♥
Have a groovy day!
Mona & Lisa
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