Kaulitzes in Kindergarten

Scream! Scream! Scream! The teen band Tokio Hotel forces themselves onto the US market, tours through the country, and proves in a legendary San Francisco club that above all pubescent screaming is the single true world language of today.

The flair held itself, all changes because of defiance. The area around the Fillmore Street corner Geary is still always a little shabby. Dark house entryways alternate with small lower level shops, neon advertisements advertise fast food restaurants, before which the homeless beg for a few cents for a beer. Above all this, blazes a single yellow sign before the building with the number 1805 - "Fillmore".

Here, in the legendary Fillmore auditorium in San Francisco, the blues were re-discovered. The greats have played here: B.B. King The Who, Santana, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, The Doors, Aretha Franklin, and many more. That, however, is long gone, and now everyone who wants to make it big treads here.

Or even bigger.

Such as Tokio Hotel that teen band from near Magdeburg who proceeded directly to conquer the hearts of the US teenager with their English translated success melodies. With simple, honest lyrics like "Turn around, I am here" or "We are here tonight, leave the word aside," they want to bring the girls to screaming here exactly like they do at home.

In May, the first English-language album "Scream" reached place 5 in the US rock charts and earned the praise of the tasteful music magazine "Rolling Stone": "These boys are biggest German bubblegum-neo-glam-goth-emo-boyband. Of all time."

That wasn't meant ironically. But real help came from the music station MTV, who set not only one fan week, but also nominated the hit "Ready, Set, Go!" in two categories for the MTV Video Music Awards. Does one need more in order to leave teenage hearts captured?

And so stand the fans on this Tuesday evening far down the next block, out in the line until they are let into the Fillmore in small groups to the Tokio Hotel concert.

Way in front stands Cathleen, who held out in a hotel around the corner for a week in order to snag the best spot. "I heard of the band on the internet for the first time, there I didn't know at all that they're from Germany," says the 15-year-old. Afterwards she later read Wikipedia - and she fell in love with the boys even more. "That they sing in two languages impressed me. They lead the word together, and that's good" she says with a pompous seriousness that absolutely doesn't fit into her confession of being "forever in love with Bill".

"San Francisco is Beautiful"

Singer Bill Kaulitz looks like a Japanese cartoon version of Christian Siriano - the youngest winner of the talent show "Project Runway", wrote the "New York Times" in February. And join, the US fans should please not freak out for a "goth-punk-boy-band" led by a "sexy androgynous person with spectacularly spiked hair."

Why not? After all, nothing stays anymore on Rammstein to mint the German image in the US.

The US fans stand freaking out for nothing in any case. When Tokio Hotel took the stage shortly after nine, an ear-deafening screaming concert breaks out - as the fans take the album title "Scream" literally. The parents, in not insignificant numbers, look tortured and seem first relieved when their kids ignore it, sing along with the lyrics.

The object of hysteria is - like in German - singer Bill Kaulitz who presented the first three songs as routinely as little electrifying presentation. First after the third song, he greeted the crowd with little imaginative sentences "Hi everybody, how are you tonight?" and "San Francisco is beautiful!"

That brings the fans to screaming anew, but also shows how ambitious the project of the four boys is, to sing in a language that isn't their mother language.

Music from Kids for Kids

Allegedly, they couldn't speak especially good English a year ago. Their pronunciation is pretty hard, out of "eyes" comes "ice" - but the fans sooner find that to seem sweet. And only on that, it's brought. In order to release the enthusiasm storm, it works anyway that Kaulitz bends down and touches hands now and then. Sometimes he even stretches the microphone out into the audience, but such designed gestures for big halls don't work in the Fillmore, the venerable jazz club is too intimate.

Here on this evening, simple kids music is made for other kids - what isn't certainly absolutely bad if the band and fans are lucky. Only too bad, that neither one nor the other appears to know where they stand.

The boys had only jerked their shoulders, when they would make it noticeable where they appear, says a member of the crew. Most of the fans don't notice the hundreds of concert posters in the lobby of the Fillmore that represent decades of music history once the four boys enter.

Where something of Tokio Hotel's will soon also hang, according to tradition. After just barely an hour, the concert is over. Elders, who still know other times, wonder. "No concert can end so early," the taxi driver snarls. "That was different earlier."

He probably doesn't know the total work of Tokio Hotel still doesn't really grant a longer appearance.


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