The Apart Hotel celebrates its 25th anniversary. And this despite the fact that the club has been closed for ten years. This shows that the fans’ love for this Swiss rock institution has not ceased. So is our writer.
Nothing bores me more than people constantly dwelling on the supposedly good old days. If you do, you will now be missing out. However, being in my mid-30s, I’m not immune to nostalgia after a beer or two – or after listening to the latest episode of Sounds! Story podcast, where the Abart founders reveal the history of their club (above in this article).
Abart, the club that has made Zurich a Swiss melting pot of guitar music for 15 years. It closed its doors in 2012 because Sihlcity had developed from an industrial area into a residential one. But also because it’s time.
Shut down before it gets sloppy, boring, or worse, irrelevant. This is probably one of the main reasons why so many people – myself included – mourn the loss of the store after ten years.
New York and London in Zurich
As a mountain boy from Graubünden, I wasn’t introduced to modern indie rock (or “post-punk revival”, if you only listen to music on vinyl and drink only expensive craft beer) in local pubs – there was only Gimma, Ska or Gimma who He played Ska. Instead, the soundtrack of the snowboarding game “SSX on Tour” (Bloc Party! Maxïmo Park! LCD Soundsystem!) introduced me to the genre and on my first visit to Abart in fall 2006 I heard it in the real world for the first time.
From the photo vault
People in this neon-lit industrial hideaway on the Manessestrasse looked like those at hip parties in New York and London: they wore skinny jeans, V-necks or tank tops, and Chucks or Chelsea boots, and danced spectacularly on them from spilled drinks and spilled sweat. . The metal floor that became slippery to hits by the Arctic Monkeys, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and The Strokes. It sounds disgustingly cheesy, but: You’ve found a new home.
When the stars were still an astrologer
In my new room, which holds about 400 alternative nerds, I see Calvin Harris, who is actually still doing passable music with bands like Acceptable Eighties. You paid tribute to The OC’s West Coast darlings Rooney and their long-running hit When Your Heart’s Gone? And at the Kraftklub mosh pit, I learned that sweat can drip from the ceiling.
In between, I interviewed bands at the Abart-Backstage as a blue-eyed music journalist, made my way through the party crowd as a runner collecting broken glasses, became a resident DJ for the Supersonic concert series, met the bar manager and got to know my next girlfriend in Outside between two concerts (by contrast, I haven’t done the clean transition between them to DJing).
There was never an alternative
Now it happened: I enjoy the past. Abart shaped my twenties more than anything else. And like me, a whole string of former rock, rock and metal kids from Switzerland who suddenly no longer had this room in January 2013, apart from the short-lived Kinski (today Klaus) on Langstrasse, could not find a new room. one whether.
Sure, life went on and on. But with the variator it was a little hotter. And louder anyway.
The 25th anniversary of the opening of Abart will be celebrated on Saturday, January 28th at Dynamo Zurich.
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