One sunny day 11 years ago my friend and fellow DJ Wladimir had a revelation. "We are getting too big, he said, - we need our own club where we can have parties and gigs every day, we'll pick up the bands and DJs ourselves, wouldn't that be just fabulous?". Of course!, I replied. What else could i say, having your own club...isn't that a dream coming true? At that point of our lives we used to spin records twice a month, having up to 800 people coming to dance to our music in a club that could handle only 200, so no wonder Wladimir came up with this idea.
Soon the place for the club was found, and it was big enough to receive all our guests, and even some more. We called it "Rodina", which means "homeland" in russian and "family" in ukrainian, we wanted the extended family of our fans to party there every night, the new club should have become their homeland. The location was not really perfect, not in Berlin's club and party zone, but quite close, just two stations away from the Alexanderplatz, at the Jannowitzbrücke. And it was cheap! Well, not exactly cheap, but cheap-for-a-place-that-big. The problem was, as we were to realise soon, noone would turn up. Two stations was a distance that berlin-based party people just wouldn't cross. Some nights were better than others, the soundsystem was outstanding and the drinks for the crew were always free (have I mentioned that back then I wasn't a sober DJ yet?).
We would cooperate with some unlikely peers, like a successful but very underground techno line called Susie & Sabine. They would advertise their gigs via mailing list, and would attract hundreds of technoheads. However, their audience was very suspicious when they would see that there was some unknown dj-team playing. "Russendisko? Whjat is that?", they'd ask the girls at the cashier desk. "Oh, this is just some....music WITH LYRICS", they'd reply. That summed it up quite well, actually. What did we play? Music with lyrics, true. For some techno purists that was a shock, they would leave immediately, other would stay till dawn, and longer than that. It was like a clash of two worlds, our followers would be getting drunk at the bar (with the DJs), while the techno lovers would take drugs in the restrooms. The drugs would start to work as the drinking part of the congregation was already pissed and ready to go home.
We had to give up the club in 2007. After all, it wasn't THAT cheap, and the clubgoers were still too lazy or spoiled or not interested, and a huge construction site right in front of the doors of "Rodina" would make the place actually invisible. So paying the rent became quite painful. So when I heard there's another guy opening a club at the Jannowtzbrücke, I just laughed and wished him luck. But it turned out Pasha Interpaul was much more successful than we were, and guess what, after 8 years he is still there.
