Rote Liebe — Where It All Leads Back

The first time I went to Rote Liebe, I didn’t like it at all. It was 1995.
The club in Essen was packed, cheerful House music was playing and the dancefloor was full of people having what
appeared to be an absolutely fantastic time. Terrible. At that point, I wanted Techno. Raw, dirty and fast.
Preferably played in places that were equally raw and dirty. Dark basement clubs. Not much light. Lots of Techno.
Rote Liebe was not what I was looking for. Or at least that is what I thought.

Every Saturday

Two friends of mine loved the place and kept persuading me to go back with them. So I did. Again. And again.
And somehow, without really noticing when it happened, we started going every Saturday.
And something even stranger happened. I started liking it. At first, I didn’t know anybody there apart from
my two friends. Between dancing and getting something to drink, we spent quite a lot of time watching the other guests.
Some of them were difficult not to notice. There was one guy we called Zorro, because he sometimes wore a black
mask around his eyes. Then there was the Disco Fraktion. They were a group who always seemed to arrive very late.
They would appear, dance intensely for two or three hours and then disappear again.

We didn’t know these people. So we gave them names.
Week after week, we saw the same faces. And gradually, something changed. They stopped being random people in a club.

Going Alone

Eventually, my two friends became less interested in the music at Rote Liebe. I had the opposite problem.
I wanted more of it. By then, I was going almost every Saturday and quite often on Fridays as well.
And when my friends didn’t want to go anymore, I went alone. There wasn’t really a decision involved.

I wanted to hear that music. And there was nowhere else where I was hearing quite the same thing.
Over time, I started getting to know more and more of the people I had previously only seen on the dancefloor.
Some became friends. Eventually, there was no real need to arrange anything in advance. You simply went to Rote Liebe.
Your people would be there. What had initially seemed like a room full of strange characters slowly became something
resembling a little family. The club hadn’t changed. I had.

I Just Wanted to See Josh Wink

One night in 1995, Josh Wink was playing. My friends had said they might come as well. They didn’t.
It didn’t matter. I wanted to see Josh Wink. So I drove from Sprockhövel to Essen. Before going to the club,
I needed cash. There was a bank branch not far from Rote Liebe, so shortly after midnight I stopped there to use the ATM.
Except I couldn’t get inside. At the time, some bank foyers with ATMs had opening hours. After midnight, the doors were locked.

No access. No cash. No Josh Wink.
I tried another bank. Same problem.
This was becoming inconvenient.

Then I remembered another ATM. That one was outside the building. Perfect. There was just one minor detail.
It was 23 kilometres away. So I drove 23 kilometres to an ATM. Withdrew some money. Yeah!
And drove 23 kilometres back to Essen. Because I wanted to see Josh Wink.
By the time I parked and reached Rote Liebe, it must have been around 1:30 in the morning.
There was a huge queue outside. Of course there was. I joined it anyway.

And then something unexpected happened. After only a short time, the doorman waved me in.
I have no idea why. I wasn’t going to ask. I had just driven 46 unnecessary kilometres for cash.
I was going to see Josh Wink. I walked downstairs, opened the curtain leading towards the dancefloor
and entered a club already in full motion. What happened next became one of those musical memories that has stayed with me ever since.
Josh Wink was playing Daft Punk’s Rollin’ & Scratchin’. But that part of the story has already been told elsewhere.
Apparently, even my stories keep finding their way back to Rote Liebe.

The Record Shop and the Club

By then, another place had become closely connected to Rote Liebe for me:
Important Records in Essen. The relationship between the two places was simple. I heard records at Rote Liebe.
Then I went looking for records at Important. At Important, I discovered more records. Then I heard some of them at Rote Liebe.

The resident DJs shopped there too, and sometimes I would buy a record during the day and hear exactly the same record
being played at the club that night. For someone still learning about House music, it was an almost perfect cycle.

Listen.
Search.
Buy.
Listen again.

And around all of that were other people who loved music and talked about records, artists and labels. Without really planning it,
I was building the musical map I still use today. Sometimes, though, my research methods were slightly less sophisticated.

The Red Bus

One night, I heard a record at Rote Liebe that completely caught me.
I wanted to know what it was. But apparently I had already asked DJs what they were playing often enough, because this time I decided not to ask again.
Instead, I looked at the record on the turntable. There wasn’t much information I could use. What I could see was a red bus on the label. Fine.

I would remember the bus. A week later, I was at Important Records. I explained to Thommes that I was looking for a record.

I didn’t know the artist.
I didn’t know the title.
I didn’t know the label.
But there was a red bus on it.

Apparently, this was sufficient information. Thommes went to the records and pulled out exactly the one I was looking for:

The Fifth Edition – Road Trip.

Today, you could probably take a photo, search online or find some other way of identifying it within minutes.
My search method was: Red bus. Ask Thommes. It worked. And Road Trip is still one of my favourite records today.

Learning What I Liked

The most important thing Rote Liebe gave me was not one particular record, DJ or night. It changed the way I listened to House music.
When I first walked into the club in 1995, I didn’t even want House music. I wanted Techno. By the time Rote Liebe ended in the
summer of 1997, I had spent almost every party there.

Residents or guest DJs.
Friday or Saturday.
Friends coming with me or nobody coming with me.
It didn’t really matter anymore.

The music I heard there had become part of how I understood House. And Rote Liebe became the starting point for much of the music
I would search for afterwards. That influence is still there.

Where It All Leads Back

I didn’t really notice how often Rote Liebe appears in my musical memories until I started writing these stories.

Daft Punk leads back there.
DJ Sneak leads back there.
Cajual Records leads back there.
The records I bought at Important Records lead back there.
A track comes on and I remember a dancefloor.
Another reminds me of a particular night.
Sometimes I remember the lights.
Sometimes I remember the people.
Sometimes I remember nothing except how the record made the room feel.

The club itself was only part of my life for a relatively short time. From 1995 until the summer of 1997.
But almost thirty years later, I am still following paths that began there.

I still search for records.
I still follow artists into labels and labels into other artists.
I still occasionally play records I first heard during those years.

And The Tribute Mix Show itself is built around the same curiosity that grew during that period: hear something,
follow it, find out where it leads. When I first walked into Rote Liebe, I thought I was in the wrong club.
I had no idea I was walking into the place that would shape almost everything I listened to afterwards.
Maybe that is why, after all these years, so many musical roads still seem to lead back to the same place.

Down the stairs. Through the curtain. And onto that dancefloor.