Tito & Tarantula Live At Rockpalast 2008 & 1998 (2-CD & 2-DVD)

(MIG Music) 54 tracks

A shady strip joint with the subtle name "Titty Twister" somewhere in no man's land behind the Mexican border. Like a high priestess, a dancer (Selma Hayek) enters the stage in front of the assembled demimonde. Columns of fire erupt. A pearly guitar lick sets in and her lascivious snake dance begins, accompanied by the no less hypnotic sounds of the song "After Dark", performed by a house band in mariachi suits: Tito & Tarantula. This scene from Robert Rodriguez' cult film and Quentin Tarantino collaboration 'From Dusk Till Dawn' has probably been etched into the collective consciousness of pop culture forever since it first flickered across the screen in 1996.

The first international success phase is aptly documented by the Rockpalast performance on June 21, 1998 at the Loreley. It was Tito & Tarantula's third guest appearance on German stages, at that time still with violinist and mandolin player Lyn Bertles. The bubbling mixture of blues, rock and Americana captivated the audience just as much as the dubious audience in the famous movie sequence. While Tito & Tarantula continued to release albums in the following years with a changing line-up of musicians and toured constantly on our continent, the recording included as a bonus on DVD 2 is certainly one of the most unusual concert stories that a musician's life can tell.

Planned as a club show (capacity 350 people), the crowd was so large that the concert was moved to the street without further ado and a spontaneous open-air show in front of 5,000 people made a virtue of necessity. The Rockpalast performance from the fall of 2008, recorded at the Harmonie in Bonn, shows Tito & Tarantula in perhaps their most unforgettable and natural setting: the band plays a hot-blooded set of songs from their album 'Back Into Darkness' to atmospheric, dim lighting.