A heart for subculture

As a youngster, Michael Wiegand organised underground concerts in the Odenwald forest. Today, he runs a club that is known well outside the boundaries of the Rhine-Neckar Metropolitan Region—the Café Central. 

Three decades of Café Central are preserved on three walls full of posters. Mambo Kurt looks onto the stage from the right. The “King of Home Organ” with his iconic bald head and the 1970s sunglasses loves to perform at metal and hard rock festivals and is an integral part of the Café Central programme. Further in the middle, you can see the Knorkator guys, renowned for their bizarre performances, in which they make music on toilet brushes or launch chopped vegetables at the audience. After the band’s first gig in Weinheim, Michael Wiegand had to pull chunks of cucumber out of the mixing console. “It was legendary,” the club manager says, as his gaze continues to wander over the posters. Casper, KIZ, Zebrahead, Absolute Beginner, Samy Deluxe—they were all here, and most of them long before they made it big.

Since 1995, Café Central draws bands of all genres and from all over the world to Weinheim. It is hard to imagine the club scene of the region without Café Central. The club won the Applaus-Award, a prize awarded by the ministry of education and cultural affairs for outstanding music clubs and event series. It is just a few minutes’ walk from Weinheim main station to Café Central. With its high windows, its broad staircase and spacious rooms, you can easily envisage that kids once strolled to their classrooms here. That is, despite the fact that the days when the building on Hauptstrasse, the main road, was used as a school are long over. Built in the beginning of the 20^th century and used as a youth centre on and off, it is now owned by the town of Weinheim. The Stadtjugendring—an urban youth organisation—is located on the ground floor, while Café Central rents out the first floor.

“I sort of stumbled into this,” Michael says about the first years when they established the club. A friend who was a social worker had taken over the former youth centre. He brought him and another friend on board because he knew that the two organised concerts. Three years after the club was founded, the other friends followed different pursuits. Since then, Michael has been running the club alone, and—much to his own surprise—actually likes that. “Although I am the youngest of five kids, I like working on my own,” the reserved and rather unobtrusive man with tousled hair and greying beard says.

Only a few metres and two doors are between his office and the stage. If need be, he can work here while up to 300 guests party next-door. “When I shut the door to my office, I hear almost nothing of the concerts.” Most of the time, though, he wants to hear the concerts, of course—since quite often he is himself surprised by the musicians that he booked. His latest discovery is Odd Couple, a Berlin-based duo whose genre is hard to pinpoint.

We have worked together a lot with local bands right from the start—and we will keep that going

Michael Wiegand

A certain similarity with Café Central’s programme comes to mind here: While the club used to be known for its punk rock gigs in its initial phase, all kinds of metal bands perform here now, too. “Café Central has somehow developed a life of its own,” Michael says with a sly smile. “We’re trendier now.” In the past, the focus was more on pop music, e.g., Wir sind Helden, Silbermond and Mark Forster. Just recently, however, Gutalax, a band from the Czech Republic, was here. Goregrind is what their musical style is called. “Basically, they just grunt, yet on a high level,” as the club manager describes it and he does not at all mean it ironically. In-between, there are events like readings, a circus for kids, techno, ska, the Odenwald Shanty Choir, newcomers and many regional artists. “We have worked together a lot with local bands right from the start—and we will keep that going,” Michael promises.

When he came to Café Central in 1995, he was training to become an electronics specialist for energy systems. He never really worked in that profession, since Café Central quickly took off. Even as a youngster, the man, who originally is from Mörlenbach, organised improvised concerts in the Odenwald forest. A carpenter friend built the stage, Michael and his friends organised the bands and drinks, took both to a hut in the forest and even performed on stage themselves. “In the Odenwald, you need to get something going by yourself, otherwise you’re lost. That was rock’n’roll,” the club manager says.

He played bass, guitar and drums temporarily in four bands, “classic noise-rock”, meaning a lot of noise—as the name of the music style implies—and rattling sounds. By now, he can take pleasure in various styles of music. His motto is “There is only good and bad music.” If musicians master their genre, they are welcome in Café Central. “The only kinds of music you will never hear at our place are Schlager and politically right-wing music.”  

In the early days, the bands Michael booked sometimes spent the night in his old teen bedroom. “It was a tough road,” he says recounting a time when music agencies had no idea where Weinheim was and simply wouldn’t reply. This is why Michael focused on local bands and newcomers, on good food and decent sound—a concept that proved successful.  

The breakthrough came around the turn of the millennium when German hip hop got big. Michael has known many of the bands for decades that have performed at Café Central: “Demented, Peacocks, Mambo Kurt—they are part of the family.” And sometimes they are indulged with roast turkey and candied beans by the club owner. The boss actually cooks for all the bands himself. “I perceive myself a bit like a hostel warden.” This is why it became so important for him that the artists he books are not only good musicians, but are also nice people.

Like Hermeto Pascoal, who performed in Café Central in 2022. The Brazilian jazz musician and multi-instrumentalist was back then already in his mid-80s. Pascoal, who looks a bit like Santa Claus, has the ability to elicit sound from even the most absurd of objects. In Café Central, he coaxed sounds out of little plastic pigs, amongst other things—in front of merely 80 guests. “Commercially, that went down the drain. But it was the most awesome concert that we ever had,” as Michael recounts enthusiastically. “Absolutely dada, yet brilliant. The audience got goose bumps.” In moments like these, he senses very clearly that it is Café Central where he is at home.

https://cafecentral.de