Featured Essay: Or, Hans Gruber And The Die Hards

by Kory Adams

From a bird’s eye view, it must have looked like the floor of the venue was a particularly high-scoring game of Snake, that old Nokia phone game. People with tall mohawks, studded jackets, patches sewn on with dental floss, everybody, and I mean everyone, was in a conga line while the band played Harry Belafonte’s “Jump On The Line” at a blistering pace. 

The bass-player had jumped into the crowd—wireless instrument and all—and wound everyone around pillars, through archways, and along the walls. I could barely find the end to hop on. And then there were sock-puppets? Man, I’m not even going to get into the sock-puppets. I was having the time of my life, and so was everyone else.

But outside the venue? The world is rough. Unhoused people are begging for support while the tax money meant to support them is funneled or reappropriated or misappropriated who knows where*.* Many of my country’s elites have been implicated in crimes beyond reckoning with no foreseeable consequences. Our leaders can choose to unleash waves of death across the globe without warning or authorization. It’s enough– more than enough– that I feel hopeless and insignificant and I want to just fold myself up and lie down forever. 

Yeah, no, fuck all that though. I may be a small and meaningless blip on the world’s stage, but that doesn’t mean my life isn’t worth living to the fullest. So when I heard Hans Gruber and The Die Hards were coming to town, I picked my ass up, bought two tickets, and asked my partner to come with me. It was, as always when it comes to going to shows, the right call. Two songs in, she turned to me with raised eyebrows and said “Oh, so they’re all insane.”

Up on the stage the band is all pretty much in their underwear, plus or minus a fanny pack; they make the crowd do squats because according to them, “every day is leg day,” and they never, ever seem to run out of energy. After their set the house music started playing “One Step Beyond*”* and the sax player, Rosey, just kept playing along and dancing on the floor while the remaining audience kept the pit going. 

But to me a move that is possibly more wild than all of those antics, is that earlier this year they dropped an absolutely killer album with no buildup or warning. Yes, Or Hans Gruber And The Die Hards is available now at all music vendors of ill repute! 

The new album sounds as if Woody Guthrie and Tom Waits got together and started railing lines of disintegrated Latino skacore LPs. This is most perfectly encapsulated in the song “One Day,” which starts with an intense and thrashy guitar line while guest band The Odd Advantage howls and shrieks about rebeldía. No sooner does your heart rate match the tempo than it all gives way to a slinky New Orleans-esque baritone sax and flutes. 

Then there’s the lyrics “One day the houses we build will be the ones we live in*,”* and before I know it I’ve killed my landlord, crashed my car into city hall, stripped the gold from my local Flock camera, and unmasked and doxxed every ICE agent in the city of LA.

Maybe the most unexpected part of this record is “Throwdown,” the song that could be a pop-radio smash-hit. This really isn’t the kind of thing I come to the Grubes for, but goddamn if I don’t find myself bopping along while Rosey offers (threatens?) the titular throwdown. And despite the slick, poppy sheen, they manage to sneak in some warbly undead-turkey vocal harmonies as a pre-chorus. That vocal style is practically a Gruberino signature, and here it’s fuckin’ sublime. 

As a matter of fact, the record is full of sneaky little hooks. “Chambacú,” a cover of a classic Cumbia tune, is causing a serious divide between me and my partner right now because I cannot stop chanting “CHAAAAM… BAAAAAAA… CUUUUUU” at the absolute bottom of my vocal register every second of the day. 

For those that don’t know (like me, 10 minutes before reading an article about it on bandcamp.com of all places) Chambacú was a town in Colombia that no longer exists. Before it was destroyed, it was considered the largest slum in the country, described in the article as “sitting precariously atop a landfill.” 

The song was written in the 60s, a decade after the government had decided to begin razing the city and relocating the inhabitants. But the catchy little tune would never have the listener believe that. It’s a song about loving your city, loving the land, and dancing all night despite the horrible truth. And the horrible truth is that the government can and will do what it wants– will of the people be damned. (For a closer look at life in Chambacú, check out the novel “Black Slum,” by Manuel Zapata Olivella)

That the Grubadores chose to cover it is, to me, the epitome of ska music and the hard center around which the album revolves. From the Two Tone movement onward artists have reached back in time to pull from music close to their hearts and place it under a contemporary lens. Bands like The Specials revived ska and rocksteady by infusing it with punk in songs like “Ghost Town,” “Rat Race,” and “Concrete Jungle.” These are songs about government crackdowns, malaise, and class-divides. They acknowledge these problems and encourage you to fight when you can while also taking time to find joy. To listen and dance and shout is to exercise your right to humanity.

See, the Gruberites live in and sing about a world where forces beyond our control oppress the common people, act without impunity and terrorize those deemed to be “outsiders.” Things get more surreal with each passing beat, and folks, we live in that same world. Every day we get to read about a level of corruption and evil that would have had Alex Jones screaming himself purple, and even the most outlandish of these theories constantly gets proven true. 

I’m the angriest I’ve ever been in my life, and what do I do about it? What can any of us do? Call our representatives, join our neighbors on the streets and scream at the masked goons in front of the government buildings? Make sure to vote in all your elections, local to presidential? Buy a pallet of water bottles and hand them out to the unhoused? Join your local Buy Nothing group? Volunteer your time somewhere? 

Yes to all of that. But how about just go to a show to start? Grab the shoulders of the guy in front of you and do the conga. When the lights hit just right you’ll catch a glint off the brass, and that’s the glint of hope, baby! I look at the scars I’ve got on my hands from my time doing construction and I know that one day the houses we build will be the ones we live in. They’ll be for our family. They’ll be for our friends.

Hans Gruber And The Die Hards are currently touring the US. Catch me crying and cackling in the pit, carnal. Oh, and do your stretches. And bring a spare sock.

Kory was a passable musician, mediocre at best. When he’s not gasping for breath and rubbing his aching joints juuust outside the pit, you can find him on bluesky as @neverendingkory