Autumn in Munich

Autumn is rushing in with brisk gusts of mountain air carrying the promise of snow-packed weekends (snow line went down to 1000m/3300 ft this weekend). So parents of young boys naturally flock to new forms of Sunday entertainment. We went to see the fantastic Poncho Ponys, who play country music for kids.



They're one of the first examples round here, that kids' entertainment doesn't have to follow the traditional cuddly bear/Judy&Punch line of anachronistic kids' culture. The Poncho Ponys sure are hip, following kind of a Sunny's/Red Hook mentality of a good night out. Which is about as hip as it gets right now in the Western hemisphere. Sure helps of course to have an ace art direction for your kiddo Western Swing band.



Karl was deeply mesmerized by his first full-on underground music pop show. It sure helped that he had already listened to the Poncho Ponys CD about a gazillion times, thus knowing all the songs about "Der schlimme Jim" (mean Jim), "Kaugummikauen" (chewing gum) or the "Forgetful Cowboy". We took along Ferdinand with Amelie and Benny again. Having amazoned Ferdinand the CD as well of course helped to hype up the pre-pre-prepubescent pop hysteria. Which actually manifested itself quite differently. While Ferdinand was glad to sit in the kiddie mosh pit and jump up on stage for the grand finale (see the kid in the white shirt right on the front of the stage below), Karl was quite happy to sit on Fred's lap and listen with literally red-hot ears to every word they sang. Henri slept through most of the show, but when he woke up he was more of a mosh pitter as well, wich we had to limit to pogo-dancing on mom's lap due to age-related limitations to his abilities to independent movements.
Afterwards we went for drinks and cake to our favorite Cafe (with a reservation under the name of Karl, because that's the name which guarantees you the best table in the ouse, which we indeed got. Whose proprietor Georg actually turned us on to the Poncho Ponys in the first place.