The Concert Dealer

Kraftwerk, Björk, Rammstein oder Robbie Williams on tour. These are not just concerts, but pop operas, the most spectacular stage events of the modern era. Tens of thousands make their pilgrimage to these stadiums and concert halls. But no one knows the man behind it all. For over 30 years Scumeck Sabottka has been a “Concert Dealer”, constantly travelling, constantly negotiating, always on the look out for the next big thing. An ex-punk from the Ruhr valley, who started out as the driver for the band Die Einstürzenden Neubauten, who worked his way up, narrowly escaping bankruptcy twice, to finally agree a deal with the legendary promoters Fritz Rau and Marcel Avram. With this portrait, Sobo Swobodnik goes behind the scenes of the concert industry and shows the tough globalised business of touring. Accompanied by the magnificently weird sounds created by Dinos Chapman, the film pursues a man as contra-dictory as the business he is in. The “Concert Dealer” is both the hunter and the hunted, he is both underground and mainstream, both glamorous and drab.