Fifty Years of Punk Gets a Berlin Archive Room at Columbia Theater

For the coming Thursday-to-Sunday stretch, September 24–27, one of the calendar’s most distinctive music events arrives as a listening-and-looking proposition. On Saturday, September 26, John Robb and Mark Reeder take over Columbia Theater for “50 Jahre Punk,” an evening structured around conversation with guests, projections and photo exhibitions. The format gives the weekend a useful focal point: an opportunity to hear figures associated with punk, post-punk and adjacent underground scenes place their own histories beside visual evidence from the period. Columbia Theater lists the program for 8:00 PM, with doors at 7:00 PM.^[1][2]

The guests give the event its breadth. Pauline Murray, Colin Newman, Budgie, Annette Benjamin, Alexander Hacke, Malka Spigel and Thomas Schwebel are billed alongside Robb and Reeder, linking English punk and post-punk to German underground lineages. Murray’s Penetration, Newman’s Wire and Immersion, Budgie’s work with Siouxsie and the Banshees and the Slits, Benjamin’s Hans-A-Plast, Hacke’s Einstürzende Neubauten connection, Spigel’s Minimal Compact and Immersion, and Schwebel’s S.Y.P.H., Mittagspause and Fehlfarben credits make the evening a map of overlapping scenes. Silke Super is announced as moderator, keeping the encounter in conversation form instead of turning it into a sequence of separate sets.^[1]

Robb and Reeder give that guest list a strong Manchester-to-Berlin axis. Robb’s official biography traces his work from the post-punk fanzine era and the Membranes through writing, broadcasting, books and the Louder Than War platform. Reeder, a Manchester native who has lived in Berlin since 1978, carries another route into the city’s music history: Columbia Theater’s event notes connect him with The Frantic Elevators, Die Unbekannten and Shark Vegas, as well as production, remixing, film and label work. The venue also identifies his earlier Factory Records and Joy Division role in Berlin. Together, their conversation can hold British punk’s local beginnings alongside the particular transmission of those ideas into West Berlin.^[1][3]

Images, artifacts and the point of the archive

The visual component is essential to this date. Columbia Theater announces rare projections of photographs, posters and artifacts from Archiv B Berlin, plus a touring photo exhibition by documentary photographer Sabine Schwabroh. Archiv B describes itself as an official archive for bands, artists, photographers, venues, labels and fanzines from West German and West Berlin punk and post-punk in the 1970s and early 1980s. That institutional connection gives the evening a material focus: the accounts onstage sit alongside the flyers, images and objects that circulated around the music when these networks first formed.^[1]

Plan around the 8:00 PM start at Columbia Theater, Columbiadamm 9–11; entry is scheduled from 7:00 PM. The date falls on Saturday, September 26, within the September 24–27 weekend guide window. Tickets and any final running-order information are handled through the venue’s official event page. Recheck Columbia Theater’s official pages before leaving, since guest participation, door times and event logistics can change.^[1][2]

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source metadata follows in the dedicated sources field.  All core factual program details are supported by the listed official pages.^[1][2][3]

Sources

1. John Robb & Mark Reeder — Columbia Theater
2. Columbia Theater Programme — Columbia Theater
3. Biography — John Robb Official