Shameless/Limitless - Interview with Kevin Halpin
- halfofarainbow
- Nov 25, 2024
- 7 min read
Updated: Nov 25, 2024
Originally published in Tutti Frutti Magazine #3
If you have been to a DIY show in Berlin, there is a good chance it might have been by local promoter Shameless/Limitless. During the last 15 years, the one-man brand created by Kevin Halpin has put on countless shows in established venues like 8MM, Loophole, Das Gift, Monarch, Sameheads, WestGermany, and even Berghain. S/L has become a trademark for unforgettable nights, for raw and fresh talent, and it continues to surprise fans of underground music.
In 2021, Kevin compiled the promotional posters and texts for his shows from 2008 – 2020 in the book ‘Please Come’ – a spectacular documentation of the DIY scene. We met Kevin for a beer in Neukölln.
TF: You have been putting on shows at Loophole (RIP) now for quite some time! You're like an unofficial looper.
Kevin: Yeah, it seems to be like that. It's a good arrangement for me because the collective stuff I've always found difficult. But here, collectives were the thing in 2008, 2009, 2010, and it was more club music - live music like this wasn't around that much or I didn't know about it.
TF: Alex Cameron is quoted in ‘Please Come’: “We've gone from five people in a gay bar one summer afternoon, to main stage at Berghain with Molly Nilsson.” Tell us about that.
Kevin: Do you know Alex Cameron? He's one who got bigger than most, tours internationally and releases on ... Do you know Secretly Canadian, the label?
TF: No!
Kevin: This is another thing that I often encounter: even in a world where we're all interested in the same stuff, people say they like indie music, and they never have heard of the biggest artists who I have heard of.
TF: What's the story behind the name? Why shameless and limitless?
Kevin: That was someone I met in my early days here and kept in touch with. She lived in Liverpool, we were just in email contact and catching up – and she said her weekend was shameless and limitless. It was just a funny expression that caught my attention. She actually made one of the first few posters in [the book].
"I have this thing set up - if the alternative is to just stop and not have anything else going on, I'll keep it going."
TF: 15 years of shows! What has kept you going the whole time? How did you end up being Kevin from Shameless / Limitless?
Kevin: Starting with a lot of enthusiasm and excitement! Then catching momentum, and it is a job to some extent, too. There's income from it. But it was mostly about fun – until 2018 I was an English teacher primarily, teaching in private language schools. It was more like a hobby. COVID obviously interrupted things significantly for a long time – and then coming out of COVID, things changed a lot. I do much less now than I used to.
But at a certain point I realized that no other opportunities were coming up as a result of the extra time I had now. Sometimes you think, if I pull back from this, maybe other doors will open. But that wasn't really the case. And then I was just like: I'm good at it, I like it. And it's different now than it was.
TF: How do you mean that it’s different?
Kevin: It was a lot more community-based before. You can't really overstate how much COVID impacted different things. But in fairness, we all got older too. So I totally understand people not wanting to keep going to Loophole in their 40s. It's still fun, I make some money doing it. I have this thing set up, it's like, I'll just keep going. If the alternative is to just stop and not have anything else going on, I'll keep it going.
For a while I thought it would grow, you know, and I could be running thousand cap or two thousand cap shows. But I found that to develop it in that way takes a ton of investment and risk and a competitive attitude that I didn't have, approaching it as a primarily social thing. So that's why it's still such a relatively small level 15 years in.
TF: Generally, shows today have gotten more expensive. Did you observe this inflation directly?
Kevin: Definitely. Particularly coming back from COVID it was a big change that everything was up. That's another reason why I’m sticking to doing things at a small level. If you're gonna try and book touring bands in hotel rooms and get them taxis, and all these associated costs, it's just higher and annoying.
"I think that to get big one has to leave Berlin and go to London, New York or LA and party with lots of people."
TF: You've been booking a lot of venues since 15 years that are still staples of the scene, like WestGermany, Loophole and Sameheads. How have they changed in the last 15 years? Is there a different crowd? What about the atmosphere? And what do you ythink of newer venues like Hinterraum, Loge and 90 Mil?
Kevin: WestGermany has not changed at all. They really hold a special place in my heart because they were the first venue where I could do something. The Loophole evolution has been amazing because it was more outsider music when I started there. I love Jan (Loophole boss), but now it's much more organized than it used to be. You'd go there and the projector's broken, the amp's broken, the toilets don't flush. Figure it out. (laughs)
Sameheads is really cool. I just haven't done stuff there in years because I've kind of moved away from the club focus and it's a bit small for a live space. I'm happy they're still going. I think they're an integral part of the neighborhood.
These new places, it's very difficult to initiate a relationship with a venue. It took me a long time to get into Loophole. I felt lucky with WestGermany. And then once you do that it's important to try to maintain that. I would have imagined that through my body of work, it would be easier to develop new relationships. But I've contacted new places and not gotten a response from them. At this point, I've learned to not expect it. At some point I would have been like, what the hell? How do I get some respect? (laughs)
TF: Some of the artists you put on in the beginning of their careers are now big and successful. Weyes Blood, Molly Nilsson, Mac DeMarco … Do you feel like you helped their success? Are you surprised by it?
Kevin: I guess I would have imagined more artists would have gotten bigger. There was a period when it was really active with a lot of local Neukölln artists releasing music. Molly has always kind of stood alone, and she was honestly already big when I started working with her.
I think that to get big one has to leave Berlin and go to London, New York or LA and party with lots of people. That's what you gotta do. Because it was like, oh, you know, maybe Berlin will be like Brooklyn or Montreal, people will look to it as a scene. And that didn't really develop. With Alex Cameron, who got big, I wasn't really surprised just because he was so good. He networked a lot and moved around and did it that way.
Mac DeMarco – that was surprising. I knew him because he lived in Vancouver before. He just played small shows there so I was aware of him. I lived in New York briefly, and saw he was coming through. I went to see him, he was standing outside before the show and I approached him, talked to him and then someone's like, hey Mac, you gotta get on stage, it's time! We go in and we're the only two people in the room and then we just keep the conversation going from the stage while he plays to just us. That was in 2009. I was involved with putting up his first show in Berlin.
"I used to think it was important to be friends with the bands. But it's more important to be friends with the agents."
TF: As a promoter, how do you develop working relationships with bands?
Kevin: I used to think it was important to be friends with the bands. But it's more important to be friends with the agents, because the bands, in many cases, don't even have much say, which I used to think was annoying.
TF: I wanted to ask a bit about the posters, because this book is all about the posters. I find out about gigs mainly by Instagram these days, and posters in bars. I see Facebook and even Myspace was mentioned in the book. Would you say now promotion is all by Instagram, or is it still by posters and Facebook groups?
Kevin: I still use Facebook because it’s like an archive where I have been posting. Although when I started, Facebook wasn't even a thing here because Berlin was anti-social media for a while. Anti-smartphones! It's always been impossible to know how people come. I put up posters for a long time thinking it helped, but also just thinking it was cool. And then I stopped that because my knees got bad.
TF: Has beer changed a lot over the years? What's the it-beer for gigs and do you have a favorite? I see you're drinking a Berliner.
Kevin: Well, it's changed over the years because it was Sterni for a long time. That used to be 50 cents in some places.
TF: So Sterni was fueling your gigs. Because, I mean, alcohol is important for gigs, no?
Kevin: Absolutely. I mean, that's all pre craft beer.
2 beers into the conversation, we notice that our chief editor Frutti’s bag got stolen from her seat at the Neukölln Späti. The conversation ends in panic. We say goodbye to Kevin and head to the police station.
Is this a sign of the times? Is it a metaphor for the peculiar situation the Berlin DIY scene is in? For the sudden cut-off that legendary venues are experiencing? For the everlasting thievery that Polizei and Ordnungsamt commit to cultural spaces like Loophole?
Original page design for Tutti Frutti Magazine #3.