Bambi Kino


Bambi Kino is a band formed in 2009 by four members of notable American indie rock groups, including Doug Gillard and Ira Elliot, to play music of the early 1960s for a celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the first Beatles concerts in Hamburg, Germany. The group debuted in Hamburg in 2010 and continues to perform.

Musical career

Bambi Kino was formed in New York, in the summer of 2009, in anticipation of 2010's fiftieth anniversary of the Beatles' early concerts in Hamburg. The project was created to cover songs from the formative 1960–1963 pre-celebrity era of The Beatles in Hamburg and at the Cavern Club.
The group's name was taken from the Bambi Kino, a movie theater in Hamburg, described as squalid, where the Beatles lived in a storeroom behind the screen.
The four founding members were guitarist Doug Gillard and drummer Ira Elliot, Mark Rozzo and Erik Paparazzi. Gillard previously had been a member of Guided by Voices, Death of Samantha, and Cobra Verde, among other notable bands. While performing in Bambi Kino, Gillard plays 1960s guitars that include a 1967 Gibson ES-330 and a Höfner Verithin.
On August 19, 2010, the band debuted with a concert at the Indra Club in Hamburg, where the Beatles first played.
A live recording of the debut concert performance was released in 2011 on Hamburg-based Tapete Records, as the group's self-titled debut album. The record was praised by AllMusic's James Allen for its authentically "scrappy Merseybeat style," resulting in an album that "also happens to rock on its own merits."
The group has remained active, and in May 2014, Bambi Kino played at a benefit concert at Brooklyn's Bell House.

Discography