Anton Spielmann and his young friends Basti Muxfeldt and Jonas Hinnerkort live with their parents in detached homes in an attractive village just outside Hamburg, the town where Basti and Jonas attend school. The trio have formed a band called ‘1000 Robota’. A couple of months after they start up, they are signed by a small Hamburg record label, ‘Tapete Records’. The band has high hopes: ‘we want to instigate creation, not memory’ the musicians proclaim, and are determined to live up to their ideals. In a society driven by economic concerns, the members of ‘1000 Robota’ have taken it upon themselves to question their own and others’ motivation. They refuse to tow the line and do what is expected of them. In a world saturated by excessive consumerism they strive for something more worthy, and hope to band together with others in order to create a new youth culture.
But they soon encounter problems: the recording of their album doesn’t go quite as well as they imagined, and they don’t exactly see eye to eye with the label about their sound and its marketability. In spite of excellent press coverage, attendance of their first tour is only so-so and, although London’s in crowd attend their concerts religiously, they can barely earn enough to pay for a youth hostel. Hard knocks, aggravating circumstances, as well as the gulf between their ordinary lives and their media image, all serve to put their enthusiasm to the test. Have their ideals now become a thing of the past?