I’m starting to think there is maybe too much great music for free in the open air currently. How else to explain an excellent combo like Alex Krienke’s AJK playing to an unjustly small crowd on a sunny Summer evening at the Kunst!Garten?
Why do several hundred people pack the beer tables to hear band’s covering music that’s older than the wood the tables are made of? Meanwhile other bands write their own excellent material and people stay at home. Are there really so many people who only like songs if they can sing along to them? Alex Krienke has put together an excellent band with Andreas J. Ballnus throwing great shapes on lead guitar, Jens Mayland laying down a solid beat on drums and Martin Philippi keeping the beat solid on bass.
Alex has some excellent songs in his musical armoury – great own compositions like ‘The Day I Stopped Loving You’ and ‘My Private Hell’, as well as some excellent material from others, especially the Dead Kennedy’s ‘Holiday in Cambodia’ –the quality of which is proven even as I write this – some two hours after the show and it’s still stubbornly running round my head. A nice surprise this evening was a pared down version of the UFO classic ‘Doctor, Doctor’ that took me back what seems like a lifetime to Portsmouth Guildhall in the company of messrs Phil Mogg, Pete Way and Michael Schenker.
Wonderful stuff indeed despite all the hurdles that Bonn in 2015 lays down. 6pm start? A bit early, but okay – except that the 6pm includes the soundcheck. Oh, and hey, finish is 8pm, wouldn’t want people getting blinded by the stage lights would we?
Not surprisingly the band seemed to start the show like greyhounds coming out of their traps. Fifteen songs on the latest CD and more newies that we all wanted to hear. There was the excellent ‘Love Song’ (although not the snappiest of song-titles!) and a number that I couldn’t make out the last line of: “Then you hit me with your bad talk” was it bad talk? Or brown chalk? Or bad walk?… I meant to ask later, but was sidetracked by a cool pint of Kölsch and forgot.
Cool beer and cool music then at Kunst!Garten, and home before dark too. Mum would have been pleased. Live music lovers out there, enjoy the current glut of music and get out to the shows when you can. When it’s as good as AJK then you won’t regret the effort.
