To prove that The Hurdman and his website are super cool I headed out to where it was BAD.  I’m talking Kunst!rasen Country, I’m speaking Sido cool ya all!  Check out my baseball cap on stylishly backwards (try to ignore the ‘Rory Gallagher’ logo above the peak that puts me back in the 70’s).

Here’s the lowdown on da first show at Kunst!Rasen 2016.  Chill out and enjoy…

6.30 pm and this really could be a baseball cap manufacturers convention.  It’s certainly a master-stroke by the promoters to kick off the season with music that has a wide teenage appeal, tapping into an audience segment that perhaps doesn’t get so much time on the big stage here in Bonn.  Judging by the ever swelling audience size there is obviously an audience here for it though.  Hip-Hoppers and Rappers will be in seventh heaven tonight – unless that ever threatening line of grey clouds decides to let loose on all those cotton caps – we might just see a German re-enactment of the current Glastonbury mud field.

Mr MoTrip

Opening the season this year Lebanese rapper Mohamed El Moussaoui aka  ‘MoTrip’.  Mo (Mr Trip?) has made forays into the German charts himself and his CD ‘Mama’ reached third place in the German charts as did ‘So Wie du bist’ that spent a whopping 42 weeks in the German singles chart.   Both are featured in tonight’s short but lively set.

I’ve no idea who the other (baseball cap wearing) guy was running about the stage with MoTrip but between them they worked hard to make up for the lack of volume  and restless crowd.  Maybe opening the gates a bit more than a half hour before the start would help here – threading several hundred people through three eyes of a needle (= entrance gates) in 30 minutes is a bit optimistic.  Probably the best Rap performance I’ve ever seen – and I’ve seen very few admittedly!

The coming and going of some mean looking guys between stage and audience was perhaps to be expected  before an appearance by one of German musics ‘Bad Guys’. When I tell you that  Paul Würdig once described his stage persona name Sido as meaning ‘Super Intelligent Drogen Opfer’ and earlier as ‘Sheiße In Dein Ohr (Shit in your ear) then you  will understand my hiding behind the tall figure of Thomas Brill in the photopit in fear for my (camera’s) life.  Memory does not recall if Sido played his early hit the ‘A*s F*ck Song’ but you get my drift on where Sido is/was coming from.

Immediately noticeable from my position behind Thomas Brill’s monopod (maybe a defensive weaopn in emergency) was that from the first deep bass note there was a swell of waving arms reaching back to what seemed like infinity in the audience.  There were indeed times later on that watching the audience was like watching a keep-fit video.  You have to give kudos to anyone who’s music gets around 5000 people waving arms in unison.

Mean machine – Sido

In early days Sido apparently wore a silver skull mask and that would have made for a better portfolio picture than the typical ones this evening which all seemed to involve the man grabbing at the crotch of his khaki combat trousers.

Having said that, the down ‘n’ dirty side of Sido looked a little staged alongside the mainstream appeal of his music – a dichotomy that was noticeable from the very start as several relatively young children were led into the photo-pit ahead of us to see the show start, and later when Sido himself pointed out a 64 year old fan down the front.  His is a sound that has now gone beyond the angry youth brigade.

No messing…

As backing musicians we were introduced to the evening’s DJ’s which really isn’t my sort of backing musician so I won’t even try commenting on their musicianship behind the turntables.  As with MoTrip there was lots of to-ing and fro-ing from fellow singers and even back-up singers.  Sido’s set did seem a step up from that of MoTrip but that could also be a result of the obvious step-up in volume.

If good music is judged by what people enjoy though then who am I to argue with several thousand happy faces and waving arms.  It wasn’t my taste, but to a great many people at the Kunst!Rasen on Friday night it tasted pretty damn good – or is that ‘Bad’?  Anyway, to quote Huey Lewis I take comfort from the belief that “It’s hip to be square!”  See you at the Kunst!Rasen soon I hope – there’s lots more to come and something for everybody I’m sure!

Click HERE for more pictures