The sun continued shining for this weekend’s concerts at Stadtgarten Alter Zoll. Saturday saw three young bands presented by popNRW: Becky Sikasa, Florence Besch, and Easy Easy. The latter band’s name describes how it felt to be sitting on the lawn overlooking the beer garden and watching the setting sun glint off the surface of the Rhine.

First a quick intro of popNRW who presented music this evening for the first time at the Stadtgarten Festival. As the name suggests, popNRW’s aim is to promote young musicians in the NRW region and make them visible to a wider international music scene. 3songsbonn finds that a very good thing, and is pleased to put out some ‘Werbung’ in English to a wider English audience. Yes, World, there is some talented music coming out of the region (as this website attests) and tonight’s bands further emphasized that fact.

This evening’s band at Bonn Kunstrasen came fresh on the heels of a headline spot at Wacken, one of Europe’s loudest and proudest heavy metal festivals. Given the problems with noise at shows these days I had to read that last sentence twice to believe it. In the end, the songs were strong enough to survive the drop in volume, and aside from a discontented remark mid-show, The Dropkick Murphys and their loyal audience seemed none the worse for the decibel drop. Along with Dublin support band The Scratch they managed to deliver a powerful set on the night.

‘Songs That Matter’. That’s a pretty heavy tag to put on a concert. We all have songs that ‘matter’ personally to us of course, but songs that matter generally? that’s a pretty tall order to fit into one evening. I take off my metaphorical hat then to Marcus Schinkel (keyboards), Johannes Kuchta (vocals, percussion) who, together with introductions by journalist Jörg Lange had a good stab at narrowing down the field. So, from the fifty or so songs that were shortlisted between them, which ones made it to the final presentation? Read on…