Kunst!Rasen Update

 

We’re only just in 2023 but already more than 40,000 tickets have been sold for this Summer’s Kunst!Rasen Season.

A rundown of the current program:

15.06 Santiano                                                                                                                                                                                         18.06. Klassik!Rocknacht
19.06. Bon Iver
20.06. Porcupine Tree
24.06. Achtung/Note: No Classic Rocknacht at Kunst!Rasen. Instead E Werk Köln with Billy Gibbons & The Bfg’s!
04.07. One Republic
07.07. Roland Kaiser
08.07.Folk!Picknick
14.07. Simply Red
15.07. Broilers
02.08. Bastille – Neu
04.08. Brings
10.08. Placebo
12.08. Niedeckens BAP

With a couple more shows still to be confirmed so watch this space…

FULL DETAILS ON THE KUNST!RASEN WEBSITE

Wolfgang Niedecken’s BAP in 2016. Back by very popular demand in 2023!

 

Second Kunstrasen show in 2021 for Jan Delay

Jan Delay has now added an extra show to his Kunstrasen appearance this year. The top German Rap star follows hot on the heels of a similar ‘double booking’ for Lea and makes me wonder if this could be the new norm for concerts – if you can only have half as many people attending, then do two shows. Anyway, Delay is now scheduled for both 24th and 25th August, 7pm Kunstrasen.

There are few musicians in the German pop landscape who can boast a career as rich in surprises as Jan Delay.

He draws from five decades of (black) pop history, but plays just in the here and now. In him are Daft Punk and Drake, Burna Boy and Stefflon Don, Sly & Robbie and Meek Mill. Jan Delay and his terrific band play with disco, trap, funk, afrobeats, ska, arena techno, reggea, rock, soul …. as only free spirits like Jan Delay & Disko No.1 can do.

Jan Delay has always been a popstar by conviction. Never shying away from the big melodies and moments, rather embracing and celebrating them and bringing them into his own cosmos. Only the obvious has never interested him. On the contrary, it is precisely the small breaks and apparent contradictions in his music and artistic personality that have made him relevant over three decades, a period of time that is incomprehensible by hip-hop standards: from the Rote Flora to “Grün Weiße Liebe” to features with Hafti and Tretti. He still takes the political personally almost 30 years after “K.E.I.N.E”.

The fact that he always gets away with it, however, is not only due to his unerring rhyme art and his fine sense for crisp slogans, nor to the trademark of his unique singing voice, but above all to a hard-won fact: There is simply no better live band in this country than Disko No. 1 and their stylish MC Jan Delay.

Scorpions End Kunstrasen Season in Rocking Style

 

Back in the late ’70s, when I was an avid Rock music fan and gig-goer, Britain was rather proud of it’s contribution to the genre.  We were competing largely against American bands like Aerosmith, Bon Jovi and mega artists like Springsteen.  The real metal-heads though knew there was also another rather excellent source of Metal music – Germany.  We really didn’t have a female equivalent to Doro Pesch, Michael Schenker was seemingly both a guitar master and madman but we loved them both – and there was a band, also with a Schenker brother in it – whose name appeared on practically every one of those denim waistcoats festooned with sewn-on patches that I saw.  A band called The Scorpions.

 

Fast forward over forty years and here we are at the closing show of the 2019 Kunstrasen season in Bonn.  There are cloth patches for sale at the merchandise table still, to show some things haven’t changed.  I still giggle nervously at the thought of these unkempt and motor-oil drenched bikers sitting at home with a needle and thread working on that patched to the hilt jacket.  But if the patches haven’t changed, can the Band really be live up to a legendary name from the ’70s at 70?  Interested to know the answer?  I was too, so let’s pick up a pair of free magenta ear-plugs from the Telekom booth and find out (where were they when I saw Sammy Hagar in 1978?!)

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From Brighton to Bonn – James Bay at Kunstrasen

I’m a firm believer that Brighton might well be the secret cradle of modern UK pop music.  Hitchin born James Bay cut his musical teeth in the bars of that very UK seaside town at open-mikes.  Now he’s heavily touted as a future Rockstar and warming up audiences for The Stones and Ed Sheeran.  His appearance, along with that of this year’s Eurovision winner Duncan Laurence, made a visit to Kunstrasen on Thursday too good to resist.

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Classic Rock for connoisseurs – John Illsley and Roger Hodgson at Kunst!Rasen

Forty years ago, I would quite possibly have considered walking over broken glass to get to a double concert featuring Dire Straits and Supertramp.   That was then of course, and this is now: For Dire Straits tonight,  read bassist and co-founder John Illsley.  For Supertramp read Co-founder, writer, arranger and singer Roger Hodgson.  Maybe not Dire Straits and Supertramp then at Kunst!Rasen – but certainly, for the latter at least, worth walking over broken glass whilst wearing sturdy shoes.  In the event, no broken glass, just very dry grass was underfoot for the penultimate concert by the Rhine in 2018.

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Simple Minds – Don’t you forget this concert!

 

Following their Karlsruhe show this week, the band’s website suggested that Simple Minds were raring to hit the Bonn Kunst!Rasen stage: “After a two-day break we are more than refreshed and very much looking forward to performing live in BONN tonight.”  Singer and co-founder Jim Kerr will be 60 next year but is not living off of past hits as a well oiled but power-packed show proved.  UK veterans Fischer-Z were also on good form to start a very hot and humid evening of good Rock music by the Rhine. 

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Alanis Morissette – Iconic rather than Ironic at Kunst!Rasen

There are little photos on her in-ear monitors, alphabet letters are on her earrings, she’s rushing from stage side to stage side all the time.  It’s very difficult to concentrate on Alanis Morissette as she makes her first ever appearance on the Kunst!Rasen stage.  Easier to just close your eyes and let some of the best song lyrics of the 90’s wash over you.

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Wincent Weiss Charms the (young) ladies at Kunst!Rasen

Music these days isn’t measured by discs sold, sometimes not even by files downloaded.  Careers now are made (and presumably also ended) via YouTube.  Take tonight’s show at Bonn Kunst!Rasen: Wincent Weiss first made his musical mark via an acoustic version of Turkish/German pop-singer Elif Demirezer’s song ‘Unter meine Haut’ on YouTube.   Main support act LEA (aka Lea-Marie Becker) began making music at 15 but broke through when a YouTube video of ‘Wo ist die Liebe?’ rang up a mind-boggling 45,000 clicks overnight (now almost 3 million).  In addition – the best introduction I could give you of local openers for the evening Steal a Taxi would be to send a link to their song ‘Time’ – on YouTube…

Do they measure up, not on a flat screen after countless edits, but on a stage with just one chance to deliver?

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