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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Steve Winwood gives Bonn some loving

There are not too many musicians treading the boards today with careers stretching back five decades but Steve Winwood at 70 still has the enthusiasm of a teenager when he straps on a Stratocaster or digs in with his Hammond Organ along with a talented band of colleagues.  Support for the evening Gary Clark Jr was last seen in Bonn during Santana’s concert here, but is a highly rated guitarist in his own right.

A great evening of Music was guaranteed then at Kunst!Rasen this week.

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Sweating with Blueswater

 

“100 years of Blues & 60 minutes to play it”. That’s how Edinburgh Blues band The Blueswater describe their musical mission at the yearly Edinburgh Festival. Certainly, they play at an often frantic pace that suggests they might even cover all that ground in an hour. They even got an extra 30 minutes on top at Kult 41 on Sunday and sneaked in half the band for the support slot to shoe-horn in as much premium RnB as any sane, blues-loving human could hope for. Certainly, if you didn’t know by 10pm what the Blues was all about, then quite frankly, Jack – you dead!

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Bob Dylan – Reigning in the Sunshine

“I came, I saw, I conquered…” The words of Julius Caesar might easily have been coined by Bob Dylan after Wednesdays show at Bonn Kunst!rasen.  You might even be forgiven for thinking that Caesar also first declared “The answer my friend is blowing in the wind” – it certainly seems like those words have been around since the Roman Empire existed.  So how do you keep songs fresh that seem to have been literally written in stone?  His Bobness knew how, and the many listeners came away knowing that where legends are concerned Bob Dylan is very much the living variety.

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