Date: 9 July 2007
Originally published in: Eindhovens Dagblad (Netherlands)
Written by:
How good can a text on a t-shirt be? On the Bospop terrain an old, grey man walks around. On his chest the text: ‘Results from the past are no guarantee for the future’. It’s very apt for the 27th edition of Bospop.
On the poster there are many big names. What to think of two blonde divas who sold over ten million records: Kim Wilde and Blondie? The figures point to the results from the past. The truth is hard.
Then the guarantee part. Wilde is the first of these vamps to get on stage on Saturday. She runs onto the stage. But soon it becomes apparent that the woman behind the sunglasses has lost some of her charm and quality. She drops her microphone and drowns in the sound sometimes. If she gets above the music, it doesn’t sound too well. The draws from a repertoire with which she practically owned the charts, but now the operates without power. Wilde does several attempts to win hearts with her sex appeal but it is a mission impossible. Before Wilde leaves the stage she says that she once bleached her hair out of respect for Blondie, her big idol. What a coincidence. Because she gets on stage a little later. And guess what?
The apple doesn’t fall far from the ‘idol tree’. Deborah Harry is also not a shadow of who she was. Visually, but also musically. The same problem: bad sound, bad voice. If her talent was as big as her ego, the performance would have been perfect. Her band plays without passion.
Bospop had a lot of these older bands. Bands that use the nostalgic feelings of fans. The hits are as enjoyable as the beers, but it’s almost never tasteful or surprising. Joe Cocker, The Scene, The Waterboys and Paul Rodgers do their best, sound great but never enchant. It’s typical that the Northern Irish band The Answer provides the revelation.
One of the few acts that cannot draw from status or fame. So they have to play their rock which sounds like Led Zeppelin. Rough, raw and straight from the heart. With a shirt fully drenched in sweat the singer from Belfast walks from the stage. He’s upside down because of what just happened. This is how it can be done. Correction: how it should be done.