Date: 25 November 1986
Originally published in: Mannheimer Morgen (Germany)
Written by: Mike Seifert
Kim Wilde in the ‘Musensaal’ in the Mannheimer Rosengarten.
The concert organised by the ‘Hoffmann’-office by the ultra blond Kim Wilde starts with a gigantic music like in a science fiction film. She has a hard time to bring the audience in the not well visited ‘Musensaal’ of the Mannheimer ‘Rosengarten’ into a good mood. The atmosphere is arising in the few fans at the beginning of every simple pop-song, but loses its power right after the first refrain. That’s why the small singer has to strive permanently for enthusiasm by saying with a stereotype voice: ‘Thank you, Mannheim’.
One reason for the lack of enthusiasm is that most of the visitors just don’t know some of her songs. Some faces are really looking helplessly, as they don’t know why they did come. ‘I had a free ticket’, is one of the mostly given answers. The music has too much bass; keyboards and guitar are destroyed brutally by the simple disco-beat of the drums. Only a nice bass is hearable from time to time and you can only hear the saxophone clearly. Alltogether everything sounds very licked and slimy.
Kim Wilde’s voice painfully is only at home in one octave that’s whay you have to commend the sound-mixer for his job well done. The man behind those many regulators really tries to support her voice through the hall. But when she tries to get to unreachable heights in her voice, even the mixer can’t help her. But the biggest ‘faux pas’ is to interpret the oldie ‘Fever’, a song which requires a considerably deeper voice.
The fans in the first tiers are throwing flowers and teddy-bears to the English girl. In the back everybody is bored. Only at the end of the show, which was simply and cheaply arranged with projected Kim Wilde portraits on the stage, some kind of atmosphere arises with her hits ‘Kids in America’ and ‘Cambodia’.
But then, already after 70 minutes, the regular programme is over. Two additional songs, ‘Hangin’ on’ and ‘Chequered love’, the only song which has enough rock, are presented and then the audience may go home. Again everybody can see that such simple disco-pop may sound nicely on an album, but can’t satisfy at a live concert.
