This is an all star, all most people I've never heard of German benefit for the tsunami victims. It starts off being cheesy fun and ends up being just a dull rock concert. I was going to put it in Bad Movies but felt bad because it was a benefit but it makes more sense here anyway.
The show opens with Bonfire and they kind of set the pace with corny stadium rock with some bad balladry thrown in. They have one song about how people should stop giving German people s**t for being German. okay. What is the focus of this concert again?
The next act is Bonnie Franklin (edit: Bonnie Tyler lol). She sounds like she has been chain smoking Marlboros since her last hit in the 80's. She does other songs that are I guess hits in Germany. Her accompaniment is one acoustic guitar player. They end with Guns n Roses "Sweet Child of Mine" for some reason. It's like your aunt doing karaoke.
This thing is 2 hours long
The next act is IN Extremo who seem kind of punk ish and therefore out of place. They play metal with bagpipes and medieval trappings.
There were two different groups with hot lead singer chicks. One was Krypteria. Like most of the acts their songwriting was pretty poor, though not as bad as their english lyrics. Their singer is a rock chick type girl who is asian the rest are nondescript guys. They had a Star Search vibe.
Nu Pagadi were probably the best act. They are alot like Evanescene who I don't like at all but the girls are very attractive and the material is pretty solid. They wear In Extremo type medieval clothes with some goth in there.
Doro- This woman was like a nazi. She kept wanting the crowd to clap or jump or do something. She had one okay ballad and slightly metal but still pretty pedestrian rock.
The concert started off being really fascinating and entertaining. At this point is started to become less interesting and colorful to me.
Edguy - this is a bad hard rock band. They had a song called Lavatory Love machine. I wonder what it was about? The chorus was in English the verse in German.
David Knopfler- this guy was a serious dud. I think he is in Dire Straits? or something. He played some very uneventful Dire Straits sounding mid tempo rock with unfortunate sax, giving it a soft rock "edge" it certainly didn't need.
There were a couple other groups with saxophone that were not rock and didn't rock and weren't good.
By the time I got to the one group I had actually heard of and I think possibly heard Saxon, I was done. They were relatively good.
At the end some group played mediocre versions of a couple Beatles songs, "Imagine" and "all you need is Love" and then everyone came out to do a version of Bonfires "Rock n Roll Cowboys" which they had already played. I think they probably should have ended with "Imagine"
It's worth seeing just because it's so odd. I had a roomate once who was German and a musician. I remember wondering why he came to America,why not stay in Germany and make a name for himself there. Now I kind of see why he came. Where was Hasselhoff?
4/5
