It’s Bosstime

Bruce Springsteen at the Bad Godesberg Stadtfest?  Well maybe not, but ‘Bosstime’ would give me the chance to finally hear ‘Born in the USA’ live onstage at least – or not as it turned out.

‘I’m asked for it all the time – but I won’t do it’ sighs Thomas Heinen.  ‘It is too mis-understood’     later at home I listened to an  early version of  Bruce’s anthem‚  Just acoustic guitar, before it became the drum driven mega-stadium anthem of later years,  and I’m reminded of it as the political statement  it started out as.   It’s obviously now a crowd pleaser though and whereas I could understand ‘The Boss’ himself telling me  after the gig why he didn’t play it now (in your dreams, Johnno!) it seemed odd coming from the leader of a coverband.  I mean, Isn’t being a coverband all about capturing the magic of a star?  Isn’t ‘Broooce!’ punching the air and stamping his foot whilst announcing he was ‘Born down in a dead man’s town’ what people want (expect?).

So here, to make my position clear, is my take on the subject.  Whilst I’m not known as a fan of cover bands I do find them often entertaining and interesting.   An example: ‘Dire Straits’ are no more but ‘Dire Strats’ have an excellent young guitarist with all Mark Knopflers quirky finger picking down pat.  However, you get a cleaner stereo sound from your home speakers so what’s the point of the cover?  It’s not like Dire Strats can depict Knopfler  trashing his guitar onstage every night because he didn’t and even if you look at a Hendrix stylist like Randy Hansen he still doesn’t do it either (hey, ’69 Strats aren’t cheap you know!)  I’ll go so far as to say that, in my humble opinion, Thin Lizzy without Phil Lynott or Slade sans Noddy Holder are cover bands.

Back to Bad Godesberg though and whatever your or my view here it’s clear that Thomas Heinen, a.k.a. Bruce Springsteen and leader of Bruce Springsteen coverband ‘Bosstime’, cares about what he does.  It’s not all about coming from Cologne yet having that New Jersey gravel in your voice – it has to be in your heart too.  Aside from ‘Born in the USA’ the band will play just about anything by The Boss, although I suspect that his ’41 Shots’ recalling the police killing of Amadou Diallo is another on the black list.  ‘You’re Missing’ a hymn to the dead in the World trade Centre carnage is also no throw-away pop song.  Bruce is not someone to tackle light heartedly – heinen remarked that tackling Bruce’s music was seen by some as ‘sacreligious’.   There are plenty of other songs to choose  though of course from Bruces 35+ years of writing/recording and ‘Bosstime’ do their job well.  So well in fact that  They have their own following too – I hear a fan (clad in Springsteen Tshirt naturally) tell the band later that he’s travelled down from Frankfurt for the show.  I have to admit too, that despite my bellyaching about cover bands I’m here too – curious to see how someone so distinctly American can be presented by Nord-Rhein-Westphalians.

Soundchecking in big aviator sunglasses Heinen looks more Elvis than Bruce – though he has a baseball cap on which is/was Bruces equivalent of a rhinestone suit I guess.

Early evening in a shopping precinct is not the ideal setting for a classic gig of course and it takes a lot of haranguing from the band to get people to fill up the space between hamburger vans and stage front.  An elderly gent in combat fatigues gets the ball rolling though and makes me almost think he was planted there by the promoters only he looks more likely to have been planted there, rather unsteadily, by a day long build up of the local beer in his veins.  He’s having fun though and soon enough others join in as the band move from slower numbers like ‘Rising’ and ‘Darkness on the Edge of Town’ and start to party with ‘Darlington County’, Waiting on a Sunny Day’ and ‘Badlands’ – the latter with a nice sax solo from Jochen Baltes who, despite being smaller, thinner and of course whiter than  Clarence Clemons still knows how to play sax that rides smoothly on the music.  oddly enough guitarist Thomas Spindeldreyer is also the opposite of his E-Street nemesis Nils Lofgren – being taller and balder but admittedly white too.

As the evening progresses I begin to warm to the cover-band ideology.  Certainly there are plenty of children here getting their first glimpse of a rock concert and they certainly won’t be allowed out to see the original Bruce at the Cologne Arena any time soon.

By the time ‘Dancing in the Dark’ bounces out it’s actually what the people here are doing.    The band are having fun, the audience is having fun and I’m having fun,  so where’s the problem?  Proof, if any were needed, that this shouldn’t be taken too seriously, comes later when someone asks Thomas Heinen which song he is most often asked to sing at concerts – ‘After ‘Born in the USA’ that’s probably ‘Summer of ‘69’ he answers.  No he doesn’t do that number either – maybe you should find a Brian Adams cover-band and ask them instead.

Bosstime photos

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