Sixties United – Stoned Again!

“Mit siebzehn hat man noch Träume” is the title of Bea Tradt’s memoirs of teenage life in Bonn – especially so it seems when you were seventeen in the 1960’s.

Tradt re-lived her dreams in the Harmonie on Saturday and the packed house was proof that she shared those dreams with many a resident of Bonn who came out in force to let the  sixties swing again for a night at least another night.

If the colour in the hair of many of those present was lacking then it was more than made up for by the colour onstage with it’s flower power petals or at the hippy market with it’s garish tie-die neck scarves and Tshirts. There was colour in the cheeks of both audience and performers too. Maybe the Summer of Love is long gone but the children who lived it still have a corner of their hearts where, like Bea, the memories are kept and cherished. Just watching the pictures of a bygone age flickering by on the giant screen behind the stage was worth admission alone. Young teenagers with daring to be different clothes and attitudes that all seem so endearingly un-threatening and un-different today.

Before the show could even begin came an announcement: “Can everyone stand a little closer together, like in the old days? It’s almost full here now and we have another hundred people outside wanting to come in!”

The stage too was packed full with people.  21 songs and 21 musicians from Bonn’s past. They’re the bald statistics of ‘Sixties United’, Except the evening wasn’t about statistics, but about memories and music. The former came from Bea Tradt who took us on a teenagers journey through sixties Bonn. It started at a seemingly innocent time when sex was something your parents did behind your back and finished in the decadent seventies when it was something you did behind their backs.  Bea had wanted to sound like Melanie, to look like Twiggy and amongst her earliest wishes just wanted to own a whole 45rpm record, instead she shared them with her brother – and was only allowed to play the B sides! Ah, but a Rolling Stones B-side was not a bad deal at all she recalled “As Tears Go By” on the flip of “19^th Nervous Breakdown” for example. On the subject of the Stones we had Mick Jagger himself to give the evening some weight and swagger. Well okay, not Jagger exactly but Günther Grothaus seemed to embody Mick in everything but the birth certificate. Certainly his Stones covers gave a lot of people ‘Satisfaction’ (pardon the pun).

The 21 songs chosen for the evening were a real ramble down memory lane. Some were the expected hits of the era, like the opening ‘Roll Over Beethoven’, ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ and ‘Wild Thing’. Others were surprising choices – like Peter Sarstedts ‘Where do you go to my lovely’ or, what to me was a highlight, Steamhammer’s 1969 hit ‘Juniors Wailing’. Not a single melody from a German band though – was Germany pre Lindenberg a rock wasteland?  Truth to tell, despite being more a child of the 70’s myself (I was a mere ten year old when Woodstock rolled into history) I was a bit disappointed to hear Quo’s ‘Rockin all over the world’ from 1975 and although I can understand the sentiments are perfect, somehow ‘Summer of 69′ from 1985 seemed a pity because there were so many great sixties songs that went unsung.

The good news is that packed audiences don’t go unnoticed and there is every chance that this show will become a regular at the Harmonie. If so I’m sure we will get to hear some other gems from a time when there was no ‘Bonner Loch’ and the height of decadence was sitting by the Kaiser Fountain in a tie die shirt on a Saturday afternoon. Someone suggested to me how lucky I was to be in the UK at the time. I had to admit Portsmouth wasn’t Carnaby Street and anyway I was still in short trousers. I have to say though that Bea and her compatriots by all accounts, did a pretty good job of putting the Beat in Bonn.

Footnote: I went along with a wide angle camera lens to capture the musicians playing together but finished up using a telephoto because in the end it was all about smiles on faces – and what I will most take away from the evening is those expressions of sheer pleasure at playing music. Young musicians take note!