13-Dec-1992 - Köln, Luxor

Klaus Kluge, Germany, 04-Jan-93
(from a posting to the Ecto mailing list)

Right after a big family celebration we changed clothes and stopped in Cologne on our way back home to see Bobo in concert for the first time.

Although that name popped up a couple of times on Ecto, I probably missed to introduce the band properly. Let me do that now.

Bobo in white wooden houses is a band from East-Berlin who managed to get a record contract right after the reunification. At that time they had been playing for quite a while, but only on an underground level, as they were playing western rock music with english lyrics, which was not encouraged in GDR times. So although their selftitled album release is the first one openly available, they have a bigger repertoire.

Bobo is the singer of the band, a 23 year old ministers daughter, strikingly beautiful (IMHO), with a beautiful (IMHO again) clear high singing voice. Apart from her, the band has 3 more members, playing drums, guitar and bass. Occasionally Bobo was also playing guitar. No keys.

The venue was a small but very active club in Cologne, and the concert attracted about 200 people. Bobo said that she was happy that "so many" people came, which gives you an idea how popular the band is.

They play popish guitar rock with emphasis on the singing voice. At the concert a couple of songs were a little too "heavy" for my taste, but still her voice always came through, and the instrumental parts were not as long as I would expect from such a band. You might compare them with the early Rainbirds in that way, although the singing voice is completely different.

The opening song was Ever the Wind a beautiful traditional irish song played as a rock song, which also is my favourite. They played a couple of songs which I didn't know, presumable older material, one new song and a cover of The Beatles' "Day Tripper".

They also had good news for us; their new album will be released in March, and judging from the one song that was said to be from the forthcoming album it will be pretty good.