Since downloading came along and made records free but gigs really expensive, bands have had to pull their socks up. As recently as five years ago, if a lead singer climbed on top of a 15 foot amp it would be a classic rock moment. However, high ticket prices in a time when people are wondering if they will still have their job tomorrow, mean audiences want more for their money.
People are starting to wonder why they spent all that money on a gig ticket when it sounds pretty much the same as the album they downloaded illegally (apart from the guy behind them talking loudly all the way through).
If the success of Lady Ga Ga is anything to go by, people expect the entry price to include at least one blow-torch bra and/or meat dress moment, and as a result the line is blurring between art, music and theatre. It’s nothing new, it’s been happening since the beginning of time, from Andy Warhol’s darlings The Velvet Underground to George Clinton. Yet until recently things have been quiet. Since the 90s it seems that musicians have been trying to show that their music is powerful enough to stand on its own.
So now the pyrotechnics are back and it’s not just multi-platinum stadium-fillers storming the stage. Named after the French inventor of the leggings-boot combo, Bonaparte is the brainchild of Berlin-based Tobias Lundt. Originally from Switzerland, he is supported by a troupe of around 20 live performers from all over the world.
The first time I saw Bonaparte play was by accident; I went to a small festival to see another band but was drawn into the auditorium by the sight, through a crack in the door, of a bath on stage and couldn’t stop watching for the next hour.
To be honest the music was nothing special, spoilt brat-rock with super-catchy repetitive lyrics, designed to make you either laugh or wince. Whatever I thought of the songs they worked as a perfect soundtrack to the bedlam that was happening on stage. It was Nathan Barley meets The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Each song has a story, represented by dancers, actors, gymnasts and contortionists who find bizarre and sometimes very uncomfortable ways of reflecting the lyrics. Each song has a total of about ten costume changes, often on stage. It was so hard to walk away when each performance got more shocking, more funny, more surreal and just as you thought it couldn’t get any weirder…it did.
Bonaparte combine music with performance art, theatre, burlesque, circus and silliness. One thing’s for sure, the crowd of mostly under-25s at the gig would never go to the theatre to see ‘Bonaparte the show’. This is evident in the constant cut-price or free tickets for this age group at theatres across Europe. But ‘Bonaparte the band’ is selling out well-known gig venues and collecting die-hard fans as it goes.
I tried to find a video that captured the magic of the live show, but they were all far too naughty to show on Artsharks I’m afraid! It’s not that it’s sexy, just weird with quite a bit of bondage tape…you get the picture, or if you don’t you can watch the post-watershed version here.
"The Imaginary Historian"
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