Bap

Formed in 1976, the rock band Bap emerged as a German institution under the leadership of Cologne-based singer, songwriter and activist Wolfgang Niedecken. Long before assembling the group, Niedecken had earned recognition throughout the city as its equivalent to Bob Dylan, an identity rooted in his command of acoustic guitar and harmonica yet defined above all by lyrics that addressed social concerns with unflinching clarity. Exposure to the Rolling Stones and the Kinks prompted him to assemble a full band, which he christened Bap after adopting a nickname that allowed him to sidestep his father’s surname. The strained bond between father and son persisted until the elder Niedecken’s final days, and their uneasy reconciliation supplied the subject matter for the band’s signature track, “Verdamp Lang Her.” That song became a fixture of Bap’s concerts, anchored by a Bruce Springsteen-inspired spoken passage that Niedecken altered slightly with each performance. In 2005 a single assembled eleven distinct live renditions of the piece captured across multiple years; by then Springsteen and Niedecken, who had first crossed paths in the 1980s, had become close friends. Director Wim Wenders chronicled the group’s history in 2002 with the documentary Viel Passiert -- Der BAP Film, fashioned after his earlier Buena Vista Social Club. By 2006 only Niedecken remained from the original lineup, yet the reconstituted Bap concluded its greatest-hits tour with three sold-out concerts in Cologne. Radio Pandora appeared in 2008, presenting the band’s hits in both unplugged and plugged arrangements, while the following year saw the release of another live document, Live und in Farbe (Live and in Color). The long-awaited studio album Halv su wild (Half as Wild) finally arrived in 2011.