To celebrate its 25th anniversary, the Bad Bonn music venue in Fribourg will publish a songbook with contributions from some of the approximately 1500 bands who’ve played there. Called Bad Bonn Song Book, it has been in the making for the last two and a half years, with artists adding anything from sheet music to lyrics, guitar tabs, photos and drawings. The book runs to 528 pages and it includes the work of 264 artists. “You have 264 songs that you can 'practice',” enthuse the book's graphic designers/editors Katharina Reidy and Adeline Mollard. “As we are not the best at archiving stuff, we decided to create a song book instead of a conventional historic book," the pair explain over email. "We asked artists who played at Bad Bonn to give us the score of one of their songs on paper. Beside the fact that these contributions are all great testimonials of the artists for the Bad Bonn, we were also very interested in how musicians write down their music and in the action of capturing sound on paper. As the project went on, we realised that most of the musicians who played at Bad Bonn don't write their music at all, which makes the book even more interesting.”

Mac Demarco “The Stars Keep Calling My Name” (left), Sleaford Mods “Bronx In A Six” (right)

Participating artists include: Goat, Jandek, Arto Lindsay, Panda Bear, Maja Ratkje, Shabazz Palaces, Shangaan Electro, Sleaford Mods, and more. But that's not all. “We also have a Website,” add Katharina and Adeline. “It works as a web archive where the bands recorded a tutorial video to show the reader how to play their song. The reader can then play its own version of it and upload it to the website.”

R Stevie Moore “Sort Of Way” (left), Jandeck “Lilac Garden” (right)

Bad Bonn Song Book is published by Edition Patrick Frey. You can watch a whole host of these tutorials online at Bad Bonns website. See Bardo Pond's lesson below







Update: list of contributors has been corrected. Some of the artists previously mentioned (Aphex Twin, No-Neck Blues Band, Battles, Clark, Marc Ribot, Jim Jarmusch, Killl, Death Grips, Sunn O))), Lasse Marhaug, David Grubbs, Psychic TV and Nisennenmondai) are not featured in the book.