Oct 11: Short review Philippe <Philippe.Corswarem@ping.be>
I've just come back from the 1st Cologne concert. Here are a few
comments :
When I arrived in the brand new arena (18.000 capacity) I said to myself : "wow, what
a great place, this will be surely a night to remember". But unfortunately I was
wrong !
Firts of all, the gig was supposedly sold out. But when DM came on at 9.00pm there were
empty seats all over the arena. And surprisingly the floor section was only filled by 2/3
(for security reasons I heard ... yeah, right !!). What a shame, I had a couple of friends
who would have liked to attend the show but where unable to get tickets.
On a more positive note, before the concert a guy announced that the show would be
recorded and shown on MTV-Europe mid november (I doubt they'll show the whole concert,
probably a couple of songs and some interviews). Then band performance: they were just
great, Dave had a few voice problems during WIMS but overall it was a top performance
(Dave was playing with the camera a lot).
And last but not least, the German audience ... Don't misunderstand me, I don't want to
offend anyone. But man, I've never been so disappointed by an audience at a DM concert.
Maybe the German bongsters who attended won't agree, but I'm sorry, I attended a lot of DM
gigs in my life and recently the Brussels show and compared to this it was really lame !
What a big let down, even Dave seemed disappointed (he tried almost everything to get the
place wild but apart from the front rows there was nearly no response; he even said
:"wakie, wakie"). It was not all negative of course, at some parts the crowd
responded well but what really pissed me of was that the majority didn't even know the
chorus of Stripped (Dave asked to sing along but there was almost no response, he then
turned his back and looked at Mart and Fletch and raised has arms in disbelief). This is
just my opinion, and I'm sure a lot of Bongsters who were there and already attended some
other gigs on this tour will agree with me. It would be interesting to have the opinion of
others about last night. I hope the response will be better on the second night.