Reviews 2
Traiapail
le 19/04/2005
WOOOOOOOW!
Yesterday, 18th of April at the Ahoy' Rotterdam... It was an amazing show, really great!!!
Well, at 20:10 MK and band began to play with the amazing opener "Why Aye Man". I read in a few other reviews that "Why Aye Man" at a really long instrumental part, but I didn't found it that long. To be honest, I found it quiet short, but still superb!
After that "Walk of Life" came, and I have to say that it was more groovy, probably because it was played much, much slower.
Than "What It Is" came, followed by "Sailing to..."! Both were great.
After that, a piano-intro came. I didn't recognize the song, until I hear the chords in the strings-sound. Mark on his Dobro - Romeo & Juliet. AWESOME!!
And that the 'THANK YOOOUUUU!', 3 hits on Danny Cumming's hi-hat... "Sultans of Swing"! The crowd was really, really cool on that one, a lot of movement! Though, "Sultans" wasn't what I hoped it was. I always liked the song better when it was in a six-piece band (Alchemy-version), and there wasn't that calm-down-part, it was just long guitarsolo. But still... It's was absolutly GREAT!
Than the acoustic-part. Mark had a towel to clean his guitar a little bit. All that sweat...
The little drumkit came on stage. Guy Fletcher took a guitar and Matt Rollings had his accordeon (also on "Walk of Life") and "Done With Bonaparte" came. Maybe I'm a reeeealy bad fan, but I didn't knew the song. (Don't hit me)... But I loved the song!
I think the 'tea-party' came after that. You know, Mark took a chair and the got a cup of good tea. Everybody, except for Mark, Danny and Glenn, left the stage. "Song for Sonny Liston"... Yeah, that one was really awesome live, no kidding! Especially the bass-drum sounded very good on this one. Actually, both drumkits sounded REALLY AWESOME! "Song for Sonny Liston" has got a really catchy guitar-riff, so a few people were singing the riff along. Great!
I'm probably putting this acoustic-part in wrong order, but I don't care. I didn't wrote down the setlist, but I thought the surprise of this show came now: "Balony Again"! It was REALLY GREAT, best one I've ever heard. Although, there was no accordeon-intro, but hey... you can't have everything! After that one, Mark told something about the next song: "This is song is a little old, written in 1996. It's about some guy who's crazy about photo's and autographs. That guy is called Rüdiger, so that's why the song is called "Rüdiger", thank you very much!" (or something it that direction). I'm really a fan of this song so I'm glad they played it, because I thought they wouldn't, because they didn't played it on the 17th of April. But "Rüdiger" was F*CKING AWESOME!!!
Alright, now while that's all done, the small drumkit got off stage, Danny back behind his hugekit. MK said: "This is a song about fastfood"... Yeah, that was easy to guess: "Boom, Like That".
HAHA, I really enjoyed the song, it started a bit relaxed (which was cool!) but the end was HUGE! I knew the song after "Boom, Like That" was going to be loud and screaming in your ears, but this one was already loud. But the sound was... fantastic! It was loud, but not messy and noisy, no! It was really, really good.
So! After all that, we all heard strings. We heard some synth-bass and we saw purple flickerlight. Synth-drum. Yeah, definitly "Speedway at Nazareth". And no kidding, this one was ENORMOUS!!!!!! Really, really ENORMOUS!!!!! The whole outro-thing was just huge and really loud. Great solo's, great sound, great drums, great organs, everything's great! And everywhere were purple/blue/pink/red/orange flickerlights. It was a wave of sound that let you drown, or something like that. And you really don't believe the applause after "Speedway...". HAHA, the applause sounded even louder than the music was.
But OK. Silence. A little thunder. Panflute. The stage was all purple, well... more dark than purple, because I didn't saw anybody, except for Mark's Steelguitar. "Telegraph Road" was the next one. A 14 minute monster! And agian, the outro-solo was LOUD and HUGE and long. I guess the solo was about 4 or 5 minutes. But great!
Than the left the stage. And the whole crowd was screaming for much more, like the crowd wouldn't leave Ahoy' until MK played a few encores. And ofcouse, they all came back.
Encore 1: "Brothers In Arms"... I don't have to say more. Really great, although, I missed the thunder-intro. Followed by "Money for Nothing". This one was also great, just like I wanted to hear it. (Well, maybe the intro they used to play at the STP-tour could've been in it, but that doesn't matter).
After that they left agian (well, I thought they did, but I'm probably wrong). More shouting for more, more and more.
Encore 2: "So far Away". I never really heard that song live, so it was great. And the people on the floor were dancing (well, at least a few of them).
After this one, MK and band waved to us, but they weren't leaving. They stood in a circle for a while, discussing something. Than I was Guy Fletcher jumping and he ran to his keyboards. The complete crowd went crazy for this last one: "Our Shangri-La". Beautiful! In one word: beautiful! I didn't expect that this song would be loved so much. It was really awesome. After this one they waved and bowed. I hoped for "Mist Coverd Mountains/Going Home", but they didn't. And what do I care? I'm glad that I had the chance to see him/them live here in The Netherlands. I couldn't be better than this!
Everyone who's still waiting for a MK-concert! You are lucky you can see them! You're lucky!
Greetings,
Kjell
Geert
le 19/04/2005
My second show this tour, my first was in Amsterdam. Both great shows! The crowd went crazy and I could see Mark and his friends enjoyed it!!
I sat on the right side of the stage, in the 1st ring. I could see a crewmember next to the podium playing computergames (Counter-Strike) on his laptop. I really didn't like that!! How can you do that while Mark Knopfler is playing a few meters from you?!
Anyway... it was a great show! Even better then the Amsterdam gig april 16th.