Suede live in Tel-Aviv, Israel on June the 6th
We arrived at the venue at 22:00, the official starting time. The place seemed rather dissapointing from the beginning - a large and ugly metal hangar with almost no air conditioning. It was a pretty hot day - 25C outside and much more inside. The crowd was rather dense and it didn't improve the situation.
The opening band - a new Israeli band called "Ice 9". Shortly, they're the worst Suede-Pulp rip-off band you'll never get to hear. The band desperately tried to copy the magic of Suede, but the main component - talent - was unfortunately missing. Few of the songs had their moments, but the most was boring. What killed their performance altogether was the sound, which was absolutely terrible.
At 23:30 the intro of She intoduced the band all the crowd came to see, to the stage. The crowd seem pretty frozen at first, and didn't really respond to the music, as the set continued the crowd became more lively, thus increasing the quality of the show. The sound quality and the acustics of the first few songs, and especially of She was very bad, but it improved later, only to drop at the end. After She came Trash, Heroine, Animal Nitrate and so on. Brett shown his discomfort with the earpiece, but other than that the band seemed rather happy with the performance. Richard was really impressive in the comparison with the previous show I've seen - 2 years ago. He moved a lot and was very lively, as a opposite to Neil and Matt.
Picnic By The Motorway really impressed me with it's live version which is much better, in my opinion, than the album one, and so is Europe is our Playground. Beautiful Ones ended the show, and Filmstar was the encore. Unfortunately they played only 1 b-side (Europe is..), and I really missed Killing of a Flashboy, on the other hand, we got both So Young and Animal Nitrate and Heroine (to my personal great delight). Implement Yeah wasn't played, but they promised to play it on the second night.
Setlist:
Encore:
Filmstar
Read my brother's review of the same even on his reviews page
The following day the band appeared on the Israeli radio and gave an interiew and a wonderful performance of Trash B-side Another No-One (with Richard on the piano) and of Accross The Universe by The Beatles.
The setlist of the show on the 7/6/97 was:
Encore:
On the next day, a woman clamed on the Israeli radio that she had followed Suede to their hotel and had a very close encounter with them. Further details are not availble. Go figure....
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