Thanks to Kris & Pascale for the Ticket Stub
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Thanks to Kris & Pascale for the Ticket Stub |
Sting live in Brussels was really great, although the support act Soraya was terrible 'American-FM-Rock'!
The show was very good, but the sound was horrible (like all concerts in National Forest). Small detail: we were there with five people and all of us had the same idea about the concert: 'oh, he is so cute....'
If anyone has good pictures or recordings from the show, just send me an e-mail on the address you can find at the bottom of this message.
Why doesn't he play 'the soul cages'??????? OK, for the rest I can only say: go on like this!!
Well, what else to say than that the man himself shaves his head each morning, quite bizarre to see this, first he has long hair (1986) and now, 1996, he has no hair at all!!
I Think you are the first one thinking that. A lot of people going to several places tell us that Forest is one of the best sound (Ghent is horrible...), and not only for Belgium. May be it depends where you were located... Anyway, on all video tapes we have, the sound is good. It really depends of the equipment used by the groups...
It was a nice concert, a nice public...
Our friend didn't go because he was detected by the security (in fact, the small boy selling some Coca-Cola detected him and announced him to the security) the week before, and two other persons have been trapped with their video camera... So, if someone was more lucky that these 3 persons, let it me know too...
8:12 Monica Pugliese's plane has just landed, she's with her friend Achille. Few minutes later, we meet each other for the first time (Thanks Internet!). We planned to go to their hotel, visit the town and then go to the venue.
Around 14:30, we are in front of Forest/Vorst Nationa(a)l. Two girls are already waiting, their friends will come a bit later. We talk together. They come from Holland (I won't write all your names, I'm sure you'll understand). It's so nice to meet other fans. Then others from Germany show their face, another fan from Italy, others from Lille in France.
Whoa, this concert is rather cosmopolitan! The atmosphere is good but it's quite cold and our feet start freeeeezing. Anyway, we're here to see Sting and nothing gonna stop us now! We spend our time talking about the show in Newcastle, The Hague,... between two hamburgers full of Ketchup(!). Some latecomers try to find tickets, apparently, the concert is sold out.
Then the security guards get out, no doubt, it's time for us to get in! I don't know whether it was the cold or the pizza I ate but I ran so quick that the guards couldn't stop me, they didn't even see my ticket ! Then I find once again my favorite place: first row, right in the middle, in front of the mic... We speak with the people around us, once again to kill time and make new friends.
Tonight, the support act is Soraya. I think Soraya is the singer's name. They come from Miami, the singer originally comes from Colombia. She sings in English and in Spanish, she speaks a perfect French. IMHO, they are one of the best support act I've ever seen, they are really good, they made the atmosphere cheerful. They're cool. The audience asked for more. They left the stage well applauded.
Break.
Dominic is the first to come on stage, followed by the others (of course). It seemed to me we waited for hours before Sting finally arrived. I don't know what he was doing and I guess the musicians didn't know neither: they were looking backstage after him wondering where they left him... New tactics?
No surprise with the set list:
(Thanks a lot for the setlist, Danny!)
The setting is different: no pictures on the back, just lights effects. Some songs version are different, especially You Still Touch Me: they all came on the edge of the stage (that's less than one meter from the first row!!!), Dominic played acoustic guitar, Vinnie small percussions (sorry, I don't know the name of the instrument!) and Kenny sat on a chair, a small keyboard on his knees. Sting said he bought it for seven dollars... Everybody laughed. Then he pretended that they would play I'm So Happy. The audience was not happy: "Ooooo!", "NOOOOOOO!" came from everywhere! "Alright, alright" said Sting, apparently happy about our reaction, "Let's play You Still Touch Me". Gee, it was minus one! Anyway, it was A GREAT version, I loved it. Why A & M don't put this kind of version instead of those Sister Moon Stupid Remixes??? Do you hear me out there? I hope so. Anyway. Fields Of Gold was the next song. Then Sting asked more light on the audience, well you know why.
Jean-Christophe and Angie jumped on stage. Sting asked Angie if she is married. She said no but if Sting would be a candidate she would say yes. Sting looked sad for her and just said no, no, no. IMHO, that sounded like: "Oh no my dear, I won't trade my Trudie for two Angie's"! Angie was really excited, she was jumping, she hugged Sting, I guess she didn't sleep that night! They sang the whole song with Sting, so did the audience. "Very good" said Sting. Jean-Christophe and Angie had only just found their place back in the audience when Sting carried on with Synchronicity II. By the way, if you took some pictures, Jean-Christophe will be thrilled to received them. Thanks for him.
The audience was great, everyone sang, the people were really in the concert, they all participated, there was no pushing (I was very surprised about that, usually, it's not like that) except, of course, when Sting or Dominic came on the edge... Clark and Butch came a lot of times in front of us asking us to sing louder, to clap our hands, you know, these sorts of things. If my memory's right, during Bring On/World (correct me if I'm wrong), they played some notes of Consider Me Gone. Demolition Man really rocked but an Englishman in NY excited us even more!
After a short break, the atmosphere was still great especially during Every Breath You Take. Then the song I was waiting for: Lithium Sunset. I'm very happy 'cause the more I hear it on this tour the more it seems longer. Don't know why. As usual, Fragile to end the show.
What a great show! I really loved the Paris shows, the audience was just as good as in Brussels but now as I'm writing this "article", I definitively think that Sting and the band were better than in Paris.
Perhaps because the show is now in a kind of routine, the setlist is perfect, they know exactly when they have to go on with the next song, Clark and Butch know now how to "touch" the audience, you can realize how much they feel free to do whatever they want on stage, that's what makes the difference between "musicians in a band" and " backing statues on stage", they are in the band and not a part in the band and that's very important (hope I made myself clear).
Well, to cut a long story short, this was a tremendous show, the kind of thing you never forget, and you know what? I hope I'll be able to attend lots of other shows anyway! Till then, bye, bye. Take care of yourselves.
I'll agree with your observation of the concert, but strongly disagree with you about the sound, which was orders of magnitude better than in Den Haag. My friends and I, who have each attended 8 shows on the tour, placed this one near the very top. Fabulous crowd, great atmosphere, and a band really on form. Definitely a keeper when tapes/discs start circulating.
Others have mentioned that the annoying back projections have disappeared (a good thing), but I don't recall anyone mentioning that the backing tapes for Let Your Soul have also been dropped (Sting now singing the whole song on his own) -- other backing tapes are still used, however. Did anyone notice that the varilights are now controlled by tags that are attached to Sting and Dominic?
Also, no one seems to have mentioned that Kenny drops into Consider Me Gone during his keyboard solo in When The World ... -- this was certainly the case in Brussels (so check those tapes!)
Set list for show is as follows:
Here some notes on the wonderful evening in Brussels, last Saturday night.
As Pascale already wrote, Achille and I arrived from Italy by plane on Saturday morning (we woke up at 4 o'clock!!) At the airport we finally met two new friends, Pascale and Kris who are really two lovely persons (hope to see you soon, in Milan maybe).
The day passed very quickly and soon we were in front of the gates of Forest National, at 14.30! We were very surprised to see that only few of us were already there: till about 17 o'clock we were just about 20 persons, freezing in the extremely cold afternoon (ciao Markus, Martin, Tania and all of you who spent that waiting hours with us).
I agree with Pascale in saying that Soraya, the supporter, was very good and prepared the audience to the great event! Sting was great as ever. Compared to the show in Milan, 8 months ago, of course everything was much more spontaneous, kind of routine. Some arrangements were different, and yes, Pascale, we too noticed some notes of Consider me gone. Great version of You still touch me, Lithium Sunset, and what can we say about Englishman in New York? The audience sings and claps...wow... (who said the acoustic was bad? I was not in front rows, but believe me, it sounded very good ..) I never get enough of listening to Roxanne, every Breath and the historical Police songs. And I do still love Hounds of winter and I was brought to my senses.
Bravo to the two guys who sang I'm so happy... The audience did not expect such a thing and everybody got crazy, screamed, laughed, clapped (and, most of all, envy them).
So, as you can imagine, the MAN was great, we had a great time!
Now we are back in Milan, reading bad news on mail (gig in Genoa cancelled. Guido, you ought not to tell it!), and waiting for Geneva gig, in February..
Thanks to this list we had the opportunity to know two lovely guys as Pascale and Kris, and all the other guys we talked to (hey Markus, we saw Sting with your black cowboy hat ... WOW!!).
Hope you will enjoy some other gigs, because it's always a new and wonderful experience. Merry Christmas to all of you.
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