Yellow Submarine
The venue was a really modern circular arena - it’s the largest indoor venue for concerts in Europe as it seats 18,000! It was almost sold out (there were only seats left up in the Gods). It was the same set list for the show as last night but the Master Of Ceremonies was Tom Petersen who sang Michael Row The Boat Ashore but in German! They had standing at the front of the stage (but it was deliberately not as crowded as in Antwerp). I had a great view in the front side tier so I could see what was going on backstage too!
Thankfully for most of the show the crowd were a lot less staid and more enthusiastic than last night (I’ve been told today that Northern Germans are more reserved) but it was a disappointing reaction during Meat Loaf’s set as very few people got up in their seats! Chris de Burgh actually received more applause and a better reaction from the audience than Meat Loaf! The majority of the people in the seats were seated throughout all of Meat Loaf’s set! In my block two girls stood at the beginning of Anything For Love but then sat down again……during Chris de Burgh most people in my block stood!
Chris de Burgh sang the same four songs tonight but, again, he couldn’t hit the high notes in the songs (someone actually commented to me that they thought he sang slightly flat in places too!). He jumped off the stage again and tonight ran along the crowd control barrier getting people to sing into the microphone!
From where I was sitting I noticed that Kasim went to the sound board and spoke to one of the people there during Laith Al-Deen’s set while the guitar tech was tuning his bass. Unfortunately at the beginning of Home By Now / No Matter What it seemed to me that Kasim’s microphone was quieter than normal as I could hear Patti and Pearl singing above him. Thankfully after that Kasim’s voice was heard at it’s normal volume!
At the beginning of Paradise, Meat Loaf highlighted Laurie Wiseman’s guitar playing and then ran into the orchestra up to where John Miceli was sitting and stood by him while he played the drums for quite a while. Next Meat Loaf moved to John Miles on the keyboards before coming back to the front of the stage and focused the audience’s attention on Mark Alexander. (At the beginning of the set, Mark had had some problem with his piano (I think) which resulted in a technician rolling out some cable and doing something by the piano for quite a while!) Tonight, possibly because of how the audience was, we didn’t get to sing the word “Light” as Meat just sang it himself.
As I’ve mentioned in my reviews before, Kasim regularly wanders into the orchestra during Paradise By The Dashboard Light but tonight I could actually see where he goes! There’s one part of the song when most of the string section stand up and sit down in time with the music - Kasim found a spare chair and was joining in with them!!! Later in the song he wandered around the other side of the stage and spoke to about three of the double bass players!
Very few of the audience stood for Land Of Hope And Glory tonight but I did notice that by the end of that song, Kasim’s bass was already in it’s guitar case inside a trunk ready to be moved to the next city tomorrow!
Yellow Submarine was as light hearted as ever! Unfortunately Kasim wasn’t given a microphone again but maybe it was just as well as Chris de Burgh sang his lines so fast (not in time to the music!) that the descant was hardly possible!
Roll on tomorrow night…..!
Back to Kasim Sulton at Night Of The Proms