I have wonderful memories of hearing Kasim singing acapella at the Stadthalle, Bremen in 1996 but unfortunately tonight was a disappointment in some ways. The Stadthalle is an oval arena shape and that was where the problem lay as probably only about 30% of the audience were actually facing the stage as the rest were sitting sideways on! If, as in my case, you had someone beside you who leant forward, you could only see half the orchestra! (As I paid full price for my ticket, I expected to see the full orchestra so I soon asked her to sit back as everyone else to my right couldn’t see either.) Some unfortunate people in the upstairs were actually positioned so that they had to look back over their shoulders to see the stage! I expect there will be a lot of people in Bremen tomorrow with stiff necks!

The show itself was good (as usual) and the crowd were better than I expected as we are quite near the graveyard city of Hannover! Nobody stood until Chris de Burgh told us to get up and dance but they did spontaneously get up for Paradise By The Dashboard Light. Unfortunately, maybe because the majority of people appeared to be over 50 here, a lot of people left during Meat Loaf’s set!

The percussion guy, Patrick de Smeet, played the Jingle Bells intro into The Look Of Love which is effective as everyone is looking at the right side of the stage when Martin Fry seems to suddenly appear on the left, singing. (Of course this doesn’t work when he wears his infamous gold lame suit as everyone can see the glow from it when he’s still off-stage!)

John Miles (who’s a really funny guy anyway) seems to constantly be having some sort of running joke with the two female background singers as he’s always laughing at them as they sing! When he starts Music (Was My First Love) the place really lights up with all the tiny torches (and some people have sparklers too). Tonight, as I walked into the venue, I was handed some lollies, some matches, a lighter, a pen and a notepad but still no light - it’s a conspiracy!!!

The people here seemed to at least know the words to Lady In Red but very few actually sang it. Before his song Don’t Pay The Ferryman, Chris de Burgh asks the people to sing “Don’t do it!” when he raises his arms in the air (it occurs four times during the song) but tonight the people took him literally and raised there arms in the air too as they sang it!

Laith Al-Deen sang and posed again tonight too.

As soon as Kasim walked on stage tonight, I could see that he was in a good mood as he joked with the roadie guy who sets up his microphone (he often will do that). Meat’s voice is definitely showing the wear and tear of having done about 40 concerts in about 6 weeks - when Patti starts singing she totally overshadows Meat now. Kasim’s vocals sounded just amazing again tonight in Home By Now / No Matter What!

During You Took The Words Right Outta My Mouth, Kasim again showed his expertise at behind the back clapping, plus at one stage he had his back to the audience and clapped face on with the two guys!

Meat Loaf really performed a long pace at the front of the stage at the beginning on Anything For Love as he kept going backwards and forewords so the band just kept playing the intro over and over. Patti received a tremendous round of applause when she started singing tonight too. However, for some reason, during the “screwing around” part of that song, Kasim went down the stairs off-stage! He usually stands near the harp and then Laurie Wisefield joins him - thankfully Kasim came back in time for the two of them to walk to the front of the stage together at the beginning of Paradise By The Dashboard Light.

Kasim did his usual wanders into the orchestra (Laurie Wisefield will often accompany him too) during that song - tonight I thought he was going to be too late to tell the guy to start the baseball commentary tape (the soundboard was below the level of the stage so they wouldn’t have been able to have seen what was happening on the stage) but he made it just in time.

At the end of Paradise, Meat Loaf and Patti Russo sing their parts quieter and quieter so that they are whispering it by the end! It shows how effective it is as often (like tonight) the audience will start clapping thinking that the song is over! Meat Loaf will then sing it loud again which sometimes almost catches the band out (occasionally Kasim will mouth to Mark Alexander that Meat will sing it once more quietly and he’s usually correct!).

The Meat Loaf hand slapping line-up was very long again tonight and poor Kasim was caught behind some of the orchestra trying to get in on the action! When John Miles started singing Yellow Submarine, Meat stood beside him and got him to sing it country music style! Before they had even started on the chorus I noticed that Kasim left the line-up! He went to where the percussionists stand (just in front of the choir) and started playing with them!! He’s working his way around the orchestra!

Roll on tomorrow night…..!

Back to Kasim Sulton at Night Of The Proms