The show started as normal other than a few members of the orchestra were wearing Father Christmas hats. The compere kept obviously saying that it was the last show in Antwerp! Martin Fry’s set was the same as normal (black suit with his wide white tie).

When Karl Jenkins comes on stage they set up some pillars which appear to have flames at the top (it’s actually coloured paper with air blowing but it looks very effective). Tonight on top of one of the pillars, someone had put a snowman which was later illuminated!

During John Miles’ Mister Blue Sky, Laurie Wisefield comes to the front of the stage to play. As he walked back the drummer Trevor Morrell and the percussionist Patrick de Smeet walked in front of him with brooms cleaning his path - the look on Laurie’s face was incredible!

As usual Music (Was My First Love) had a tremendous reaction. When John Miles got to the dramatic part (where he waits for the audience to start clapping in time before he continues playing), the piano podium started to sink back into the floor! At this point Charles II held a piece of paper with some musical notes on it in front of him. John Miles disappeared totally and when he came back up, he was smoking a cigarette with a glass of wine in his hand!

Next on the list was Michael Borsato who received an amazing reaction again. He sang his first song and then they played the first eight bars or so of his second song before the orchestra switched to Happy Birthday! The compere came on and he was handed a bouquet of flowers. They obviously then wanted a photo of him with the crowd behind singing Happy Birthday as a photographer came on stage and positioned them all. When Michael Borsato resumed his set, he was obviously very moved!

The next joke I totally fell for as on the set list it had Chris de Burgh singing Lady In Red before the interval. As the orchestra and choir had walked off stage, I asked one of the sound guys where Chris de Burgh was and I was told that it was another joke - duh!

The second half started with Patrick de Smeet’s showpiece as always but tonight instead of getting us all to clap at one part, Patrick de Smeet made the people whistle! The sound of 18,000 piercing whistles was overwhelming!

When Karl Jenkins came back on stage, I thought that at one point the choir all sang the wrong words and when I looked at their faces I could see that it was deliberate! Karl Jenkins had a big smile on his face at that point too!

The special guest was “the French guy” again. He’s like a slim old looking Sacha Distel who all the crowd seem to know. Although Antwerp is a more Flemish / German speaking part of Belgium than say Brussels, everybody seems to know the words and sings along. (Actually the audience participation part of his first song is just “La, la-la, la-la-la-la” so even I could manage to sing that!)

As the whole concert didn’t finish until just part midnight, thankfully the orchestra played the shorter version of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody so soon Kasim was walking on stage ready for Meat Loaf’s set!

They started the usual way (Kasim’s great vocals in No Matter What, The audience knowing and joining in with the clapping on You Took The Words Right Outta My Mouth and a long intro to Anything For Love) but when they started playing Paradise By The Dashboard Light some couples from the choir, Fine Fleur, started jiving near the front of the stage. One of the girls in particular was a great dancer so Meat Loaf started dancing with her! Afterwards she was obviously really excited by it!

Again tonight (thankfully!) in Paradise By The Dashboard Light they went straight into the Phil Rizzuto part except that tonight it wasn’t Phil Rizzuto as the compere Carl Huybrechts said the baseball commentary speech in Flemish!

After Meat Loaf had said his usual “From all of us to each and everyone of you….” speech, I noticed that Kasim turned around to face John Miceli on the drums. I expected that it was to end the song (as he often does) but instead Kasim started counting John into a new song and I heard the opening chords of Bat Out Of Hell!!! This was a wonderful surprise for me as anyone who knows me knows that I’ve been hoping all tour that they’ll eventually play it! It was great to hear it played with a full orchestra - I heard later that the orchestra hadn’t played it since the rehearsals before the tour but you would never have known that to have heard them! Laurie Wisefield played really well too - he’s such a talented guitarist! And as for the bass playing…..!

Yellow Submarine was even more crazy than normal! The line-up for Meat Loaf’s hand slapped stretched past the front of the stage tonight! The guy who dresses up as the Sheikh in the Persian Market track ran across the stage wearing his Superman T-shirt again and the next I saw of him, he was being hoisted up at the back of the stage and spent the rest of the song suspended about 30 feet above the stage! When I left the hall, he was still up there!

Kasim started Yellow Submarine by playing (perfectly!) the opening bars on the harp again before he joined everyone else at the front of the stage! At one point he ended up wearing a pink boa before he played the double bass again!

What a brilliant evening!

Roll on tomorrow night....!

I first have to say someone has GOT to hire Laurie Wisefield in America. I will get to it in a few, but he proved tonight just exactly how amazing a guitarist he is. It was unreal! Anyway, It was pouring down rain tonight, but that didn’t stop anyone from making it to the show.

I was told a lot of inside jokes and fun surprises would happen tonight, so I was prepared for anything. Although I was told some detailed items ahead of time; like how they were going to do something for Marco Borsato’s birthday and John Miles would have some fun during his song, I was also told to be prepared, but the one bad thing about sitting in front of the stage in the pit next to this very high stage, one can’t necessarily see everything that happens! One of the first things I saw on my way through backstage were some joke signs being held by the orchestra notating things like the Ring (road in Antwerp) and a few others, but I don’t know if the signs at least, were used. Another thing I saw was that two of the women in Fine Fleur had wigs on; someone commented to me how fine fleur always look so plain. Well, tonight, I guess they were allowed to live it up!

Martin Fry started the artist showcase with his usual, The Look of Love (which, unfortunately was piping through the speakers in the hotel restaurant at breakfast this morning - every day I’ve gone down there, it’s been songs from him, Chris De Burgh, or Celine Dion - thank goodness it was my last time down there this morning!). Nothing funny from what I could tell from the pit area (tonight, since the official proms photographers were out shooting the show-they could shoot anything they wanted to alas, well, they had to follow the rules though when meat was onstage J, but it meant it was all right to sit in the pit in-between songs ) during Martin’s set. I guess it would’ve been a bit mean if say Fine Fleur or the orchestra all of a sudden ran to the front of the stage in gold lame suits or what not. He had his black suit on with the wide napkin tie tonight. Antwerp breathed a collective sigh of relief that the gold suit must’ve been at the cleaners.

For the stagehands who were setting up Adiemus, they set up mike stands and about three torches normally. There was an inside joke, I believe during the setup tonight (it might’ve been during setup of another performer though, I’m not exactly certain), that one of the crew who normally carries on and off the mike stands across the stage, just basically walked onstage carrying it like he was setting up, but walked right off the other side, just as he was giving a smile to the crew. But also, besides the torches for Adiemus, he also had to share the stage with Frosty the Snowman tonight. At least Frosty got to look out into the crowd.

John Miles actually performed his set tonight with all three backing vocalists. Maybe the third girl was finally told she should be out for more then just Marco’s set, or maybe she wanted to see what was going to happen during John’s. During Music, right before John starts to play the Proms anthem in the middle of the song, his piano started to lower into the stage. He acted startled a little, but knew it was going to happen. It then lowered even more and when it came back up, John was smoking a small cigar and had a glass of beer (or other alcohol), looking rather relaxed.

During the waltz tonight, couples from Fine Fleur came to the front of the stage and waltzed as well.

Marco was in the first half of the show tonight. We were told we were actually allowed to shoot his first two songs, as during the second one, was when he’d be surprised about his birthday. The trio backing vocalists pulled out the Terminator glasses again for the first song - they didn’t look as bad up close as they did to me from the audience the other night. The orchestra started playing the intro to Marco's second song, but immediately launched into happy birthday; the look on his face was priceless, he was totally caught off guard. A woman brought him out flowers; I'm not sure if she was anyone famous, or his girlfriend or wife, but the compere did introduce her and the crowd went nuts. They took photos of them together for awhile and then Marco finished performing.

Gerard Lenorman was back again tonight and really did well with the crowd. He performed the same two songs he did last night.

Some of the orchestra numbers sounded a little different to me tonight; I’m not sure which one’s exactly, I should’ve looked at the set list each time to see.

Now the best part of the show….Kasim (with Meat Loaf)! They started out the set as usual, and I didn’t notice anyone having to ask for sound adjustments tonight, and I think the level were really well, as Kasim was really clear in all of the backing vocals (to me at least). I still am amazed about how well a range he has during the songs, No Matter What in particular. I was watching everyone, but there were some points during this song, that Kasim makes such odd faces (either that or he’s finally sick of singing ‘ahhhh’ in four ranges for 41 shows in under three months!) to form the notes but they are really wonderful to hear. Took the words had meat trying to get everyone riled up again. Anything for Love didn’t seem to have anything unusual in it either, but my one peeve during this song is the lights; proms overused them for every other number, they don’t seem to have enough power left to light the stage up enough! Paradise was the same again, except for a few little inside jokes and Meat also drug a member of Fine Fleur down to dance; he really was slinging her around the stage, the look on her face at times was priceless. Meat intro’d Patti but she didn’t leave the stage, she went back to her mike stand as they then launched into Bat Out of Hell! The orchestra and band were really on with this song, not one note seemed out of place or missed. Kasim really must’ve worked hard with them to get the arrangement just right, and that he definitely succeeded in doing! Laurie came down In a leather jacket and a different type of guitar. I think he is THE MAN to be performing this song. It sounded amazing, parts of it sounded exactly like the album note for note, and then the extra’s he threw in put it over the top and it stayed there. The orchestra and audience just went wild, it was the perfect final song for the set. I wish it was performed more!

Yellow Submarine was the silliest yet. Orchestra members would get up and run around with silly shirts and hats, all the while still playing their instruments. Patti, Mark, Kasim and Pearl all took turns wearing a hot pink feather boa. When John Miles went to sing the first verse of the song, Meat said something that made him stop completely for a moment, but he picked right up. One of the double bassists, wearing an odd colored wig, brought to the front of the line his bass for Kasim to play, and that was quite nice to see. There was a man hanging from the back of the stage from a harness and wires with wings at one point. There were lots of silly things going on it was hard to keep track! The song then ended and it was all soon over. Antwerp will never be the same again!

Video Clip
This clip is quite large to download (it'll take about five minutes each on a normal modem) and unfortunately I took it with my digital camera length-wise and I have no way of changing the orientation! (I will not take any responsibility for damage caused to monitors by people turning them to view it properly!) In the clip, I started with Kasim Sulton, then panned over to Meat Loaf before returning to Kasim. Some of it is quite dark but you can hear how great Bat Out Of Hell sounded with a full orchestra!

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