Well, since I’ll be doing more shows this tour and already did more than one I decided to make an own thread for it, where I’ll add all of them. I took some days off after Munich as I wanted to still have feel the magic of being at those concerts, but didn’t want to write my reviews out of pure excitement.
My tour started on Friday morning, when my dad and I took off for the show in Dresden. We left here at around 10am and normally you need about 4 hours to get there. Well, normally…
On that day nothing came like I expected it! There were 2 heavy accidents in front of us and the freeway got closed twice! While the first one didn’t last longer than 30 or 40 minutes, the second one took for around 2 hours. It was then already around 6pm and we were still 60 kilometers away from Dresden and I was almost sure we wouldn’t make it to the show in time. But somehow we still made it.
We arrived at the venue when the first opening act (still don’t know their name) had finished their set and the breakers went on. I didn’t care about them as we were still trying to get a bit closer to the front, which was possible as many people were still sitting and we could just work our way around them without anyone complaining. We ended up on the right side and were rather close to the stage as Dresden only had a rather small GC area. First thing I did was get myself a beer just to celebrate that we made it to the show in time. The Breakers left the stage rather unnoticed again. No, they weren’t bad, but all I remember from them was that they were dressed like the Beatles and that the singer was looking to the drummer anytime I caught a look on the stage.
Right on then, ShowTime. It was exactly 8:30 when the intro all of a sudden kicked in on the screen, which sounded like a explosion as it was coming out of nowhere! It worked though, the crowd was immediately totally focused. I was waiting for Richie to hit the chords of RYH, BOB or LMS, but he didn’t and it took me around two seconds to realize they bursting into Bounce. The first great moment right at the beginning! The crowd was into it and Bad Name was great as well. Surprisingly, the audience was louder during Born To Follow than they were during BTBMB!
Next was Superman Tonight. I always had a soft spot for that song, and though the version wasn’t bad it lacked some punch. On to Runaway, good performance, crowd loving it, Jon doing both solos. Not bad and he did them better than in Munich. IML had the crowd mad then! This was the first time I actually started to look around in that “stadium”. In the back there were 2 tribunes, the left one was almost filled, the one on the right half empty at best. The field was packed to the back though and the people seemed really into it.
In These Arms was next, followed by Captain Crash. Well, let’s say I could have done without both!
Then Jon started talking a bit and announced a track from the GH record - and it was No Apologies! Man, this song just kicked ass that night! The performance was packed with energy and the crowd loved it.
My video:
Bad Medicine was the party song I had expected it to be and though, out of all covers they could have chosen, Roadhouse Blues was the one I did not feel the need to hear, I was having a lot of fun. My excitement was really rising when they started LYHOM and I realized Jon was going to sing the song. I was so hoping for the jam session to have “survived” Richie’s comeback as that was one of the highlights of the shows with Phil X to me. It did and the crowd really liked it!
I was hyped when Jon went out on the circle and got very curious as I heard the opening chords of MAM. So far I had never heard that song live, though always liked it on the record. I remembered Seb saying that it totally drowned in Gelsenkirchen 2008 and it happened exactly the same way that night! It was the first (and only) song of the night where they lost the crowd and me as well. It just sounded like every band member was playing his part but there was no real harmony in it, they just weren’t sounding “tight”. Jon called Richie out to join him and they started IBTFY. It wasn’t sounding bad, but I had the impression that they were both struggling a bit with their vocal chords during that one. In the end they added more and more “ooooh” parts and Jon also did more ad some nice ad-libs - this was the moment where they won the crowd back again!
Time for Tico and Dave to join the front and the surprising appearance of Bells of Freedom! This was one I really didn’t see coming, but I have to admit that I never was the biggest fan of this song to begin with. I like parts of the lyrics, but the entire version from HAND never really got me. I always assumed that an acoustic version might grab me more and was thrilled when they started it as my anticipation was really rising. But the version was different from the one they did in Munich. In Dresden Bobby played parts of the riff in the end on his electric guitar. No, he didn’t screw it as he does on other solos, but it just killed it for me somehow in that moment.
I expected either SFTP or Saturday Night to follow and it was the latter one. They always do a good job on that one for me and I like the key change Jon does in the acoustic version, but in general I share the opinion that this is a song that needs to be done electric as it builds up on the energy delivered by Tico!
Who Says…and by that point the people around me and I was having so much fun that I didn’t really care about it. I don’t mind the lyrics or the groove of the song but I just can’t stand those ****in’ “allrights” all the time…they make me cringe!
Next was Sleep and this song really was one of the highlights of the show! The band had so much fun, Richie played the shit out of the solo and the inserted cover songs helped to evoke an awesome party mood! I’m not a musician myself, but in contrast to Munich Richie played the guitar he uses for WWWB and Dry County here. Somehow I was also flashed by the lights that moment, though they weren’t in any way more special than during other songs, but it was one of those moments where just everything was fitting - my personal mood, the band’s playing and the audience around me.
After the song there was a short break and Jon came back say that they were going to do a song they had not done at all this tour and talked about them dedicating it to the victims of 9/11. That was the moment I really almost suffered a heart attack. In all honestly, a more unexpected moment couldn’t have happened to me. Some people might say now “WTF? You get STBI and get all crazy about Undivided instead?!” Yes, I do. And I think I have to go a bit deeper on this one. Many around here state that this band wrote the soundtrack to their lives. So do I. And this song is a big reason for it. There are just these moments in live where, if a certain song appears in a certain situation, it will stick with you forever. It was back in early January of 2007 where my father became very ill while being far away and I got the phone call that he was in a hospital there on the ICU. I remember walking home that night, feeling miserable as this had just been one of a few awful incidents during that period of time, and listening to the concert from Munich 2003 on my Mp3 player. And those lyrics just totally spoke to me, the energetic way how he sang words like “enough, enough, the time has come to rise back up” really gave me courage and helped me make it through those difficult days. Ok, enough about the past, but now you can probably understand why this song means so much to me. The performance was great, very powerful and I got lost in it.
HAND followed up, during the first chorus the punched my fist in the air, not knowing the man behind me was filming with his camera over my head…well, it flew across a few heads, but luckily no one got hurt! And to top it all, the guy put it on YT:
Faith was the main set closer and worked extremely well. Every time Richie busted into one of his solos the fans around me went crazy and the entire band played a very good version of it. But it was Richie’s moment! He totally rocked the outro solo and got a big round of applause.
I hope every one on FB is able to see the video of it, I just changed the privac settings for it:
https://www.facebook.com/video/video...94130203&saved