Lost Highway followed, he took the shirt off and for a short moment I thought that he’d threw it into the crowd but he didn’t. Born To Be My Baby was next and this song has never been a hit in Holland, it’s never charted either and with it not being on Cross Road I thought that we again did pretty good with our sing along fest. Bad Name followed which resulted in a lot of crowd anticipation that it was so loud that Seb’s ears started ringing. I expected Raise Your Hands next as they had dropped Summertime for some shows now and just hoped it wouldn’t be Complicated coming up next. It wasn’t, it was Raise Your Hands and during the song it became obvious that Richie was on fire this night, his fingers were fast and there was no going through the motions during this song. Runaway followed which was the first song that didn’t go over as well as the others did, and Jon got a tiny bit upset because his Telecaster didn’t work when he got it. He strummed anyway and I’m glad it started working when he started singing or I think Jon would’ve been a bit more than just a tiny bit pissed off. Runaway was nice and Jon was happy again and smiled to Richie saying “it works”. They got together in the end for the song, did many rock poses and Jon did his brilliant two note guitar solo.

I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead again was one of the highlights of the show. We all know Jon does his “who’s got a song for me now? I need some jukebox music tonight” but tonight was different. Richie wanted to start Mercy but Jon already said “no, not tonight, tonight I’ve got one!” Or something like that, and started Jumpin’ Jack Flash. After the song, Jon wanted another song, looked around in the band and nobody started one. Richie didn’t start Mercy again but commanded someone else from the band to start one, and it was Hugh who kicked off a cover song instead! Gimme Some Lovin’ was done for the first time in Europe and again this audience surprised me by being so loud and chanting the “Gimme Some Lovin!” and the band loved it, you could just see it. So far I thought that they decided which cover songs would be played in Sleep, but tonight it felt unrehearsed, which made it cool to watch the band just jam along and having fun together.

Jumpin' Jack Flash + Gimme Some Lovin': http://www.megavideo.com/?v=SXNV9Y6E

Whole Lot Of Leavin’ again didn’t really go over well compared to other songs and I wondered if the band would continue keep playing this song because of the personal meaning the song has or if they’d drop it sooner or later. I just mentioned how I saw one of my ex girlfriends in the audience and if there was one song that me and her listened to a lot last summer it was this song because her mum died last year. I zoned out a bit during the song but was sure she thought about the same things I did during the song. It’s odd how life goes on but music can still connect 2 people even though they never speak to each other again. I wasn’t sure if I’d type this out anyway, but I guess it’s part of the experience and with many fans having their memories attached to songs I thought I’d give some insight into my memories here.

Right, enough about this. The intro of In These Arms started and right away someone held up a banner saying “Let David sing”. When Jon was saying “Is he ready? On the keys blablabla…” David didn’t really realize he was up to sing a bit of In These Arms until Richie pointed out that he should sing the first verse. He did, crowd cheered and Jon followed. Jon went for the song, gave everything he had and the song went over rather well. I still don’t understand why Bobby can’t come up with a better guitar solo. It’s slightly different every time but it’s shit over and over again, but I won’t go into detail about it in this review, enough has been said about his skills as far as I’m concerned.

In These Arms:
Jon went on and got his acoustic guitar, Richie got together with an acoustic as well and I thought Can’t Help Falling In Love would be next. But no, instead Jon started talking. “I don’t know how many of you have seen us before, but every now and then we play these request from banners held up in the crowd. This is a song from the These Days album and is called Diamond Ring”. I just couldn’t believe what I was hearing, and when he started singing the song the entire stadium just went quiet. And I don’t mean quiet in a way like “let’s chat ourselves through this song” like what happened in Germany during Memory in Gelsenkirchen, but quiet in a way like “let’s appreciate this”. The full band joined in and during the second verse we had an entire stadium singing the lyrics in a way like they did with Memory in America. It was very cool to hear and see a stadium know such an obscure album track, and when Always came on it felt like a reward for our singing and cheering for the song. It was the second time I heard Always this tour but it was miles and miles better than the way Jon sung the song in Gelsenkirchen. And when the song almost finished Jon did an attempt at the “don’t you do me no wrong” parts, failed, but did a scream in the end, which was very cool. So far, Richie had been on auto pilot every time they played the song, but not tonight. The man was on fire and tore the ****ing roof of the place. This was the way Always is supposed to be played, with a Jon that sung his ass off and Richie giving everything he had. They also extended the outro a bit, every time I thought he’d finish his solo he gave just a little more. Absolutely stunning guitar work.

Crash followed. Shit song. Time to send Emil some text messages about how badly I needed to take a leak (I drank a little too much Taxi during the soccer match) but how I couldn’t leave my spot as I was standing there 8th row. These sort of updates must’ve been what Emil loved to hear, so I told him twice how much I needed a bathroom break. Yes, people, texting with Seb is one big pleasure. During this song some people tried to make it to the front by pretending to bringing beer to the front (as if that was ever going to work). One of my friends didn’t let them pass which resulted into them pushing my friend which resulted into a glass of beer spilled over the Kraut in front of her and over my friend. I didn’t mind the Kraut getting the beer over her hair and all that, but it made the boyfriend of the Kraut getting himself involved into this as well. They all started yelling to each other (2 in German, 3 in Dutch), it made absolutely no sense at all until another friend of mine said “so, time to go back to where you came from, right?” She pretended not to understand what my friend was talking about and pretended like she was from Mojo (the Dutch concert organizer) and we fell for that. Obviously not, we couldn’t give a **** even if she’d been the Queen but she pretended not to understand what they were on about and just stood there with a thought like “I’m not going anywhere, I made it here and I’m not going back”. Seem, my incredible Dutch friend got the brilliant idea to hold up a banner right in front of her face, and she went off realizing that she was not going to win this fight with Seb’s cohorts.
Just Older was next, and by now I started to wonder if this show was really going to be just 2 hours long like they advertized in the papers and on the internet. Just Older was nice, and there was no long silent break like they usual do. Tonight Jon was in a hurry and wanted to play as many songs as possible, and when Older had finished Jon started Sat. Night right away. I was hoping for an extended version of the song and I got one. Finally Jon didn’t just rip through the song like had done so far this tour, but made the song special again. Tonight Jon was into the song as well, which made the improvisations better as well. The entire band worked their way around Jon’s improvisations which made it better too, and there was a proper build up to the chorus again as well with Tico’s drums pounding the beat long before the chorus was about to start. Very, very cool, and this was how it’s supposed to done. Picture the versions of the song they did on the Bounce Tour, but with better vocals and you’ll get the idea.

We Got It Goin’ On followed, and by now Seb was so into the show that he didn’t really care about the shit song anyway. Jon completely ****ed up the “I came all the way to Amsterdam to hear you scream part” which lead to confusion in the crowd as they didn’t know how to respond to him. I couldn’t understand what he said anyway, but I’ll hear it soon enough when I’ve got the bootleg. And again, I can’t share it with you, but I’m just saying this to make you all jealous. When the intro of It’s My Life started the crowd were back on their feet again and again Seb’s ears were ringing and I wondered when they’d start to bleed because of so much crowd noise.

Keep The Faith got the show back on it’s feet in my opinion. Keep The Faith is. Jon struggled with the first time he did the chorus but fought his way back into the song, and after the chorus the pit started chanting the “ooh ooh’s” from Sympathy For The Devil. It didn’t take long before Jon picked it up and he started teasing the crowd by waving his hand like “give me more, c’mon, I’m waiting”, to which the pit started to chant along and people started to realize that the ooh’s might lead to something interesting. More people joined in, which was great fun and then Jon gave Hugh finally the signal to start the bass loop. At this point I screamed “Yeah!!!” what apparently not that many people understood, until Jon started the words of Sympathy For The Devil, which resulted into the people around me giving me a nod like “oooh I understand why you like it!” Some jungle screams followed while many people were still chanting the “ooh ooh’s” which made Keep The Faith a very, very special song tonight.