REVIEW BY JORG SCHELLEKENS

At 20:15 Nighttown opened its doors for the people waiting outside. The first thing to do was of course to take a look at all the different rooms and to see what was going to be happening there. The main Nighttown stage was reserved for the acts that would only perform once that night. That included dEUS & Think Of One among others. On both sides of the stage there were film screens on which paintings by Rudy Trouve & co were projected. The basement area was used as a special dance area. On the very small Popular stage all things would be shown several times. In the attic of the Popular bar area Die Anarchistische Abenunterhaltung had their own room.
It started of pretty good. Me and a friend went looking for DAA because they were not in the schedules for the main halls. After asking about this somebody from Nighttown showed us to the attic of Popular even though they weren't gonna play for some time. There we asked someone at what time DAA was gonna play. He said he wasn't sure 'cos not all band members had arrived yet. So i asked if he knew the band. He turned out to be the accordeon (is it called that in English too?) player. Since he didn't have much to we talked for a while. He told some thing about their supporting Moondog Jr. They are not only going to play before them but there will also be some songs they'll play together. When the conversation got to dEUS he told about a dEUS single that has dEUS songs and their version of Suds & Soda. I had never heard about this but it seems to exist. Their music own music is really great, but it was also really cool when they played together with Moondog Jr. Four members of Moondog Jr. (Aarich was not there) and the four DAA members walked through Nighttown in a row while playing the Moondog song Spike Smith's For All Lost Goods. This was really fun and nice to see & hear. Moondog Jr. did not play alone.

One of the first things in the main hall was Think Of One. They had Tom Pintes, Thomas De Smet and Benjamin Botreur (all Moondog Jr.) in the band. They made really cool jazz like music with some world music influences. At times they sounded like Moondog Jr. (suprise ;-)), Morphine and Frank Zappa. Cool!

One of the things i like best were the Lionel Horowitz & His Combo shows. They performed three times in Popular. This is the bands including ex-dEUS member Rudy Trouve, who had created a special movie for this night. The movie was projected on a big screen behind the band and at some moments they played their songs while the movie was playing. The music was really great and really suited the movie which was also amazing. It was a day in the life of Dave Robertson & Craig Ward who spent their days as out of work tramps (but with a house). It had some really moody lyrics (check my new sig!) but there was also some good humor to equalise it for a bit. Everything was pretty experimental and to really understand seeing it completely and concentrating is really required. I can tell you this from seeing it half the first time while standing in a not very good spot and seeing it complete the 2nd time sitting in a good place. However i figure the music of LH & HC will also be really nice without this special film.

Pierre Bastin played a fun show with instruments built from Meccano. This is a toy building system that was popular years ago. It's a bit like the Lego brick system but with iron bars with holes in them and screws. It was really amazing but after hearing it once the music really became less interesting. Too bad, 'cos it's a good show.

At 3:30am it was time for dEUS to play. First a setlist, altough it is not in the right order.

The Horror Partyjokes, Ferocious, Little Arithmatics, Gimme The Heat, Overflow, Supermarket Song, Twenty Something, Sexmachines, Serpentine ... and two ?'s

hmmm, i've got a feeling something's missing, but here goes: As you can see no WCS songs. This eliminated all stage diving, moshing and crowdsurfing. That was pretty okay 'cos it allowed me to stand in 1st row againt the stage for all of the show. The little casio electronic organ that Klaas played during their last acoustic session was hanging from his mic stand. Craig, Stef and Tom were all wearing the same purple suits. They started with a new song which only had some very long notes from the organ but no bass or guitars. After this the real set started. This was a bit dissapointing 'cos of the lack of new songs. One was really new, but the rest have already been played (& recorded mostly) live. Craig was clearly having some trouble. He had a lot of guitar trouble sometimes even switching guitars during songs in which he had to play. The Serpentine ... song was truely beautiful. They had already played this at the '2 Meter Nighttown In' show and it's the song that partly starts the radio broadcast of that show. The Horror Partyjokes was also good, but there was some misunderstanding between Tom & Stef. After a little short but nice set they came back for a three song encore.

The show was good but it didn't quite compare to shows like the Apeldoorn and 2nd Nighttown ones. Unfortunatly some of the new material lacks that special dEUS feel. I'm not saying the have to keep copying WCS but they should keep their own and very original style. I got the feeling that with Craig having guitar trouble Rudy was badly missed.

Okay, you heard it right: a little criticism on dEUS. But they're still very much ahead of other bands, and of course a lot of things were still really great and original. High hopes for the new album stay justified.

hhhmmm, I'm falling asleep again. There was much more but as i said before it's impossible to cover all of such a night in one review. Well, if you can go see them in Tongeren. Awaiting more reviews while sleeping,