|
|
Batschkapp, Frankfurt (D) - April 19, 1999
REVIEW BY JESSICA BODE dEUS were supposed to start at 9 pm after the support band Naked Lunch (who were not really worth watching them), but they came ´crawling´ out of their tour bus pretty early, walking around the venue and of course the near café. They looked pretty sober and relaxed to my mind. Tom even walked around with a football in his hand while humming some tune. As always it took the crew a long long time to fix and tune dEUS´ instruments properly and the longer it took them the more I could feel a certain tension coming up in the Batschkapp. As the gig was sold out again (there were even people at the entrance begging to get in..)it was almost unpleasantly crowded in the small club. dEUS started off with "Dream sequence" and went on playing a rather quiet set. I didn´t think they´d play "Magdalena" so early but it was appropriate to the mood. They didn´t talk much except for Tom´s brief >>hello<< and Danny & Craig occasionally having a chat with each other.It was basically the following scene: Tom - singing the songs very intensely while keeping his eyes closed the entire gig, Craig - watching or observing the people in the audience without any kind of reaction on his face and Danny doing nearly the same but with a smile on his face and occasionally a cigarette in his mouth. Tim seemed to be in the same mood he´s lways in -fooling around, playing the guitar on his back, on top of his head and one time even with a pineapple. (I guess it was his pineapple anyway because the crew had placed it at the right side of the stage and it had painted a grimace on it ..Smells like Tim-spirit to me...) Anyway, he seemed to enjoy using it as a plectrum. During "Everybody´s weird" Tom suddenly stopped singing and coughed heavily. He apologized, saying that he had >> a really bad cold << and they started the song again. He wasn´t in such a good mood I guess but still tried to be nice, by even telling an anecdote from the day before in German language. "Fell off the floor" made the whole thing take a turn for the better as they danced around in their typical way and also changed the lyrics totally. This song just spreads a good mood. They also did a very beautiful "Magic Hour" and I was so glad to hear "Let´s see who..." , but they left early and only returned once more. They still didn´t play any songs by people´s request, which -I think- is o.k., but it all seemed a bit ´straight´ in my eyes. Also they didn´t improvise that evening. "One Advice Space" was another highlight and "Eisbär" is always a party in Germany I guess but still I missed some songs (for instance "The Ideal Crash") and I missed dEUS that we´re not coming back again. It was a very good concert - but not anymore. Some songs were really out of this world and make me shake but the performance in general lacked some spontaniety and some ´creative wildness´ - so simply the things that dEUS are typical for. |
|
