Concert Review: Voru, Estonia - August 21, 1999
Timo Hulkko:
Saturday evening I attended CdeB concert in southern Estonia, Voru.
It started to rain before the show and so the show started late. We really got wet, even though we had our umbrellas and raincoats on! It was a real storm. But eventually it ended and then they started to dry up the stage.. and around half past eight it finally started to happen.
Chris walked quietly to the stage and commented the weather and greeted the audience with his regular How Are You? -question. He did not have very good interaction with the audience since it seemed that very few people there understood english. But Chris was prepared: her had this note he always took up and he spoke a quite a lot Estonian.
According to the laughs he did get his message through... (That was when we were silent and the rest of the audience reacted...) But somehow the whole show lacked the great interaction between the audience and Chris that we are used to when we are thinking about CdeB concert. Another interesting thing was that the audience (besides me and my friend of course) did not seem to recognize any of his songs except The Lady In Red and Missing You.
I guess the whole show was just about the same as in other this years concerts so I won=B4t list all the songs here. But some comments anyhow:
All the covers Chris performed got a very good response from the audience (Hotel California, Always On My Mind, Here Comes The Sun, Hey Jude) since the audience recognized them (obviously).
Most positive reaction (To CdeB songs) from the audience was with TLIR and Missing You (of course) and also with the faster songs (like Don=B4t pay The Ferryman, Revolution mid part, BHBJ (!!!) and Brother John).
Chris did a terrific job trying to get the audience warmed up. He did eventually succeed and there were really lots of people dancing and waving in front of the stage during the last songs. I thought that it was a true challenge to him since I bet these days he does not have very often an audience with almost total ignorance concerned most of his songs.
The band did quite a good job, but I think (and do not be offended anyone by this, please) that this guitarist Neil (or something like that) was too dominating. I think that some of his guitar solos just went a little bit too far concerning length and volume. Well this is just my humble opinion. Also part of the audience seemed to think this too since there were lots of older people that were perhaps waiting for more stuff like TLIR and MY.
Otherwise the sound was OK and there were not many mistakes by the players. Once the left amplifier system went dead for a few seconds but it did not disturb much (they kept on playing). Chris forgot the words in one song but I cannot recall what it was.
We heard 2 new songs: Natasha and When I Think Of You and since it was my first hearing of them both I listened to them very carefully. This KICK-part on the song was really giving me kicks too, so I am lookin forward hearing it again.
Natasha was OK too. In Estonia heavy breasts -part did not raise any eyebrows for obvious reasons. The whole concert was filmed with 2 cameras and sometimes Chris and the guitarists seemed to pose just for the camera. I wonder if there is a documentary or a tour video under work?
I did my best in singing and because of that I got some attention by young couple in front of us. They seemed to wonder how I knew all the words and songs (except those 2 new ones). =
Overall I think it was a great concert and I believe that the audience was really satisfied with his performance. At least we were... This was my friends firts CdeB concert and he really enjoyed it. Especially the older ones like Carry On that he performed all by himself.