a dEUS tour diary

Brussels 1050 - Brussels 1000: 2×2km

Pretty cool to have your favourite band coming to your town. You leave the office, go home to change clothes, go out to dine at a friend’s and then walk 3 minutes to get to the venue. I should have come live here earlier.

I thought the band played very well, but I’m MAD at the lack of enthusiasm from the crowd. Okay, you guys applauded between songs, some of you cheered during them, but pleeeaaaaase, MOVE YOUR LAZY ASSES AND DANCE/SHAKE YOUR HEAD/MOVE YOUR FEET/DO SOMETHING. What a dead-looking bunch of horribly still people. That’s out. God.

So then - today was a no-minidisc, no-camera night (as will be tomorrow and Thursday), as I just wanted to enjoy the show without having to care about self-inflicted blog stuff. Which means I’ll have to recall the setlist from my very broken machine of a memory. Pretty standard set actually, with the obligatory Pocket Revolution for starters (it’s been on that spot ever sicne November 2004), then onto Magdalena (weird position if you ask me), then Cold Sun, Stop/Start, and from that point I can’t tell the order. Got to say though, Cold Sun is one nasty little beast with its live clothes on, one of their best rock songs on the current set. And Stop/Start gets more and more convincing (I thought it was pretty empty/boring/lacking in momentum the first few times I heard them play it).

During Instant Street (and also on another song before that), the crowd cheered madly when Mauro started singing Craig’s verses, which was nice. He had quite a big fan horde in AB, as his singing made people very happy. And I heard people were singing his guitar part during the outro, leading me to believe that those people were at the Lille gig one week ago (where Mauro’s guitar broke and he actually sang that part). Great reaction during Mauro’s Scary Turnpike Screams, too. Mmmmh… did Mauro stole the show? Perhaps.

Apart from that - on a general note, I was a bit disapp’d by the sound tonight. Nice during the quiet parts, very messy when the band rocks - which they do a lot in 2005. Hope things will be a little clearer tomorrow & on Thu.

Back on track then. Assault On Magnus has become my favourite live track on this tour, which isn’t to say the new songs aren’t good, but this wrongly-labelled dEUS song is among their best. I couldn’t grab a setlist tonight, but I believe they (once again) messed around with their plans (I’m not complaining, as this adds some surprise factor) - they played Sun Ra and Serpentine at the end of the main set, while those two songs are usually “first-encore” material. Serpentine - wow, the 2005 version must be one of the best. Klaas does a perfect job at recreating the haunty piano touches of the original, Alan and Mauro sing on it as well, and Mauro’s guitar part at the end is fantastic. Thumbs up.

Onto the first encore: Bad Timing probably got one of the loudest cheers of the night. This is one hell of classic already. And it was perfectly executed, which is very cool, as I was afraid it’d be dropped from the setlist after seeing not-so-convincing renditions one month ago. Then they played 7 Days 7 Weeks (again, superbly executed), followed by the ultimate crowd-pleasing pair, Little Arithmetics and Suds & Soda. I so wish I’d minidisced the show, cause Suds & Soda was one of the coolest versions I’ve heard, jazzy, hip-hoppy, a very vocal Tom who just wouldn’t stop singing whatever he pleased during the instrumental bits. More impro please

Then it was What We Talk About and then it was over. Weird choice for a second encore, and oddly short, but really, that Belgian crowd didn’t deserve more. People please - show your love.

The band in the ABClub after dEUS were called Giants of the Air or something like that - not bad Grandaddy/Cure sort of stuff, good voice, good music, they lack originality, but are decent.

Voilà. A very unordered review, but I just let it flow and I need my bed. I’m getting old.

And I’m lagging behind - there are photos and mp3’s from Lille last week waiting for an update here.

Setlist (thx to zero79):
01 Pocket Revolution
02 Magdalena
03 Cold Sun of Circumstance
04 Stop-Start Nature
05 Instant Street
06 Fell Off The Floor, Man
07 Assault On Magnus
08 The Real Sugar
09 WCS
10 If You Don’t Get What You Want
11 Theme From Turnpike
12 Roses
13 Nothing Really Ends
14 Sun Ra
15 Serpentine
—
16 Bad Timing
17 7 days, 7 weeks
18 Little Arithmetics
19 Suds & Soda
—
20 What We Talk About

Tags: Netherlands

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 12th, 2005 at 00:32 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.