THIRD ROW!!! IN THE MIDDLE !!!
Eat your heart out, brother! ;)

While my dear brother, a big Pink Floyd fan, spent his time in powerless New York, I had the pleasure to attend the first of the five David Gilmour gigs of the current European Tour.

Clam Castle is by far one of the most scenic concert venues in Austria so I was really looking forward to this concert on a warm summer day. Although they can accommodate up to 10.000 people at the Meierhofwiese concerts here have quite an intimate touch to them. I don’ know how many tickets were sold, but it was quite cosy. There are some pictures of the setup of the stage on the official site.

Susanne and I knew we had seats in the third row, but we expected to be seated behind all the VIPs, etc. To our surprise, it was THE THIRD ROW FROM THE STAGE. And the seats (#21 and #22) were not on the side but right in the middle. So we sat about 10 meters away from Mr. Gilmore! :) As we couldn’t believe out luck, I asked three ushers whether we were seated right. According to them there was a mix-up with the seating and these were indeed our seats. You could also see a lot of unhappy faces - presumably those who got the seats in the back. Bad luck. ;) We had seats IN THE THIRD ROW !!!

Only about 15 minutes late Mr. Gilmour entered the stage and kicked the show off with Breathe/Time/Breathe (Reprise) to get everyone going. He greeted the audience in German (and that quite good actually) and then went on to play „the more recent stuff”. The first half of the show included Castellorizon, On An Island, The Blue, Red Sky At Night, This Heaven, Then I Close My Eyes, Smile, Take A Breath, A Pocketful Of Stones and Where We Start.

After that Mr. Gilmour and the band took a break. Hey, if you are sixty, you have every right to take a break. As it got dark at Castle Clam, everything was set for the long awaited second half of the concert, in which „the old stuff” was played.

As was to be expected, Mr. Gilmour played „Shine Shine On You Crazy Diamond” as the opener. But after that, he had a little suprise for the audience. Astronomy Domine and Dark Globe (a song by Syd Barrett) followed, as „as a nod to our old friend Syd Barrett, who died the other week”. According to Mr. Gilmour, Astronomy Domine was played for the first time during their tour.

The band then followed up with Fat Old Sun, Coming Back To Life and High Hopes. After that Mr. Gilmour and his band had a real treat. The played Echoes. ALL TWENTY+ MINUTES OF IT. OMFG! With lasers and everything. That was so cool. Unbelievable.

Gilmour finished the show of with two encores: Wish You Were Here and, of course, Comfortably Numb. Comfortably Numb was unbelievable as ever. Breathtaking. You had to be there.

A few side notes to this otherwise unbelievable and very satisfying concert. Why can’t people sit still for about 1,5 hours? There were women and a few guys which went for another beer or the toilets at least five times during one part of the show. I mean, if my bladder is that small of if I have to drink five beers in one hour to enjoy music, I stay home.
The other annoying fact were a few overenthusiastic fans, singing along Mr. Gilmour. Unfortunately the sang „for three voices” – wrong tune, loud but enthusiastic. I paid a lot of money to hear Mr. Gilmour, not some drunken farts.

Otherwise it was a great concert and well worth the money. If you can, try to get tickets for one of the other shows.

Tagged as: burgclam, concert, davidgilmour, Ein_Tag_im_Leben, music, pinkfloyd | Author: Martin Leyrer
[Freitag, 20060728, 15:35 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)