The Gathering - goodbye to Anneke

The Gathering are probably the most important Dutch rock band of nowadays. They have started in the early 90s as a gothic/doom metal band, but during the years they have moved towards softer and more sophisticated music. The key moment occured in 1994 when they have hired a young female vocalist Anneke van Giersbergen - trained singer with a wonderful voice. With their hit album Mandylion (1996) the band became pioneers of music combining moody metal with a female voice. This has later become very popular through bands like Nightwish or Evanescence. However The Gathering have continued in their progression adding new influences into their music and heading slightly towards alternative scene.
This spring all the fans got struck by the news that Anneke has decided to leave the band. They did not schedule even any goodbye tour, just promised to play the gigs that were already set. Luckily one of them was the perfomance at Benátská Noc festival, so I have decided to use this unique chance to see The Gathering with Anneke at least once and for the last time.
Now I am really happy that I was not lazy to go to a festival just because of one concert which took just an hour. Actually there were many people like this... and not just Czech. With a friend of mine who went there as well we met The Gathering fans from Austria, Switzerland, Poland, Hungary... It was really nice to spend the time there with people who share similar musical passion. And mainly the presence of these people ensured that the concert itself had a wonderful atmosphere.
In order to get a good place in the crowd we started to fight for it soon enough, so we also had to suffer part of the Divokej Bill concert and the whole gig of the German powermetal band Edguy. Well, we survived and the reward was sweet we were standing in the very front row, just the media photographers were between us and the stage. As already mentioned, the atmosphere of the show was terrific, definitely appropriate for the last but one performance of the whole band together. The spirit of saying goodbye to something great could be felt all around, the crowd was really enthusiastic, singing along all the time, and the band... well they were amazing, of course. Everybody could see, how much the band is losing with Anneke's leaving, she was singing, dancing and acting in a way that it was really hard to believe that she is leaving because of the lack of motivation to continue. All the time she was exchanging smiles and gestures with the people in the audience, generally I think I have never seen such an intensive contact between the stage and the audience. Just a pity that it was so short and that it was... for the last time:(
The Gathering have announced that for sure they want to go on doing music and currently they are looking for a new vocalist. I hope they will be as lucky as they were in 1994.

(I am adding some pictures and a youtube video of one of the best The Gathering songs)

Benátská noc festival

On Friday 27th of June I visited the music festival Benátská Noc. The reason I did that this was the last chance to see a live gig of one of my most favourite bands The Gathering (NL). I will devote a special post to this, here I just want to summarize my impression from the festival as a whole.
It was the first festival like this in my life and frankly said I found out that festivals are definitely not my cup of tea:) Most probably because they are slightly in contradiction with my perception of music. I like to enjoy music to 100%, immerse my soul in it. And that requires some conditions, which I would call "exclusive" and which definitely can't be met at such event like this. I mean the bands here are rotating quite fast, even the main headliners hardly get more than 1 hour for their performance. One can hardly know majority of the bands, and how many bands do the people know really thoroughly? Just very few. This of course influences the atmophere of the concert, there is an enormous difference between a gig, where people are really in a deeper contact with the music and a gig where people just come randomly to see, what it's gonna be like.
I am not objecting in anyway against festivals, I can imagine that many people enjoy it going there with their friends, having fun and in the meantime listen to few bands. I have just realized that I would not be able to enjoy this in such way, for me the music is too precious and too many things are disturbing me here:)

Live Earth

On saturday I was watching several fragments from the Live Earth concert - an enormous show happening in major cities at all continents and trying to raise the awareness and attention paid to the changes of global climate. Actually I am wondering about the sense of such events, I am not sure whether the impact can really be so strong that it can balance the usage of energy necessary for such multi-concert. However there was one moment, which has really amazed me. The first band which I saw playing was dressed in black T-shirts with white letters saying "SAY NO TO NUCLEAR ENERGY". Quite an interesting way, how to fight the global warming, isn't it?

Tori Amos - American Doll Posse tour, 21st June 2007,

With a certain delay, but still I can't forget to write few words about the second concert I have visited recently. On June 21st, just one day after the Genesis show there was a Tori Amos concert in Prague. I usually start my concert reviews with few sentences about the particular musician and there is no reason to change this habit this time. Tori Amos is an American singer and pianist who has released her first album 15 years ago and since then she has proven her ability to maintain quality and her personal approach. Clasification of her music is rather difficult, terms like "alternative rock" are used sometimes, but I am afraid that such label marks lots of totally different kinds of music. Anyway, Tori's music is based on her very emotional performance, brilliant voice and remarkable piano. She is obviously composing all of her songs and writes the lyrics. Sometimes she is compared to a slightly older female rock personality - Kate Bush. This year Tori has released her 9th album American Doll Posse and this concert has been a part of the tour supporting the album. The album has a rather complicated concept, which I admit I have not studied enough to appreciate it properly. Generally Tori acts here roles of 5 different women, each of them presenting some particular element of femininity. This is a very common theme for Tori Amos, she can be perceived as feminist at a certain level.
And now about the concert. One interesting fact about the concert was that I have visited it with my mother. Few months ago I have shown her a Tori Amos DVD and I thought she might like it. She actually liked it so much that she has started to listen to Tori records over and over and we went to the concert together. I think it is quite rare when someone of my age goes to a concert of a contemporary music with one of his parents, but on the other hand Tori Amos is not a teenage star, there are people of all ages listening to her, so there is nothing strange about it.
The concert took place in Prague Congress Centre. The auditorium looks rather like a theater than a place for a rock concert, but as this is not a typical rock music, I think it was not a bad choice. Another good choice was Joshua Radin who has started the show with a set of his songs. Little bit Simon&Garfunkel-like, quite nice to listen to. Unfortunately after he has finished his performance it took another 30 minutes for the main concert to start, so the pleasant mood from his music has mostly vanished.
At 21:00 Tori and her band (guitar, bass, drums & percussion) have finally started to play. At each concert during this tour she starts in the role of one of the women designed at her new album. This includes whole outfit, i.e. dress and also wig. After about 5 songs she leaves for few minutes and comes back finally as real Tori.
To be honest I could not really enjoy the beginning of the concert. She started with some of her more dynamic songs, not particularly my most favourite ones (generally I mostly prefer those, where she sings and plays without the band or simply where the voice and piano are emphasized), the melodies were sometimes lost in the sound mess, also it wasn't a music for the theater- style auditorium with the audience seated. But the main trouble were the lights. Several coloured spotlights were wildly running around the room and very often they aimed straight to our eyes which made it impossible to watch the stage. A big part of this initial part of the concert I was covering my eyes with a hand, which is not exactly the way how I like to enjoy concerts. Luckily it got much better later.
Generally the songs could be divided in three cathegories. The most dynamic ones, where the whole band was present, the middle ones (the guitarist left the stage) and finally those where just Tori was present, playing her piano and keyboards (sometimes both instruments at the same time). This solo set in the second half of the show was definitely the best part for me. These songs have shown in the most explicit way how great singer and pianist Tori Amos is, but mainly that she is not just an excellent interpreter, but a great musician and personality.
Most of the visitors would probably agree about the strongest moment of the concert. During her solo set Tori played a song about the fight for freedom referring to the events in Czechoslovakia in 1989. This is not a song from any of her albums, it was prepared just for this one concert! (btw. as far as I have read at each concert Tori does some little special thing like this) The lyrics were perhaps naive a little bit, but generally it was awesome. How many artists would do something like this? Btw as everybody could expect this improvised piece was followed by a regular American Doll Posse track "Velvet Revolution".
I should drop few words about the atmosphere of the concert. The site was not sold out, mainly numerous less attractive seats were empty. The audience was rather silent, another reason why those more rock parts of the concert did not leave the proper impression. But overall it seemed to me that noone came to the Congress Centre for a pure rock show. I would describe the atmosphere of the concert as friendly. During encores most of the audience stood up and went down closer to the stage. Tori then approached the crowd and greeted the people. Actually she almost did not talk throughout the concert, but to me it did not seem necessary, her music was talking instead. As usually she has finished the concerts with the song "Hey Jupiter" (one of my most favourites) and we went home.
I think it is a pity that two such strong concerts took place in 2 consequential days, my feelings from both have mixed a little bit and now I can say that I have stronger impressions from the Genesis gig. However Tori's concert was also a great night and I am happy I could experience it. Next time she plays somewhere nearby I don't want to miss it for sure.