[Andreas]

Alphaville at Umeå Open Festival, Umeå Folkets Hus, Idun, 28th March 2014


At the Arvika Festival (August 2013), the Swedish band “First Aid Kit” performed on the same day as Alphaville. Back then, Andreas had chosen not to go out in the rain to see them, but this time he and Andrea listened to the major part of their concert. Alphaville was the next band up and we had set out early in order to claim the best spots by the fence. We both liked what we heard of First Aid Kit from our seats in the back, but the best was yet to come...

After First Aid Kit’s last song, we immediately set forward, while everybody else was moving in the opposite direction to get out. Believe it or not, for the next hour or so we were the only two people in the concert hall except for staff and volunteers, grasping a tight hold of our spots in front of the stage. It was a most bizarre experience, but one of great relief for Andrea, who hadn’t attended a single pop/rock concert since her last Alphaville concert in 1995, where she was completely squashed against the fence in front of the stage throughout the whole gig, in pain and gasping for breath. Now it was time for revenge, and this time things were looking much better…

When only 15 minutes remained, a few people strolled in and sat down mainly high up in the stands, but, surprisingly, the arena seemed pretty packed as Alphaville entered the stage with "Golden Feeling" as the opening number. It was brilliantly performed, even though some technical problems with the sound were obvious. During this song and the next, “Dance With Me”, photographers were crowding the pit between us and the stage, directing the video cameras at us a lot, probably because we were the only ones wearing Alphaville t-shirts and singing along with the lyrics. This is where the audience behind us first started pushing to get forward, but there was no problem to stay in the front. Even though this song was really well played, the sound problems became more obvious and Marian’s voice almost disappeared during some parts of the song.

The third song, “Gravitation Breakdown”, was a downturn. Not only was it our least favourite song, but this is also where the sound problems reached a peak, totally ruining the whole performance turning it into a monotonous instrumental session. “Gravitation Breakdown” was followed by “Heaven On Earth”, and by then the sound was back on track, “Monkey In The Moon”, “Big In Japan”, “Song For No One” and “I Die For You Today”, during which the wrestling by the audience became worse than ever. But Andreas stood strong, protecting Andrea in front of him like some super hero being!

“The Jet Set” and “Iron John” followed, to be continued by the very highlights of the show: First “A Victory Of Love”, where Andreas paid a tribute to Peter Krapplund Krappinger by waving a t-shirt in the air, and continuing to do so during the first part of the superb performance of “Sounds Like A Melody”. Maja Kim was given some hot moments of spotlight at the stage front, showing off her bass playing like a real rock n´ roll queen. “Forever Young” got the whole audience singing along with Marian, even though nearly all the festival goers had yet to be born when the song was a smash hit.

Alphaville made a hasty exit after “Forever Young” and most of the youngsters left the arena. We knew better and were rewarded for our patience when Marian and Martin returned with the ballad version of “Dance With Me”. We savoured every moment of this beautiful, emotional extra number. Then the rest of the band joined in to take the show to a euphoric climax with “Apollo”.

Alphaville performed for a total of 90 minutes, even though they were booked for 75 minutes. David Goodes said the next morning that he had no idea how that happened! And neither did we, of course, because to us the gig was far too short, we could easily have partied on for another 90 minutes or more.

All in all, it was an excellent, amazing concert, and we’re both already looking forward to the next one.

Review by Andreas and Andrea Ruby.