Concert in Hamburg (Germany), May 2000

[Krapplund]

For this trip
We were only two from New Horizons (Ken Simonsen and Willy Nielsen), since our usual travelling companion: Thomas Sørensen, was ill at the time. Well, we manage to have a great trip anyway…even though we missed him. Hamburg is about 4 ½ hours by train from Copenhagen, so it´s not too bad. Arriving at the trainstation in Hamburg at about 5 pm, it didn´t take us long to find the first recordstore (at the station) and spending about 20 minutes there, we did buy a couple of cd´s, among others the Guano Apes coverversion of “big in japan”, which is really horrible – but that´s another story.

As always
When we are in Hamburg, visiting WOM (world of music) recordstore is a must, since the store in our opinion is one of the best around! We spent about 40 minutes there, when we realized it was about time to find the concert. So we took our map and started walking, and fortunately it wasn´t that far away, so we arrived there at about 7 pm. We were greeted by Anja and Kerstin (who we both knew from Waren in november last year), also Matthias, and Stefan from Golden Feeling, and the fanclub co-leader Torleif, and Alex.

The concert
Was great as always. The whole event was a bithday party on the Hamburg habour. There were lots of people, so the concert was good promotion for Alphaville, although Radio Hamburg were making too much a deal out of promoting themselves before the concert. Well, we were presented with a new guitarist: Christian, and he did a great job, specially in “Summer in berlin” he added an extra touch to the song that we all agreed was absolutely great! Marian was really in a good mood, and his singing was marvelous, as always…! Songs like “Jerusalem” and “Cosmopolitician” were fantastic, and everybody were singing along to “Forever young”. As usual Marian let us sing the first chorus alone. The show ended perfectly with the lovely piano version of “Dance with me”.

The party
After the concert was arranged by Tobi, that had reserved a section of a bar called “Quir” in central Hamburg. Everybody were there: Monika and Claudia from Moonbase, Tobi, K.P., Shane, Martin, Christian, and of course the fans from the german fanclub and others. We drank the whole night. Ken and I weren´t in a hurry to get home since our train left at 4.07 am – which we missed, but that´s another story…! We had a nice talk with Marian about the liveshows and the completely new album which is in preparation. Marian has written about 25-30 songs already, some titles were mentioned (Moonboy, Moongirl & Re-activator), he was not sure if these songs were even going to be on the new album, since Moonboy, for example, would requiere a large string-orchestra. Carry your flag, will definately be on the new album, but in a completely different version. How can you improve on that song? Willy asked, but Marian said that the Dreamscapes version is just a demo…! Marian mentioned that a realistic time for release of the new album would be spring 2001…! Also some “new” songs will be performed at the upcoming live shows, songs like “Pandora´s lullaby” (in a synth version) and “Inside out” (quite different from the Salt Lake City version).

We thank everybody involved in making this event so special and great…(concert pictures: 1-11 and party pictures by Willy Nielsen, concert pictures: 12-18 by Kerstin Wagner)

Photogallery:

http://www.alphaville.org/gallery/browseimages.php?c=27

Written by Willy Nielsen & Ken Simonsen