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Old 15 Feb 2008, 08:17   #1
poul e
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Join Date: 08 Nov 2000
Location: Thisted, Denmark
Posts: 7,069
7 Party in Berlin (Germany), Jan 1999

It’s been two years and 18 days since we (Willy, David and Joachim) first met in Berlin. It was at the “Peace On Earth” tour end party, December 22th 1996. Shortly after the tour end party we started to work together to form a Scandinavian Fan Club. During these two years we’ve grown to be one of the most respected and serious fanclubs in the world. We’ve started co-operating with two other fanclubs; “Faithful and True” (Germany) which is run by Uwe and Ilwa Drössler, and “Euphoria” (Italy) run by Alexandra Bertaggia and Alessandra Montrucchio. We have become very good friends during these years and we share our fanclub experiences with each other to improve our work for Alphaville. Our dear Alessandras visited us at our first fanclub meeting at Hönö Island, so the launch party in Berlin on January 9th 1999 was the third time we met our good friends. We had only met Uwe and Ilwa once before so this was the second time… you probably understand we were very excited to meet them again. We also work very closely with K.P Schleinitz and he has shown us great respect for our work. It´s mutual.

The launch party was AWESOME. We arrived around 8 o’clock and we only had to wait for one hour and then Bernhard arrived. He said “HI”, and made his way through, to the small stage and put on “Dreamscapes” right away (they played the whole set of CDs on the party). We don’t want to spoil the surprise, but the DS-box is really great. Great remixes – some of them were altered very little and some came out in more different shapes. We also heard new (old) songs that were very interesting, though it was quite hard to listen, because we were busy talking to all the nice people represented.

On the walls in the cozy basement club there were different posters showing parts of the booklet of “Dreamscapes”. The layout and ideas for the booklet was made by Marian Gold and Monika Timm, and we agreed that it’s a great artwork reaching very high levels.

Tobi arrived after Bernhard. We asked him where Marian was, and he told us that Marian was sleeping. He needed a few hours rest before the party. When Marian finally arrived at 10:30 he was immediately surrounded by fans who wanted his autograph…so we weren’t able to talk with him that much.

After a while the Danish members got the chance to talk to Bernhard Lloyd. Willy said “Bernhard is kinda shy and we really needed to open up for him so he would say something, but he did, and we talked about the past, the present and the future”. Bernhard informed us that it took at least nine months to complete “Dreamscapes”. He also told us a lot of interesting things about AV’s past; The surprising truth about Frank Mertens departure., The pressure on making “Afternoons in Utopia” after the huge success with “Forever young”, and that Ricky actually didn’t have much influence on “Afternoons in Utopia”, because he had been thrown in to the project, when most of the songs had already been written. He also told us that he and Marian work very well together, but that they don’t see eachother privately anymore. They are very different people. They like to do very different things and they have different taste in music. Bernd likes pop, and Marian likes Rock. Bernhard also admitted that work is easier nowadays without Ricky, because of his different ideas about how Alphaville should sound. He mentioned the difference between “Paradigm shift” (Ricky) and “The impossible dream” (Bernhard). Bernd said that he didn’t want to work with Ricky again. But they are still very good friends, and Bernd often visits Ricky in southern France, where he has a big house. He also has more houses that he rents to tourists…we are tourists, aren’t we?

Another thing he confirmed (our suspicion) was that he didn’t like the liveshow business. He prefers to sit in front of his computers, making music. The sad part was that he also confirmed that he wouldn’t join the Scandinavian tour. I’m not an exhibitionist like Marian is, he explained. Marian gets crazy when he is on stage. I couldn’t do that. He feels redundant on stage. We disagreed. He is an important part of the band we maintained – also on stage.We tried to convince him to join, but you shouldn’t expect too much, but you never know, he might have listened to us. He did however work out the live-concept with Marian and the liveband.

Bernhard also mentioned that they have started working on some new material, and hopefully we will see a new album in a year.

Some few moments after 11:00 Alphaville and the liveband entered the stage. They presented a completely new show, professionally arranged. (It was the premiere of the Dreamscapes tour concept). The opening act was a slow version of “Dance With Me”. I guess most of the people at the club were very surprised and so were we. It was an unbelievably great version. So different, so smooth and emotional. The second song out was our own fanclub song, “New Horizons”. During this song, K.P feel that something had to be done to get Marian up higher, so the crowd in the back could see him. In the bar he found two beer-cases that Marian could stand on and so he did. After “New Horizons” we heard completely new songs for live performances. “In The Mood” really got us in the mood. The strong intro with Shane banging the drums was really something. They also played “Summer in Berlin” for the first time live ever!

Alphaville played nine songs during the 30 minutes gig. Some of the songs (like “Dance With Me”) were special versions for the night. Just a few hours before the show, Marian said to Martin Lister: “Hey, why don´t we start with “Dance With Me” as a ballad”. During the session they also played “Flame”, “Big in Japan, “Faith” and “Forever young”. The show ended after one encore with the beautiful “If The Audience Is Listening”. (A song also featured on Dreamscapes).

After the show, we talked for a long time with the band. Our NH-girls made an impression on Shane, Rob and Martin. Joachim had the chance to talk to Rainer Bloss for a while, and took the opportunity to take a picture of him. Willy and Tobi talked about rare AV-items and both of them tried to convince the other that he had the rarest items. K.P walked around and talked to everybody, and Bernd tried to get people not touching his computer and keyboards. The girl in the bar finally showed us a smile. Shane and Rob tried to leave for a late birthday-party…but something held them back for more than an hour. Could it be the NH-girls again? Gold left the party at 2 o’clock and after that other people started dropping off as well. The New Horizons gang left the building at 4 o’clock and at that time there weren’t so many people left.

New Horizons wish to thank K.P, Marian, Bernhard, Martin, Rob, Shane, Tobi, Monika, Uwe and Ilwa …and to those we forgotten to thank…C U in the future.

Photogallery:

http://www.alphaville.org/gallery/browseimages.php?c=23

Written by Joachim Hollander, David Witkowski and Willy Nielsen
Last edited by poul e; 15 Feb 2008 at 08:34.
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