Last night I accepted a spontaneous invitation from Simone to go see Doro Pesch in Offenbach Capitol. [As a side note, the Capitol is an interesting building by itself - it was a Jewish Synagogue in the late 1800's and early 1900's. Now it's a sometimes used concert hall for not-so-successful acts.]
When we first got there, a Nickelback sounding English speaking band was the warm warm up act. Not too bad, but not great. They set up for the orchestra and then a Japaneses singer came on. She was ...um...different. Not in a good way. The music was okay, but that was the orchestra. Her voice was just a bit flat. And then she did a spoken work beatnik kind of song. Um, I'm sure she does well in Japan, but the German metal crowd was just waiting for her to be done. They did clap and give her praise for speaking in German though.
The next act was Blaze Bryson, a former lead singer of Iron Maiden and Wolfsbane. He was pretty good. (In case you haven't figured it out, I'm not much of a metal fan.) What I liked best about his performance, oddly enough, is how I could tell he most likely pratices Tai Chi or some other esoteric form. He would plant his feet in a centering stance (taking root) and sing from his root. Um, I know that sounds dirty, but it means he was projecting all his enery from his center. Coupled with that was his arm movements - I could see the arm movements of the classic Tai Chi form echo'd in how he moved. Sure, all the metal fans were rejoicing and rocking along when he sang some well known Iron Maiden song, but I was looking at his body movements and the orchestra (specifically the cute cello player). Yes, I'm that weird.
Finally, Doro came on stage and the crowd really fired up then. Doro Pesch was the lead singer of a German heavy metal band called Warlock in the 1980's. She's one of the first metal lead singers and she was very popular here in Germany - among the metal crowd anyway. For lots more history and fan club/picts/tour info/etc, visit Doro.de. Anyway, I'll agree she looked good and sang well, even for sounding and looking like an 80's metal rocker. Her band was really into the gig - the Percussionist guy Johnny was bouncing all round his platform playing the tamporine and symbols. He was a BUNDLE of energy! If I'd grown up listening to her music, I'd probably have been a lot more enthusiastic about having seen her. I can't say the evening was wasted though. I had great fun people watching and the music was okay.
I have to say though, for such a well known and loved German metal rocker, the crowd didn't really get too energetic. Oh sure, there was the core group on the floor in front of the stage that kept putting their hands in the air and singing along. However, the other 80% of the crowd stood there and bobbed their heads, occasionally singing along. Is this as much as the Germans could loosen their public persona's for a favorite metal rocker in a concert venue? Or was it just that there wasn't enough of a mass in such a small venue in a suburb of Frankfurt to get the energy flowing?
Posted by Jinglelady at October 22, 2004 10:15 PM | German Life | TrackBack