Genesis and Peter Gabriel kick off their tours in Europe, and the rain keeps falling on our heads. Now, our fan-roomies have their very own thoughts during the shows…

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Just 2 hours ago I landed safe and sound back home in Düsseldorf. I had a very nice trip to Bern at the end of my first “tour leg”. We arrived in Bern the day before the concert (Saturday) and met up with some very good friends for dinner in the city center. Great fun!

The next morning we started queueing right after breakfast. The entry procedures seemed to be a bit disorganized again. All Golden Circle tickets (for the front-of-stage area) were either for entrance North or West. But the only entrances labelled with “Golden Circle” were South and East… Very strange. As we got the information that at former concerts nobody cared about the entrance but just if Golden Circle or not we decided to queue at an entrance that seemed to be close to the stage. Weather was very good but the forecast said there was a chance of rain in the late afternoon and evening. Once again I was interviewed by the guy who’s doing the official documentary video. Seems I’m becoming a “movie star”.

According to the venue website doors should be opened at 16.00 with a showtime at 19.30. At around 16.15 I got a phone call from a friend of mine who had queued at a different entrance. At that time we were still waiting at the gates. He told me that he was already inside and standing in front of the stage for about 10 minutes now! Well, that seemed a bit like a déjà-vu for me after the Hamburg gig. Right after I had hung up I informed the security guards at our gate about what I had just heard and “gently forced” them to finally open our gate as well. I ran up the stairs and back down to the field got my golden wristband and only made it to front row because my friend had blocked some spots for us.

The stage was covered by a black curtain as the band would still have to do a soundcheck. This turned out to be rather unspectacular as they just played around on their instruments without putting it on the speakers or playing real songs or at least parts of songs. While we waited for the show one of the stewards went through the crowd in the Golden Circle and checked tickets and wristbands. It seemed due to the entry chaos a lot of people with regular standing tickets had entered the Golden Circle. He simply removed their wristbands and told them to leave this area. Just fair I’d say as we had paid about 50 CHF more than they did!

When the show started at around 19.40 the first raindrops came down. And the rain only got worse throughout the night ending up in a real flood towards midnight! The show was excellent! For the first time on this tour Phil sang the Ripples lyrics 100% correctly. They only seemed to have some technical problems. First Tony had some trouble before In The Cage and later something happened with Daryl gear during the Firth Of Fifth solo. Both got fixed pretty soon. A really nice show with Phil talking in 3 languages (English, French, German).

This morning I took the train back to Zurich airport and flew back home to Düsseldorf. I will join the tour again on Saturday in Hannover with the Ray Wilson gig in Braunschweig the night before. Another interesting weekend coming up! Until then I’m back to work to mend the hole in my pocket…

Ulli