Location: Munich (Germany), New Backstage
Concert date: 14.10.2003
Attendance: 500
Ticket price: 25,00€
We rolled into Munich at five in the afternoon. And of course we got lost right away. We pulled over in a part of town that looked like an honest-to-god ghetto – the real Munich Harlem. Thomas didn’t give a damn about this “spooky place”. Armed with a stack of maps, he bravely hopped out of the car and asked the first passerby if he could clear up the current geographic position of our vehicle. After five minutes of torture in broken German, the guy asked, totally phlegmatic and spontaneous: “Jel’ prićate srpski?” Problem solved, just like that. Of course we kept getting lost anyway, but at 18:30 we finally spotted the right street. New Backstage. A big container surrounded by multicolored spotlights, looking like a kiddie carousel or the “Nobel Burek” on Miklošičeva in Ljubljana. There’s nowhere to park normally. I just pulled up in the driveway behind the tour buses already standing in New Backstage’s tiny courtyard. No proper parking lot anywhere around! I wanted to make sure this was really what we were looking for. Just as I was about to step through the entrance, Bill Jenkins, Enchant’s new keyboardist, came hobbling down the stairs toward me. Hobbling is the right word, since he clearly had trouble with his left leg. Of course I wasn’t totally sure it was him. So I killed two birds with one extremely dumb question: “Are you from Enchant?” The answer was short: “Yes”! There. Since Bill Jenkins confirmed he belongs to Enchant, I could finally breathe out, because we had found Enchant and New Backstage!
Enough rambling. Eight in the evening. California Guitar Trio open for us with a half-hour party on three folk guitars. I was furious at myself because I didn’t know a single one of their tunes. These guys are known for working with plenty of respected artists, like Robert Fripp (King Crimson) and the genius bassist Tony Levin (ex-King Crimson, Peter Gabriel, Pink Floyd and uh, oh, ah, plenty of others), Toto, Flower Kings and the almighty guru John McLaughlin, and they blasted through three of their own inventions and two covers. A little ethno folk, a little classical, a little jazz, a little blues. The melodies were tastefully split up, weaving together in harmony and filling out the sound fantastically. Since they know what time it is, they soon got down to business. Their cover of Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen. Hideyo Moriya on the left monitor was in charge of the melody of Mercury’s vocal lines. Frontman Paul Richards and Bert Lamb (originally Belgian) backed him up brilliantly. The crowd caught its breath for the first time and fell into delirium. “Evergreen” sounded like listening to Bach’s harpsichord in the 18th century. A proper acoustic-metallic sound. The hairs on my neck stood up. The guys were tightly rehearsed and breathed in sync with each other. Paul had an interesting folk guitar in his hands with a “bent” neck. The frets on it were set slightly crooked, too. Of course the crowd could barely wait for that bouncy part where the guys “riffed” away with their acoustic artillery, then with unbelievable softness switched the atmosphere into a completely different dimension, and with the same unbelievable softness the song too. Misirlou from Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction got the crowd totally fired up. Moriya showed off incredible speed with both hands on the top two strings while kneading out the song’s main motif. CTR wrapped up their set at exactly the moment the crowd was wound up to the max, but the half hour had flown by in a blink and the guys had to hand the stage over to Enchant, leaving us visibly unsatisfied.
For the next hour, the prog heroes Enchant kept us company on stage. Enchant are a carefully oiled machine, five hair-splitting sonic perfectionists. I have to admit that I was a truly happy person that night, because it wasn’t that long ago that I sat at home frustrated, wondering: “How come super bands like Enchant or Shadow Gallery never tour Europe?” The sad truth. They’re too small. Luckily there are commercially bigger bands, like Spock’s Beard in this case, who offer masters like these the chance to join them on tour. Two drum sets were already set up on stage. The one in the middle was reserved for Nick D’Virgilio of Spock’s Beard, while over toward the left PA stood the kit used by Spock’s Beard drummer Jimmy Keegan, hired specially for this tour, who was in charge of the drumming while Nick did his lead vocal turn. And Sean Flanagan sat down behind Jimmy Keegan’s kit. I’m not used to a five-piece lineup set up like this. Drummer all the way to the left. So, through the sounds of the pre-recorded intro of The Thirst from the debut “Blue Print Of The World” (1994), they took their positions and kicked off the show. The Thirst was a nice surprise. The opening song of the band’s debut. Can you imagine Dream Theater opening their show with A Fortune In Lies? The sound gave us trouble through the whole song, because the “mixer guy” couldn’t get bassist Ed Platt dialed in, so the bass cut through the band’s sound the whole way. You couldn’t clearly hear what the guitar and keyboards were doing. Right after The Thirst they switched to the latest record “Tug Of War” (2003) with Sinking Sand, led through a gentler, more sensual chorus and an excellent guitar solo in the outro. By then the sound of all the instruments was finally balanced. Next came my favorite Monday from “Blink Of An Eye” (2002). Singer Ted Leonard picked up a guitar. While in Monday he strictly backed Doug up with chords, in Progtology Ted proved himself not just as an outstanding singer but as an excellent guitarist too. That’s not much of a surprise, since they’re all multi-instrumentalists and they all write songs, but Ted exceeded my expectations when it came to handling the guitar. Progtology has a pretty tough main motif that isn’t riffed over chords but broken down, and your fingers have to be seriously well trained to keep the playing clean at high speed. Of course the song is a pure instrumental, so Ted could devote himself to the guitar completely. The band finally got properly warmed up after the thunderous applause they earned for Doug’s excellent guitar solo breakout. Then came a real, honest-to-god sensation. The song My Gavel Hand (“Break”, 1998). Structurally it’s pretty untypical for Enchant. The vocal line is hard, with a melody you have to approach with total feeling to convince the listener. Ted, who by then had thoroughly sweated through his shirt, pulled it off in grand style, not just as a singer but as an actor too. The guys didn’t forget to include Below Zero from “Wounded” (1996), which they obviously love to play live. It got the crowd fired up again. Comatose from the new record owned the scene. Sophisticated vocals and a soft approach through a sensual melody lifted the atmosphere to a higher level. When the drums and bass kicked in, I knew this was kind of the peak of the set. A fantastically structured song radiating incredible energy and confirming how tight the band is. Even the new keyboardist Bill Jenkins looked on stage like he’d been in Enchant for a whole decade, not barely half a year. The main set was over. The audience made no secret of its excitement, and Enchant came back for an encore and closed an excellent performance with Oasis from their debut. Sadly the guys had to cut their repertoire by one song. Because of time constraints, they had to drop What To Say (“Juggling 9 Or Dropping 10”, 2000) from the setlist, which, as Ted Leonard said after the show, is exactly his favorite Enchant song. On the other hand, by his account, My Gavel Hand was played live for the very first time ever in Munich.
Spock’s Beard. Like the vast majority of the hall, I’d been waiting impatiently for this moment. A Guy Named Syd and there they are! A grooving funky opening! Dave Meros on keyboards? Hello? No, no, my mistake. That thunderous opening backing that makes the song so groovy, Dave played on a bass synthesizer. But where the hell is Nick, he should be behind the drums, and who the heck is this pint-sized guy behind the kit standing on the left, next to the band’s original one? Nick came bouncing onto the stage all alone, rowdy, puffed up, sped up to the max. And as the volleys of his verses poured out, I stared at him, glued to the spot. He acted like a cocky teenager who’d love to punch everybody in the face. That was part of his excellent performance. The opening part of the song (the part: Same Old Story) portrays Syd’s ego. And on stage Nick really was the punk Syd. Then in a moment he turned the whole conjured mood upside down with the line “…I used to be a honest man….” Subtle, almost narrated, with a completely different tone of voice. The performance was completely different. Syd was now watching his own actions, he’d become aware of them,…., he’d become aware of his own egotistical ass. Phenomenal. Then comes the explosion of Ryo’s organs and that Deep Purple-style drive that fired up the crowd again. Spock’s Beard are the most spontaneous rock band on stage I’ve ever had the chance to see live in (this) life. They constantly make fun of themselves, constantly make sure the hall is a total blast and a glorious mess. They come across as one little happy family, full of light and nothing but positive vibes. There’s no boozy pathos or self-pity in them. These aren’t professional musicians of the Coverdale’s Whitesnake type, where the dude recruits pricey musicians who sell themselves on stage under the name Whitesnake and just run through what they’re told, by rote. Spock’s Beard are the complete opposite end of professionalism. It’s like finding yourself among five kids (counting the sympathetic Jimmy Keegan) with heads full of nothing but “nonsense”. A real brotherhood!
Up on stage these guys are honest the way only children can be, kids who have never crossed the school threshold, where their brains would get washed, more or less sophisticatedly to brutally, with intimidation, the consequences of which each of us feels (mostly unconsciously). With their looseness and without a speck of arrogance, they got phenomenally close to the audience and identified with it.
Magic! Honesty! Fun! Madness, real spontaneous madness, for a measly 20€. In the part of the song with the elephant-like roar through Ryo’s effects, backed by a proper ethno-Afro percussion insert (part four: Judge), Nick and Al chased each other around the stage, and Al, with his guitar, yellow shirt and tight leather pants, was seriously stunningly funny. Al, with his orange-lensed “specs” perched almost on the tip of his nose, a stiff three-finger grip on the guitar and a worn red Fender, really does look at first glance like the jazz guitarist Bill Frisell. The guy doesn’t use a pick at all. He does use pronounced sustain throughout, which is why the guys half-jokingly call him “Al sustaniac”. The guy has really managed to shape a musical style and approach that’s all his own. In his posture, in how he uses his right hand, in how he uses the wah effect and the sustainer. And he’s so funny you laugh till you cry. Incredible charisma!
New Backstage has a gigantic ventilator (at least that’s big, if everything else is small) that looks like a fridge. It must be centuries old, because it hums like listening to the roar of ocean waves. And in the pauses within a song or between songs, this ventilator “surf” drowned out the whole hall, which at first annoyed people, but then they started having fun with it. We especially cracked up when Al started looking curiously from the stage toward the crowd, wondering what the hell was so funny. Is it maybe him? Well, obviously, even if he wasn’t trying. And when he noticed the gag, he gave New Backstage the flattering title of the hall with the biggest washing machine. In the red-hot finale, Nick too, as the band’s original drummer, sat behind his drum fortress and blasted through the closing parts of the song.
After a twenty-minute blizzard came a song from the older repertoire, Thoughts, with the main verses sung together by Jimmy, Nick and Ryo. Then the boys calmed the place down with the waltz Shining Star, where Dave stood out especially with his “Rickenbacker” (model 4001) and long slides along the neck of his bass. Next came the bouncy East Of Eden, West Of Memphis, where Nick jumped behind the drums in the second half of the song, where Al and Ryo have the main say in the solos. It was a pleasure to watch the communication, or rather the tight eye contact, between Ryo and Nick, with Ryo going wild on the organs and Nick in sync, complementing him with fantastically spiced-up, juicy, full fills on drums. Ghosts Of Autumn is a phenomenal ballad that shakes you right up to heaven. How the guys roasted Dave when introducing this song. “This song was written by our bass player Dave Meros!” Ladies and gentlemen, would you please welcome Mr. Dave Meros!” Dave Meros!!!” Dave was horribly embarrassed. Somehow he wriggled out: “I wasn’t the only one who wrote this song!” But Nick wasn’t thrown off and kept going: “That’s right man, but John Boegehold is unfortunately not present, so ladies and gentlemen, would you please welcome Mr. Dave Meros!!!” How Dave blushed…..You have to see that scene, it can’t be described in words. I was laughing like an animal, thinking how genuinely spontaneous these Beardsters are. After a one-of-a-kind, soulful rendition of this ballad, the guys picked the show back up in a higher gear.
And now that computer “drum sample”, like someone hammering at high frequency on a pickle can. Euphoria (Feel Euphoria) swept over the hall. “Ryo is rock’n’roll!!!” Nick shouted, thrilled with his buddy’s performance, at the end of the song, full of psychedelic eruptions in which a totally immersed Ryo hung off the keyboards with all his might. The atmosphere took on a different flavor again through the gorgeous composition Bottom Line. Nick took an acoustic guitar in his hands, like in Shining Star. Nick played all the acoustic parts. Nick isn’t Phil Collins, which I’d quietly been expecting, but he drummed separately and sang separately, whereas Phil back in the day did both at the same time. Well, Spock’s Beard aren’t Genesis either. There’s a chance Jimmy Keegan will become a permanent guest on Spock’s Beard tours in the future too. The guys dropped the funky Onomatopoeia from the setlist. They played it at the start of the tour. We got off cheap in Munich, since a few days earlier in Berlin they skipped not just Onomatopoeia but also Ghosts Of Autumn and even Feel Euphoria. As for why, there are two explanations. According to the first, time constraints. According to the second, they dropped them because Alan supposedly felt horribly sick through the whole Berlin show, since the tiger had supposedly paid him a visit bright and early.
At last came a change in repertoire (at least as far as the discography goes) and the guys moved over to the record “Snow” (2002). And strictly to the second disc of that double album, from which they played an unforgettably crazy medley. They opened it with Second Overture, which flowed into the phenomenal high-atmosphere gem I’m the Guy, then after Reflection and Carrie hit us with the bouncy Freak Boy (pt. 2) and kept ramping up the tempo uncompromisingly through Devil’s Got My Throat Revisited and Snow’s Night Out.
Generally speaking, the medley was the peak of the concert, with its own peak. The song Ladies And Gentlemen, Ryo Okumoto On The Keyboards, where Ryo lost his mind. The dude had already tried several times to cover himself with his set of organs, he was so wrapped up in it, but this time he actually pulled it off. The moment he completely “disconnected”, he knocked over the main stand, with his whole stack of keyboards on it, of course. The stand’s right leg snapped in two, twice over. Lying on the floor, Ryo brought his orgasmic moment to an end. Of course the guys took a little breather, two roadies somehow glued the stand’s leg back together so it worked until the end of the concert. But now one of the roadies had to hold the stand until the end of the show. Next came a solo spot, or rather a drum duel between Jimmy and Nick. It’s unbelievable what little Jimmy has in him. The drum kit was full of his hands, the cymbals spinning like a record in a jukebox. From what I could see, Jimmy beats Nick in speed, as Nick simply couldn’t repeat certain tricks after him. Stunning, unforgettable fun. You have to experience this!
Then the guys wrapped up the main part of the concert by hammering out the Devil’s Got My Throat chorus one more time and ending with an outstanding fade out that just wouldn’t end. During the medley, Jimmy Keegan pulled off an incredible stage dive. Peter Gabriel-style, he “lay down” backwards on the audience’s hands, who carried him practically all the way to the bar across the whole hall to the other side and brought him back to the stage.
In the encore, fans of Spock’s Beard classics finally got their due. The Doorway and Go The Way You Go spiced up the show to the max, the crowd was swaying, partying, rejoicing and shaking like mad. The band’s communication with the audience was outstanding throughout the show. Spock’s Beard finished their set in grand style, which lasted almost two and a half hours all told. Flawless, maximally relaxed, without a speck of arrogance. I’ve never seen a band this “friendly” and smiling live. My post-gig Beard euphoria just kept going and going. This is a band that truly captures and charms the listener with its honest love of music. The guys have no brakes. On stage they operate on the principle: “Do what you want!” That’s why the concert is incredibly unpredictable, because you never know what one of them will pull next. The band served up nothing but positive vibes, so we really recharged our batteries properly for the return to reality.
Setlist
Enchant:
1. The Thirst
2. Sinking Sand
3. Monday
4. Progtology
5. My Gavel Hand
6. Below Zero
7. Comatose
—encore—
8. Oasis
Spock’s Beard:
1. A Guy Named Sid
2. Thoughts
3. Shining Star
4. East Of Eden, West Of Memphis
5. Ghosts Of Autumn
6. Feel Euphoria
7. Bottom Line
8. Snow Medley:
a.) Second Overture
b.) I’m The Guy
c.) Reflection
d.) Carrie
e.) Freak Boy (pt.2)
f.) Devil’s Got My Throat Revisited
g.) Snow’s Night Out
h.) Ladies And Gentlemen, Mister Ryo Okumoto On The Keyboards
i.) drum duel (Nick vs. Jimmy)
j.) Devil’s Got My Throat (re-) Revisited
—encore—
9. The Doorway
10. Go The Way You Go
