End of an era
Aug. 30th, 2013 01:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tilly_stratfordSo. Kaizers Orchestra, my favourite contemporary band. I haven't mentioned them in a while. Partly because I haven't been a big fan of their output lately; Their last three albums have been part of this elaborate storytelling project, known as Violeta Violeta. The response hasn't been... overwhelming, I think. I love some of the songs on those three albums, but boy are there a lot of misfires, a lot of experiments that didn't pan out.
Kaizers Orchestra is a liveband, they've won awards for their theatrical and high-energy performances -- I think that's why committing to an experimental series of concept albums wasn't the optimal thing to do.
But here's the point:
They're disbanding.
Last night Tiny and me attended one of the concerts on their farewell tour, known as Siste dans ("Last dance"). This would be our tenth concert. I'm not going to talk at length about how great Kaizer concerts tend to be, I just know they're the best concerts I've been to in my entire life.
Well, it was the first concert of the tour, so we could tell things weren't quite as rehearsed as we've come to expect -- a lot of whispering between the band mates, some forgotten lyris (to their first hit, even, 'Kontroll på kontinentet'), a guitar solo was interrupted halfway and had to be finished after some technical fiddling had been done, and so on.
The audience was only so-so. Janno even pointed it out, how "polite" (his words) the crowd was. On the upside, this is the first time I've been in the pit of a Kaizer concert and haven't had any beer spilled on me, or my toes stepped on, or experienced any bodily harm at all. On the other hand, it felt weird being the only ones who jumped to the Songs Everybody Knows You're Supposed To Jump To.
The sound was atrocious, one of those rookie mistakes were it's turned up so loud the speakers distort the sound and you can't even tell whether there's vocals in muddle at all. My ears were hurting all through the night, and that's unusual for me at concerts.
Tiny got 'Tokyo ice til Clementine', it's one of her favourite songs and they usually never play it live (in fact they introduced the song as "one of the ugliest songs we've written"), so she was through the roof. Me, I got 'Dieter Meyer's institusjon' -- though I was experiencing some bra trouble; My underwire suddenly snapped and poked me in the rib, and so I had deftly remove it while standing in the pit surrounded by strangers. Not even Tiny noticed though, and she was standing right behind me. (Toyed with the thought of throwing it up on stage, but nah).
You could tell the fans (me included) weren't there for the newest material. Usually everybody sings along and engages in the show, but when it was time for 'Perfekt i en drøm' (an insufferably slow, whining ballad, probably the only Kaizer song I simply can't tolerate even thirty seconds of), I looked around and noticed people just staring, tight-lipped at the stage. Even after the song was finished it took the band a while to get the crowd going again. I felt it was a mistake even including it.
Other interesting things: I totally held Terje's gaze for quite a while during 'Kontroll på kontinentet' -- might just have been because I was wearing a bright orange headband over my dreads, but I felt a bit giddy all the same. During 'Die polizei' Janno urged people who didn't have lighters to hold up their mobile phones -- it's one of those things I think look super corny but hey, he told us to, so I did.
All in all, when it was fun, it was as fun as it's always been, but a lot of things were kind of disappointing: The crowd, some of the set list, the lack of banter and tom-foolery up on stage. Tiny and I broached the subject afterwards that maybe it's for the best the band quits while they're ahead, because it's like they reached their zenith a few years ago and the downward curve has started to show.
But man, I'm going to miss this band.
To think, ten years ago I taped a Kaizers Orchestra music video off the TV. I had to use a VHS cassette, Janno didn't have grey hair, Terje was still wearing wife beaters rather than well-tailored three-piece suits, they had another bass player -- it all happened so long ago! Look at these babies:
Kaizers Orchestra is a liveband, they've won awards for their theatrical and high-energy performances -- I think that's why committing to an experimental series of concept albums wasn't the optimal thing to do.
But here's the point:
They're disbanding.
Last night Tiny and me attended one of the concerts on their farewell tour, known as Siste dans ("Last dance"). This would be our tenth concert. I'm not going to talk at length about how great Kaizer concerts tend to be, I just know they're the best concerts I've been to in my entire life.
Well, it was the first concert of the tour, so we could tell things weren't quite as rehearsed as we've come to expect -- a lot of whispering between the band mates, some forgotten lyris (to their first hit, even, 'Kontroll på kontinentet'), a guitar solo was interrupted halfway and had to be finished after some technical fiddling had been done, and so on.
The audience was only so-so. Janno even pointed it out, how "polite" (his words) the crowd was. On the upside, this is the first time I've been in the pit of a Kaizer concert and haven't had any beer spilled on me, or my toes stepped on, or experienced any bodily harm at all. On the other hand, it felt weird being the only ones who jumped to the Songs Everybody Knows You're Supposed To Jump To.
The sound was atrocious, one of those rookie mistakes were it's turned up so loud the speakers distort the sound and you can't even tell whether there's vocals in muddle at all. My ears were hurting all through the night, and that's unusual for me at concerts.
Tiny got 'Tokyo ice til Clementine', it's one of her favourite songs and they usually never play it live (in fact they introduced the song as "one of the ugliest songs we've written"), so she was through the roof. Me, I got 'Dieter Meyer's institusjon' -- though I was experiencing some bra trouble; My underwire suddenly snapped and poked me in the rib, and so I had deftly remove it while standing in the pit surrounded by strangers. Not even Tiny noticed though, and she was standing right behind me. (Toyed with the thought of throwing it up on stage, but nah).
You could tell the fans (me included) weren't there for the newest material. Usually everybody sings along and engages in the show, but when it was time for 'Perfekt i en drøm' (an insufferably slow, whining ballad, probably the only Kaizer song I simply can't tolerate even thirty seconds of), I looked around and noticed people just staring, tight-lipped at the stage. Even after the song was finished it took the band a while to get the crowd going again. I felt it was a mistake even including it.
Other interesting things: I totally held Terje's gaze for quite a while during 'Kontroll på kontinentet' -- might just have been because I was wearing a bright orange headband over my dreads, but I felt a bit giddy all the same. During 'Die polizei' Janno urged people who didn't have lighters to hold up their mobile phones -- it's one of those things I think look super corny but hey, he told us to, so I did.
All in all, when it was fun, it was as fun as it's always been, but a lot of things were kind of disappointing: The crowd, some of the set list, the lack of banter and tom-foolery up on stage. Tiny and I broached the subject afterwards that maybe it's for the best the band quits while they're ahead, because it's like they reached their zenith a few years ago and the downward curve has started to show.
But man, I'm going to miss this band.
To think, ten years ago I taped a Kaizers Orchestra music video off the TV. I had to use a VHS cassette, Janno didn't have grey hair, Terje was still wearing wife beaters rather than well-tailored three-piece suits, they had another bass player -- it all happened so long ago! Look at these babies:
