Luxembourg: 12 points!!! Part one Hi folks! Here comes part one of the report of the Corrs-concert in Luxembourg on July 8th 1998. Our circle of participants for our concert meetings becomes bigger and bigger each time. So this time 5 nations took part and they were: Australia (Sonya), Finland (Mikko), France (Lily, Cyril), Germany (Wolfgang) and Netherlands (Helen, Renate and Raymond). This is going to be pretty long... Mikko had arrived the day before to stay at Wolfgang's house, and he and Wolfgang started out at about 9:00 for Heerlen, Netherlands where the meeting with the Dutch people had been agreed. They arrived around 10:35, and met as planned. Surprisingly, the train had been early and not late as was expected. :) The weather didn't look good at all, it was raining almost all the way to the Netherlands and also when driving through Belgium. Only when getting closer to Luxembourg it did stop raining. We had a bit of trouble finding our way to Luxembourg. Mikko: "I knew Luxembourg was a small country, but I didn't know it was so small that it would be difficult to find!" Eventually we did get there and found the club (den Atelier) at 15:00, though due to various delays and such an hour and a half late from what was planned. Not that the trip was boring, with listening to various tapes of Corrs and some Gloria Estefan on the side too. We wanted to be at the venue before the Corrs arrived though, and because of that being so late was a bit worrisome. At the venue we met Lily, Sonya, Cyril and some Italian fans. No locals at all yet! The worry about missing the Corrs' arrival turned out unfounded, so we set out for a long wait outside the club's entrance. Some people from RTL radio showed up around 16.00. We asked them if they were going to interview them, and they confirmed that The Corrs were supposed to be interviewed at 6pm. So we had some idea for how long we needed to wait for them. Raymond and Wolfgang were lost for about one hour. They tried to find out if there were any other entrances to the venue. Fortunately they were NOT successful in finding them, so The Corrs needed to come by the main entrance for getting into "den Atelier". Wolfgang's day would have been saved if he would have gotten bumped by Sharon's car when she was arriving. Everybody else would have been jealous for that experience! Actually he was dreaming in the middle of the street while searching for some items to get them signed and didn't notice the car coming. :-) The car with Andrea, Sharon and Jim arrived just after Sharon's. Wolfgang had made his own t-shirt with pictures from the first album (very professional). He got it signed by all four. Ray finally got his booklets singed, he had forgotten to take them with him when he was in Cologne last time. However he did make some nice pictures, wich you can see at Lily´s webpage (Closer to the Corrs). Mikko got autographs by all four on his flight ticket and his FnF booklet. Renate had made another mug again for Andrea, which she would give to her parents she said. Andrea was very happy with it and as a big "thank you" kissed Renate on both cheeks! So you can believe that Renate isn't washing her face anymore for the next couple of weeks. :) Helen had an undescribable picture of Andrea (it will be on the web some time in the future somewhere). When Andrea saw it she had to laugh hard together with everybody else who saw it and signed it. Then the Corrs went inside... After this, there were still not any other people around (at 18:00) so all of us decided to go to a cafe next door for a drink. Around 18.35 we went back to stand in line for the concert. We were still the only ones there so found ourselves some very good places so we could get in first and listened to the Corrs rehearsing... people started arriving quickly after that. At 19.15 the Corrs came out and left the building to go back to the hotel (at least that's what we guessed) to get dressed etc.... At 19.50 we were finally allowed to get in and we had to run very hard to find us a spot it the front row as others were going for that too. We all got front places except for Sonya and Wolfgang who were standing second row. The stage was very small in the corner of the hall. And there was no gap between the stage and front row. So now finally in we had to wait again for the concert to begin... which took pretty long.. it wasn't until 21.15 that the Corrs came up, as they had no support act this time around (YEAH!). End of part 1 Written by Helen, Mikko, Raymond, Renate and Wolfgang with thanks to Cyril, Lily and Sonya ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Luxembourg: 12 points!!! Part two: the concert Sharon came up first and started playing the intro to When he's not around, the others followed quickly. With the first lines to WHNA we all held up our signs, which spelled out 'T H E C O R R S' for the Corrs to read, and F R O N T R O W for the people behind us (I know, we're mean!). The Corrs saw it and were laughing at us! From the start the whole audience was singing along with everything. WHNA was followed by No good for me, Love to love you and FNF. Andrea was very surprised with the reaction they got from the audience. People were so enthusiastic, it was unbelievable. Then Carraroe jig (of course mentioned as 'joy of life' on the setlist). Wow, was this crowd good or what!! Some of us have already been to many concerts of them but this was really unbelievable. After the song was finished people kept on cheering and clapping and shouting. It was f***ing brilliant (Renate and Helen). Then Intimacy started and the little hand with lights and lighters were put into the air. But we had one problem. There was a draft in the room which blew the lighters out and Lily burnt her thumb, which Jim thought was pretty funny! Time for What Can I do. Helen and Renate had made a big sign with the names of Helen, Renate and Lily on it. Andrea announced that they were going to sing What can I do and we held up our first sign which said 'We already do' as a response to the sentence 'what can I do to make you love me'. Then the song started and when Andrea sang again 'what can I do to make you love me' we held up our second banner which said 'What can WE do to make you love us?'. Andrea responded with 'We already do!' and she blew a kiss to us! So you can believe that we were the happiest girls in the world!! Then with the next verse we held up our first banner again and made sure the others saw it to this time. Jim was laughing at us when he read it, and so was Sharon. Time to go on to the next song 'the right time'... again absolutely sung by the audience instead of Andrea at some parts. Then it was time for the very stunning performance of 'Queen of Hollywood'. After the song had finished we started yelling "CAROLINE .... CAROLINE ...." and the rest of the crowd joined in. Caroline heard us and waved her drumsticks to us while the rest of the band was laughing. Then time for 'Dreams' which was announced by Andrea as a song from a fantastic band. The audience started clapping at the exact moment that the drumbeat start in the album version. A great performance, but Helen still prefers their original live version of it. Time for Sharon's solo, but she had a lot of trouble starting playing. The audience was shouting, clapping etc... Sharon was amazed. She told us to stop a few times but we just didn't, everybody went on and on.... Finally she decided to do a little dancing herself, which was greated by the audience with even more cheering!!!!! Finally we got quiet enough for her to start playing..... Jim joined in with her a few minutes later and the others came back on stage too. Caroline came also to the front of the stage for playing the bodhran. The first thought that went through Helen and Lily's mind was 'Great shoes, Caroline!', because Caroline was wearing white sneakers under her black clothes. So Helen wrote a little note and put it on the box infront of them, but they didn't take notice. When the song finished Helen pointed Andrea again on the note and she picked it up and read it. In the microphone she said softly 'Great shoes, Caroline' laughed at Helen and said 'Naughty girl!' (I'm not :( ). Next, time for runaway with the audience singing along and doing part of it alone.. halfway Andrea suddenly says ''Luxembourg: 12 points' (referring to the European song contest) and everybody started laughing! During Runaway Helen had her little hand up again and Jim was shouting something at her, which she couldn't understand. Lily understood what he was saying and told Helen to turn her little hand around, 'cause the way she was holding it at that moment meant that Jim was supposed to go double f**k himself, so you can believe Helen got a little embarrassed. The concert was starting to go to an end and the audience was getting more and more excited. Next was OWIS, HA and INLYA. 'Valentino, I don't think so' was song by the audience along with the rest of the song. They were amazed. After INLYA they left the stage for a little while and the audience started shouting 'we want more' and more we got... When they returned on the stage we held up our THE CORRS letter-signs one more time and got the whole band laughing on stage. Everybody was putting their hands up with 'so young' with Renate leading the crowd, which got Andrea laughing. It was awesome. Time then for the very last song 'toss the feathers'. For one last time the crowd was going out of their minds, clapping, shouthing, dancing... a fantastic ending to an absolutely brillant concert!!! Written by Helen, Mikko, Raymond, Renate and Wolfgang with thanks to Cyril, Lily and Sonya