Paris - Utrecht review part 1

Warning: This might get long!

Part one: Paris, France (3rd Feb 1999)

I guess it all started tuesday morning when Renate and I met in the train
going from Utrecht to Maastricht were Richard would pick us up to drive to
Paris. We arrived perfectly in time at the trainstation, met up with Richard
and drove to Paris were we arrived already at 3 in the afternoon! We checked
in the hotel, called Lily and decided to meet somewhere downtown as Lily had
to do some shopping. There we met up with Lily and Cyril, so we got part of
us together already. After the shopping we decided to go to an Irish pub and
have a drink and which Irish pub would be better then the one the Corrs ones
visited!!  After a drink we decided it was time for some dinner as everyone
was getting hungry so we decided to go to Chily's an guess what when we
entered the place a Corrs song was playing... must be fate! During our stay
there suddenly the whole Corrs CD was put on and we started to sing along
which the waitress thought was pretty funny and the others guests must have
thought who are those idiots!
Time for bed then.. we went back to the hotel and said goodnight to Lily and
Cyril, who would come to the hotel the next morning.
The next morning Cyril and Lily arrived at the hotel and we decided to check
out Zenith as it was just across the street... we found out that the Corrs
would arrive around 2-3 o'clock from some other fans. So we started waiting.
In the meantime we met up with Denis, Tony and lots of others French Corrs
fans. To our surprise Mikko turned up very quickly too as we were afraid he
would arrive much later because of the strike at the airways in Finland.. I
guess he was very lucky! It turned out that the Corrs wouldnt' arrive till
around 4-5 pm so more waiting followed..... when they finally arrived in
three different cars they drove straight in while waving to everybody out
there. Bad luck for us.
We finally got to enter the building around 6.30 in the evening and a long
run it was to get infront of the stage but we all managed to stand front
row! Yeah!!!! Our day of waiting turned out worth it! The support act in the
European leg of the tour has changed to Babelfish, a Norwegian band, which
we all thought were excellent!! I like them better them Picture house.
Time then for the Corrs but they had  a lot of problems with Andrea's
microphone. The first one didn't work correctly and they weren't very happy
with the second one either as the guy kept making rounds on the stage to
test it. Talking about the stage it was a bit smaller then in the UK 'cause
the walking bridge in the back was not there, but futher it looked very much
the same. Finally they managed to get the microphone working and soon after
the Corrs came on.

The crowd went wild when the lights dimmed. The intro was very exciting to
hear, as always. We had prepared a set of paper signs spelling The Corrs,
which we held up for a moment when Andrea started singing WHNA.  The crowd
reaction to that song was amazing, and the Corrs were very surprise with the
welcome they got. I saw Andrea mouthing "wow" when the song was over due to
the big cheering.

The set list was no different from the other concerts so I won't write it
here.

After almost all of the songs the crowd was cheering so loud that the band
couldn't start playing the next song right away, they had to wait a moment
for the cheering to quieten down.  After Joy of Life, the front of the crowd
was singing this tune which can't really be explained in writing, and Sharon
started to dance to it, because she couldn't start FnF with the crowd being
so noisy. :-)
Jim played his piano piece, excellent as usual.  When it was time for Sharon
and Caroline's duet, the crowd was singing the tune again, so Sharon started
to dance on her seat, and Jim even started playing along on the piano!  Then
he stopped and said "Whose gig is this anyway?"

I (Mikko) had prepared a banner which said "Hard Corr Fans".  When Jim was
getting ready to play his song on the piano, I held it up because I knew he
hadn't seen it yet because he had been too far to the right earlier.  I
guess he did like it when he saw it, because he pointed at me and read it
aloud to the microphone. :-)

The audience was singing along more or less to all the songs.  Especially
the FnF ones and Dreams and INLYA.  Andrea held out the microphone to the
audience many times, at least during FnF and Runaway.
Andrea also kept making eye contact with all (?) of the people in the front
row, I think there were quite a few people there who she recognised.

During INLYA the front row got to sing "I don't think so!" to Andrea's held
out microphone.
Andrea's biggest mess-up of the night was during the introductions of band
members. First she introduced Anto, then walked over to Keith and sat down.
Then she looked at Caroline and introduced her...  After that she looked
around, saw Jim, so said "On guitar and keyboards... Jim!"  Jim was very
surprised by this, there was a confused look on his face.  And Sharon was
looking around and doing gestures that said "Hey! What about me?!?"  Andrea
realised that something went wrong, and then a few seconds later she looked
at Sharon and realised that she'd left her out.  Ooops!  So she introduced
Sharon next.


During the speach before Dreams Andrea said they were awarded platinum for
Talk On Corners sales in France.

When the band walked back on stage to play So Young, all of us in the front
row had ready paper airplanes.  Then when they started playing, we threw
them on the stage!
Well, half of them didn't land on the stage, but for a moment the air was
filled with airplanes... The band was quite surprised by this, and
laughed...  When so young was over and the band started playing Toss the
Feathers, we really tossed them -- we had a small bag of feathers with us
and we were throwing them up in the air!  The look on Andrea's face was
priceless.  First there was a look of confusion on her face, saying "What
are those people doing???" and then, a second later, she realised what it
was about and she started laughing and had stop playing the tin whistle!  I
hope I'll never forget that moment...  Unfortunately I didn't see what the
reaction from the other band members were.

That's all we can remember from the night, there were many great moments
during the concert but it's al a blur now...

All in all, a very noisy concert. :-)  One of the noisiest so far for both
of us...


It was great to meet all the French fans, Lily, Cyril, Tony, Denis, Mariel,
and all the others whose names we've forgot.


Next: part two, Utrecht

Till we meet again....
            Helen  &  Mikko