SPAIN TOUR REPORT

This is not just a single concert report, instead it details the
adventures of Daniel and Mikko in Spain from 14th to 16th July 2000,
during which the Corrs played three concerts in three different cities.

The three concerts were:
Friday the 14th, in San Sebastian
Saturday the 15th, in Madrid
Sunday the 16th, in Murcia


The three concerts had quite a few things in common, so first we'll
talk about those things.

The timetable for each show was almost the same, only about 15 minute
differences of the following:

- 8pm the gates opened and people were let into the venue
- 9pm the first support act, M-Clan, came on stage and played about 45
minutes
- 10pm the second support act, Presuntos Implicados, started their set
which lasted about 1h 15mins
- 30 to 45 minutes of sound check for the Corrs
- around midnight, the Corrs came on stage, and played about 1.5 hours

The venues were all bull-fighting rings.  San Sebastian and Madrid were
fully covered, but Murcia was open to the sky (better, it didn't get so
hot!).  There were both seated and standing places, seats around the
ring and standing area on the ring-ground itself, in front of the stage.
None of the concerts were sold out as far as we know, about five to
seven thousand tickets were sold for each concert.  The Madrid concert
was originally planned for a venue that could seat 40,000 people, but
got moved to a smaller one with "only" 20,000 seats.  As it was, they
didn't end up using the whole venue anyway, it seemed quite full but
more seats/space could've been arranged by simply moving the stage
closer to one side.

When entering, audience was given little "light sticks" to wave during
songs, small flashlight kind of thing with some fibers sticking out that
changed colour when you shook the stick.  They looked rather nice in the
dark.  There were big black and orange balloons hung in nets near the
ceiling, and these were released over the audience before the Corrs came
on stage, either before or during the support acts, and in Murcia it was
during the Corrs soundcheck.

There was no Corrs merchandise being sold at all.

For all concerts, Jim changed clothes for the encores.  When he returned
he was wearing the t-shirt of the Spanish national football team. (?)
We've know heard that that shirt was actually given to him by Mike
Anderson from Denmark, before the gigs.  He was one of two competition
winners from Denmark who together with some people from the record
company and other competition winners from Spain/Portugal met the band
in a "meet and greet".

When the concerts were over and the band had left, Rebel Heart was
played from tape to the audience.  That was a pretty nice touch
(although we always kept wishing they'd have come back for another
set of encores instead...).

The support acts:

M-Clan (1st) were kind of like a Spanish version of the Rolling Stones.
They definitely were inspired by the Stones, the lead singer's stage
acting was reminiscent of Mick Jagger's, and they even played a couple
of bits of Stones' songs.  They were very energetic and rather good to
listen to, pity they sang in Spanish.  We'd have certainly enjoyed them
quite a bit, if we only hadn't be so tired by the time they came to
play.

Presuntos Implicados (2nd) had a very good show and performance, it was
like they were partying up on the stage, and they were obviously
enjoying performing a lot.  Pity their music was very boring though!  It
brought into mind tunes like the theme song for the Love Boat TV series,
being a mix of soul and latino-kind of music, or something like that. 
Or elevator music.  They did have some good parts in songs, but for the
most parts we just wished it would be over soon.



San Sebastian, Friday 14th July

This concert was attended by Daniel, Victoria and Christina.  There were
also some other Spanish people who were friends of Victoria's who were
from San Sebastian (or from other places).  Mikko was only flying in to
Spain during Friday evening, so didn't get to attend this concert.

Our group going to the concert came to San Sebastian with a night bus,
and arrived there 6:30 in the morning.  It was raining and windy.
Nobody had tickets, they were arranged via record company and were meant
to be picked up at the ticket office.  Somebody was supposed to pick us
up, he didn't show up at the bus station (later we found out that this
was because he didn't want to get up that early...).  So, we walked and
went to find some kind of breakfast in a cafe.  After that we went to
find the venue, found it by asking people, and then did a little bit of
reconnaissance -- checked the number and locations of entrances, the
layout of the venue, where the ticket office was, all the usual stuff.
There were a lot of entrances, well over 10, but someone told us that
only entrance number 5 would be used.  We didn't think anyone would show
up to queue very early because it was raining.  This was at about 8 or
9am.  Then it was just waiting, because nothing was open yet.  When
McDonald's opened, went there and sat down having coffee for like four
hours.

After that, we went to the ticket office to ask about our tickets for
the first time.  The people there didn't have any kind of clue about
what Victoria was talking about, in fact.  So there were some phone
calls made to try to arrange things.  Next we went to a cafe right
beside McDonald's, they were playing Talk On Corners there (without
anyone of us asking) and it was rather loud.  Spent about one hour
there, then went back to ask about our tickets again.  The reply was
"come back at six".

So we went back to the cafe to wait, had a meal at McDonald's at one
point, sat around until it was quarter to six, then went back to the
office to ask again about tickets (nothing), then decided to wait in
front of the office because a queue was starting to form (4 people).
Then went back to cafe to wait for about one hour, then got back before
7pm, and there were 25 people there in the queue!  Finally, at about
7:20pm we got our tickets -- the gates were scheduled to open at 8pm, so
this was too close for comfort.  The tickets said "Invitation #NNNN"
instead of "Ticket #NNNN" which was pretty cool. :-)

Everyone had been talking about how Daniel would get "front row for
everyone", he tried to explain that for that they should all try to
sneak forwards in the queue, but without much luck.  Daniel managed to
get position 3 in the queue (from 25) in just 30 mins though!  So, at
about 10 minutes before the gates opened there were something like 200
people in the queue waiting to get in.  Daniel was thinking, "This is
good, I'll be able to get front row now".

About only one minute before the gates were scheduled to open, some
guard guy showed up and came to tell everyone in the queue that for
the ground floor (standing) places, people should go to gate #1.  Err,
WHAT?!?!?  Panic!!!  Confusion, where is gate #1?

So we went around the corner and saw this HUGE queue of people, it was
about 200 meters (650 feet) long and about 3 people wide.  We hadn't
seen it before because it was behind a corner...  So checked the time,
it was 3 mins past 8 -- SH*T!!!  Forget about sneaking, run for front
row!  Daniel started to run and told others to follow, but they didn't.

Daniel just ran past the whole queue.  When he was about 20 meters (65
feet) away from the gates, they were opened.  Then a guard came to open
a second gate too, which was right in front of Daniel, and it didn't
have a queue of people waiting in front of it.  So he was able to just
run straight through without stopping, and was the first to get in
through that gate.  A guard asked Daniel about his bag, but he just
replied "no camera" and the guard didn't bother to check.  After this,
Daniel was the fourth to get into the venue, and so was able to get
front row position between where Andrea and Jim were on the stage.  The
other people in the group arrived some five minutes later and managed to
position themselves in the third row.

Then it was just waiting, waiting.  Daniel went to look for Victoria and
Christina (sp?) when the first support act was on the stage and spent
about an hour just walking about.  He managed to push his way back to his
place at the front without many problems.

There were some problems with the soundcheck for the Corrs, the violin
sound wasn't working properly.  Because of this the soundcheck took some
45 minutes.

Finally, at around midnight, the Corrs came on stage.  It was the same
as for the Fleadh or the Hamburg concerts, the stage was filled with
smoke and Erin Shore was played from a tape, then during that the band
members walked on the stage: first Caroline, the Jim and Anto & Keith,
then Sharon and finally Andrea.  When the tape ended, the stage lighted
up and the band started playing.  Here's the setlist:

    intro
1.  Only When I Sleep
2.  What Can I Do
3.  Irresistible
    intro
4.  Forgiven Not Forgotten
5.  At Your Side
6.  Give Me A Reason
7.  Radio
8.  Runaway
9.  Old Town
10. Joy Of Life
11. The Right Time
12. Queen Of Hollywood
13. Dreams
14. No More Cry
15. Breathless
16. Anyway
- - - - - - - - - - -
17. So Young
18. Toss The Feathers

Daniel hadn't prepared any banners for the concert, except he had the
"drumsticks" paper sheet with him that Mikko had used in Hamburg.


Highlights and other things worth mentioning of the concert:

Sharon had problems with the violin sound through the entire concert.
She changed her violin several times, first to a spare, then to the
original, then back to the spare one.  At one point between songs, she
said "Sorry, but my violin is not working properly tonight.  <pause>
I'm trying!"

Radio had Jim playing at a separate "piano keyboard" set between the
drum kit and where Anto was playing, or maybe between the drum kit and
where Sharon was, since it was a bit more forward than the drum kit.
The perfomance was the Unplugged version, not what's on In Blue.

For Runaway, Caroline came down from behind the drum kit to sit down
at the piano keyboard and play the piano part for the song.  After that,
for Old Town, Caroline came to the front to sit on a stool and to sing
backing vocals.  She also had a tambourine to play, like in the
Unplugged show.

The Right Time is back in the set (it wasn't played in Hamburg), this
was a happy surprise to Daniel.

The audience was very good, singing along and generally enjoying their
time. :-)

Downsides:

Bad sound, it was too loud.  It wasn't possible to hear all the
instruments properly.  One reason for this was that there was a set of
six speakers in front of the center of the stage, and more at the sides.
Normally the speakers are hanging up, above the audience, which is
better.

Nothing was given away from the stage, either by the band or the
roadies.

Caroline did see Daniel's "drumsticks" banner, but forgot about it at
the end of the concert...

Injuries:

A busted left hip and some dirt in the right eye for Daniel.


After the concert, we had to wait five hours for the bus back to Madrid.
It was raining and everything was closed.  Not fun...



Madrid, Saturday 15th July

The day began (practically) with Mikko meeting the people coming back
from the San Sebastian concert at the bus station, at around 1pm.  After
that we did some necessary things: went to Victoria's place, prepared
what to take with us to the concert, watched a promo video for In Blue.

Then we went to eat something, as everyone was starving (and it's a good
idea to eat well before a concert...).  After the meal the time was
getting close to 5pm, and Mikko and Daniel were getting nervous since
they didn't yet have concert tickets.  So us two took the bus to the
city centre to look for a ticket office, but with no map and no address
it was impossible to find, even if Daniel had visited it once earlier.

So Mikko called Adolfo, and found out that he and a bunch of other fans
(JC, Jose, and others -- sorry, don't remember your names!) were already
there at the venue, and that it was possible to buy tickets there. 
After some confusion, we decided to take a taxi there.  Since we didn't
know the name of the venue nor the address (and it was impossible to
find it out over the cell phone...) we ended up just calling Adolfo
again once we were in the taxi, and he explained to the driver where we
wanted to go. :-)

We got to the venue with no problems, just 10 minutes in the taxi.  By
then it was 6pm, and there were some 100 or more people waiting around
in front of the single entrance's 4 gates.  Not too good.  There was a
ticket office right beside the entrance, so we got our tickets.  That
was good. :-)

With two hours to go, we did some walking about the venue, got some
water bottles (thanks again, Adolfo!), and then started talking to
people who were waiting there.  And sneaking to get better positions.
:-)  We picked separate queues so as to get a better chance of one of
us getting in fast, in case one of the queues got delayed.  Daniel
ended up getting position #3 in his queue, Mikko was 7th in his.  Mikko
also had a good time talking with the group of Spanish fans at the
front of the queue. :-)

Then the time was 8pm, and the gates were ready to be opened.  This
happened at about the same time, no problems with some being opened
earlier than others.  Daniel had the bag and its contents were checked,
which slowed him down. :-(  He also had to open the corks of the water
bottles before he was allowed in.  Carrying the two opened bottles meant
that he had to put his ticket between his teeth when running in. :-)
Meanwhile, Mikko had gotten front row position between Andrea's and
Sharon's places, and he also managed to reserve a spot for Daniel.

Then it was the very boring waiting part again.  First one hour before
anything happened, then both of the support acts...  Almost four hours
total.  We did get some amusements from the balloons, they were released
early to the audience.  Because of the draft in the venue, the balloons
tended to end up on the stage and hit the instruments there -- something
that the roadies setting up things didn't appreciate.

The Corrs soundcheck seemed to go without problems, and then at about
quarter to midnight, we were treated with the now-familiar Erin Shore
intro tape.

The setlist was the same as for the San Sebastian concert.

Highlights:

We held up the first banner during Only When I Sleep, it said "It's Us
Again".  This was rewarded with a smile from both Andrea and Sharon.  We
don't know if Jim saw it, Caroline probably didn't.

During the first three songs, the usual press photographers where taking
pictures.  Mikko used this time to also take pictures with his camera
that had been smuggled in in the bag -- the guard didn't do too good a
job in checking. :-)  He managed to take 7 pictures before got told to
stop by some staff member.

We had the big "You're Irresistible" banner from Hamburg with us to this
concert again.  However we'd changed it a bit, there was an extra word
"still" added to the banner, making it say "You're Still Irresistible".
We rolled this out with the help of some Spanish fans, but we didn't
actually get to see what kind of reaction it got, if any, because the
banner was covering our view of the stage. :-)  After we managed to see
on the stage again, we didn't notice any special behaviour by the band
members.  I guess this just proves that repeating banners is not a good
idea, it gets old really fast...  Well, we knew this already.

When Caroline came to the front to play piano for Runaway and sing
backing vocals for Old Town, Mikko showed a banner saying "Thanks
Caroline!!!" to her.  This was because of the drumsticks she'd handed to
him at the Hamburg concert one week earlier!

Daniel also used the opportunity to show the "drumsticks" banner to
Caroline again.

When it was time to play The Right Time, Sharon started actually playing
the violin bit for Queen of Hollywood!  A moment of confusion and then
everyone had a laugh...

For Breathless, we had a new banner.  When the chorus was getting
played, we held it up, and at least Andrea could read what it said:
"We're Trying". :-)  We know she saw it because she laughed. :-)

Another cool thing happened during Breathless.  After the chorus, when
Andrea ends it with "Come on...", she happened to be looking directly at
Mikko.  So he did a motion as if to climb up over the fence!  This made
Andrea laugh. :-)

For So Young, Daniel had a banner which said "Jim Is 35".  Andrea saw
this and didn't get it (the idea was that Jim isn't so young anymore,
really...), her bafflement was clearly visible on her face.  We didn't
see Jim's reaction, but later heard that he had also seen the text and
was laughing over it!

We had the usual feathers to toss for Toss The Feathers.

Finally, when that last song was ending, Mikko showed the "tin whistle"
sign to Andrea.  Then when the band members walked to the front, Daniel
showed "drumsticks" again to Caroline.  Mikko had prepared something for
her too, his sign read "drum kit? :-)".  Caroline laughed a lot when she
saw that!

Andrea threw the tin whistle toward Mikko, however her throw was rather
bad and went something like 1 meter above Mikko's head.  Mikko was
rather annoyed by that, for a few seconds, until he noticed that Daniel
had jumped and caught it after all!  Being the nice person he is, Daniel
gave the tin whistle to Mikko (it was meant for him anyway...).  Some
people wanted to touch the tin whistle, and a few tried to buy it. 
Mikko gave a price quote of 100,000 US dollars, with the reasoning that
with that kind of money he could go to plenty of concerts and possibly
get another tin whistle in the process. :-)  Nobody took up on that
though...

As a final highlight it's worth mentioning that the band certainly
recognised us from before...

Downsides:

The sound was better than in San Sebastian, but still not too good.  We
did have earplugs which helped somewhat.

We didn't get anything else besides the tin whistle from the stage. 
Daniel didn't get drumsticks despite showing the sign for the second
time, the roadies threw out the drumsticks. :-(

Injuries and losses:

Bruised elbows, lower arms, knees, and ribs for Mikko.  Daniel hurt his
elbow a bit and his hip got even worse.  He got quite a few bruises as
well.  Mikko lost his camera's lens cover. :-(


We met some rather cool people at this concert!  Especially worth
mentioning is the guy in front of Mikko in the queue, his name was
probably "Cesar" or something like that.  He was pretty cool even if he
didn't speak that much English.  After the concert, he did comment
"Bloody foreigners, come here and steal all our stuff!". :-)  (Yes, he
said it with a smile.)



Murcia, Sunday 16th July

After the Madrid concert we didn't have any idea where Victoria was,
although we had seen her in the concert.  We stayed at the venue and
kept looking, and gradually there were less and less people about, but
still no idea where she was.  We stayed near the backstage entrance
because there were more people there, and we found a group of Victoria's
friends so stayed with them because they spoke English. :-)  There were
a couple of ramps to a closed underground car park on different sides of
the venue, so we figured there was not much chance of seeing the band
leave.

After about an hour of waiting we (the groups of Spanish people and us
two) gave up on finding Victoria at the venue.  We decided to take a
taxi to her place and wait at the door.  Well, three of us did -- Daniel
and Mikko, and a Spanish girl called Laia who was also supposed to stay
at Victoria's place.  The other Spanish people went to their homes. 
Getting a taxi was a bit difficult, but eventually we managed.  By now
it was about 3am.  

After that we waited for awhile in the "stairway hall", got some Coke to
drink and some chocolate and chips to eat.  It didn't actually take too
long until Victoria showed up.  Then we discovered that there had been
some confusion about where we were meant or could to stay, and in fact
we didn't have any place for the night after all.  Oops.  We talked
about the situation some other random things for awhile (all the time
sitting in the hall!).  Mikko and Daniel were going to Murcia for the
concert there the next day, but had no idea of how to get there (or
where to stay there or where to get concert tickets for that matter, but
first things first).  It was concluded that the best (cheapest!) way to
get to Murcia was by bus, and since it was already past 4am, we decided
we would just go to the bus station and stay there until the first bus
to Murcia.  Laia was considering going home instead (she didn't live in
Madrid), but Mikko and Daniel convinced her that she should come along
to Murcia as she had originally planned.  Besides, us two could really
use having someone along who spoke Spanish!

So our group of three took a taxi to the bus station, we got there at
about 5am.  The biggest problem for us was that we'd gone to the concert
that night, and after that hadn't had a chance to shower...  Other than
that, it wasn't too bad waiting at the bus station.  Laia got to listen
to In Blue for the first time with a discman.

The bus to Murcia left at around 7am.  When we got on it, we found out
that the seats were Corr-sized -- Mikko didn't have too much space for
his legs, and Daniel (who is 10cm taller than Mikko) had real problems
trying to squeeze in.  He eventually got the aisle-side seat so his legs
could be on the aisle.

It got pretty hot in the bus.  It was supposed to be air-conditioned,
but for some reason it wasn't on.  Our seats were also on the sun side
of the bus, so despite the curtain it got pretty hot because of that
too.  We tried to get some sleep, but sleeping in a cramped space when
it's too hot is not too easy, even if you've not slept during the
night...

The bus trip lasted about 5 hours, including a half-hour break.  After
the break the air conditioning started working, and that made things
quite a lot better.  We did manage to get a few hours of sleep during
the trip eventually.

We got to Murcia around noon.  The forecast had promised around 47
degrees C (116F) there, which we had dreaded, but in fact it was 34C
(93F) which wasn't too bad at all, same as in Madrid.

After asking people several times and navigating the labyrinth-like
small streets in the city, we found our way from the bus station to a
youth hostel.  This took about an hour of walking, even if it probably
would've been no longer than 10-15 mins if we'd known the way.  At the
youth hostel we got the last available room -- at least we had luck on
our side in this!

After that we got refreshed, rested a bit, and did preparations for the
evening's concert.  We left the hostel at around 2pm to go to the venue.
We had no idea where it was, so we again just asked people for
directions.  We wandered a bit, and after an hour of walking managed to
get to the bull-fighting ring venue.  It probably was no further than
10-15 mins away from the hostel, but some of the directions we got were
rather bad and directed us 90 degrees in the wrong direction. :-)

So at 3pm we got to the venue.  There were already two groups of people
waiting at the gate, one was Adolfo and other people from Madrid, the
other some Spanish girls.  There were also other people around, but they
were in fact people who were setting up desks to sell stuff to people
(drinks, small snacks or something, not Corrs merchandise).

We decided to take a small walk to check out the venue, and see if we
could locate a ticket office -- we still had no idea about tickets!  But
we didn't find any.  We did find the backstage entrance though, which
had a gate that was open so you could see to part of the backstage area.
There was a guard or two though.  After this we walked back to the front
entrance again and settled to wait.  And wait.  And wait.

We decided to get something to drink and eat, so went to a cafe which
was almost just across the street.  We picked some sandwiches and
something to drink, but when we were paying, our money was handed back
to us -- they asked if we were here for the concert, and when we said
"yes", then they said that it's already paid.  A little while later we
found out that they thought we were part of the tour crew or something!
(Mikko and Daniel were wearing their Corrs Online t-shirts).  But we
did get free food and drink, for that one time at least. :-)

There was a guard about at the front gate, and he told us that there
would be a ticket office opened beside the gate, at 6pm.  He pointed
at something that we had thought was only a closed window or something
before!  That was a bit of a relief, to know we could get tickets here.

We waited some more.  Mikko and Daniel decided to take a walk, just for
having something to do, and to also find a good spot for finishing their
banners.  They meant to go alone, but for some reason a lot of people
wanted to go with them.  We ended up walking to the back entrance,
mostly because it was a place with some shade from the venue's wall.
While we were walking, the Corrs started their sound check.  This was
different from San Sebastian and Madrid in that they did their own sound
check.

So we spent some time near the back entrance, Daniel and Mikko finished
their banners.  We where there some 15-20 minutes, and then someone who
was looking in through the open gates saw Sharon, and started shouting
to her.  Then we waited for some 15-20 minutes more, during this more
people arrived who had heard the shouting and screaming.  (Hint: If you
want to meet the band at the backstage entrance, don't shout and scream
-- it just attracts more attention and makes more people get there, and
the more people there are, the less chance there is of the band stopping
for any autographs at all.)  Then we saw the Corrs getting into their
cars, and they drove out from the backstage entrance.  They waved
through the car windows to the group of fans that was there by then.

After that, we walked back to the front again.  By then, there were
about 50-100 people there.  There were in fact two entrance, with two
gates for each.  The gates were in fact rather wide, maybe allowing
three people to get in at a time.  We were at the entrance with shorter
distance to the only way to actually get into the venue, but we
positioned ourselves at both gates.  Mikko was maybe 7th in the queue
into his gate, Daniel was 3rd.

At about 6:30pm, we got our tickets.  Then it was just waiting and
waiting, but it was fairly uncomfortable because people were already
tightly packed in front of the gates, so there was no chance to sit or
move much.

Some minutes after 8pm, the gates were opened.  However, the people were
only let in a few meters, to the end of the guard rails where there were
people checking bags and such.  Daniel somehow ended up being the first
in his queue, he doesn't even know himself how he managed that!

It was only a minute or two of waiting, and then we were let in to the
venue -- a mad dash to get front row positions again!  The security
check was done first, and the tickets were checked *after* this, which
was different from the normal order.  Mikko had the bag this time, so
Daniel got in without much delay and was in fact the second person to
enter the venue.  Mikko got asked about his bag, but it (or himself)
wasn't searched.  When Mikko got in he saw that Daniel had gotten front
row placement again, this time between Andrea's and Jim's spots on the
stage.

Then it was waiting again, waiting, more waiting.  We were very tired,
from not sleeping, from walking about in Murcia, and from waiting around
since 3pm, much of which was standing too.  The support acts didn't do
much to help us feel better, it's hard to get into strange music which
you don't understand when your feet hurt from standing too long and you
only wish you could somehow sit down. :-)

Then finally, the Corrs intro tape started a few minutes past midnight.
Suddenly all the tiredness and ache disappeared, you just didn't feel it
anymore...

Highlights:

Mikko had the "Hard Corr Fans" banner with him again (forgot it at
Madrid :-( ) and this was spread in front of the fence.  The Corrs
apparently did recognise it, as they were smiling our way.  So was Keith
Duffy.

During Only When I Sleep, we had the "It's Us Again" banner.  However,
there was a new twist: after we'd shown that to Andrea and Jim (couldn't
really show to Sharon or Caroline), we turned it around and showed the
text on the reverse side: "Yes, we have no life :-)"  This had the
effect that Andrea nearly laughed out loud, which was a problem because
she was in the middle of singing a verse of OWIS.  What happened was
that actually only one word came out mumbled, that's pretty good
self-control she has there. :-)

From our location, we had a direct view of Keith Duffy (and he of us). 
So we in fact had quite a lot of contact with him, and he smiled at us
several times.  Daniel grabbed the "guitar pick" banner Mikko was
supposed to show to Jim later, and showed it to Keith instead!  And
Keith did throw his pick toward Daniel, but since he was far away and
throwing a pick isn't very easy, it landed quite a far away, on the
ground a few meters to the right of us.   Keith was laughing quite hard
about his throw, and making faces to us (or Daniel at least). :-)

We also had a good view of Jim, and had quite a lot of contact with him
too.  He didn't have the shades on, and he was smiling quite a lot, he
looked like he was enjoying himself a lot (something that Mikko hasn't
seen that often of him...).

We had another banner which we decided to show to Jim, it said "So
when's the 4th album coming out? :-)" -- this made Jim laugh quite a
bit. :-)  After he managed to read it anyway, he had some problems
because it was hand-written on two lines, and we weren't actually
managing too well to hold it up straight. :-)

The crowd knew the lyrics to Runaway *very* well -- all older songs
really, but Runaway in particular.  When the song started, everyone was
singing right from the beginning, and Andrea was looking amazed and
didn't sing at all.  After a few lines like this, she actually walked a
few feet forwards and sat down on the monitor, just listening to the
audience singing, as if in fact we were performing to her and not the
other way around!

Daniel also had the "drumsticks" banner with him again.  When Caroline
came to sit at the front for Old Town, she sat down directly in front of
us.  It was the perfect place for Daniel to hold up the sign again, and
also an additional paper sheet which said "3rd time lucky? :-)" -- this
made Caroline laugh a lot. :-)

Near the end of Queen of Hollywood after Andrea had sang the last lines
and it was just the music getting played, she turned her back to the
audience and crouched down in front of the drum kit, unmoving.  Mikko
was wondering if she was okay, and Jim seemed to have the same thought
because he walked to her too just when the song was finishing.  But then
she got up and was fine...

The crowd was singing along during I Never Loved You Anyway, so much
that Andrea almost stopped singing in the beginning again.  Instead, she
did this gesture saying "Me?" and pretending to look confused and sad.

During Toss The Feathers, we again tossed feathers, making up a small
cloud of them floating around in our part of the audience.

When the foursome came to stand together at the front, Daniel showed the
drumsticks sign again to Caroline -- who saw it and laughed very hard,
she had actually forgotten about the drumsticks again!  So then when the
others walked away, she walked back to her drumkit, picked up the
drumsticks, and came back to the front to give them to Daniel!  The
distance from the stage to the front fence was too big for her to reach
though, and she couldn't throw the sticks because a lot of people were
trying to grab them, so she ended up handing them to a security guard
who passed them to Daniel.

Downsides:

Again, the sound.  It was better than in Madrid, but still not superbly
good or anything.  We experimented with earplugs made out of tissue
paper and found them to be better than real ear plugs.

Andrea threw out the tin whistle but it wasn't in our direction. Not
that Mikko or Daniel would've wanted it that much, but Laia would have.
:-)

Injuries:

Nothing for Mikko, he had a good spot and not much pushing from either
side or behind.  Unless you count "being so exhausted and tired it was
difficult to move" as injury. :-)  Daniel sprained his ankle.


After all of them had left and the stage crew came to carry everything
away, began the usual shouts and asking for the setlists and water
bottles.  Nothing was given out at first, but after some 5-10 minutes
a crew member actually handed out Jim's setlist and unopened water
bottle (it didn't remain unopened for very long, we were very thirsty).

During this, Daniel climbed over the fence to pick up Keith's plectrum
that was still on the ground.

We also found out that Daniel had twisted his ankle rather badly.  This
came as a surprise to himself too, he doesn't remember at all how or
when it happened.  It was so bad that he couldn't even really walk
properly, he had to hobble along using mostly one leg, and later Mikko's
shoulder for support.

After we found out how bad Daniel's ankle was, and that it wasn't
getting better after a little rest, we tried to look for some medical
help, but there was none. :-(

We decided to go to the back entrance to see if we could catch the band
as they were leaving.  Not too surprisingly, there was a group of other
fans there with the same idea.  After some 30 or 45 minutes of waiting,
they were seen getting into two cars and getting ready to drive out.
Daniel and Mikko thought they didn't want to be waiting at the same
place as the other fans, so started going down the street.  So as the
Corrs' cars drove out, we were in fact hobbling along in the middle of
the street!  They had to slow down a bit so as to not drive over us and
let us get out of the way...

After that it was just take a taxi back to the hostel and get ready to
go back.  We practically ran out of money the following day, because it
was not possible to pay for anything with a Visa card, and there weren't
even any ATMs (that we saw anyway) where one could have withdrawn money
using a Visa card.  Luckily we had return bus tickets already, so that
was not a problem.



Ending commentary

The Spanish audience is very loud (mostly this is very good), they
cheered and sang a lot.  Some also just screamed and shouted to make
noise, that's OK between songs but they did this also during the songs.
The audiences especially sang along to the songs from the first two
albums: Runaway, Forgiven Not Forgotten, The Right Time, Queen Of
Hollywood, but even to Breathless quite well.  It was a bit strange in
that most Spanish people don't know English, so they were singing in a
language they didn't know.  The pronounciation of some words was a
little unusual because of that. :-)

The concerts were all very good in general.  We've tried to tell the
highlights, but of some songs there was just nothing to say.  But they
were all very enjoyable, even if nothing "special" happened.  The
setlist for these concerts has more faster songs than they've had
before, and because of this it takes more energy -- you need to move and
jump up and down a lot more. :-)

The weather in Spain supposedly was "cooler than normal" according to
the Spanish.  For Mikko and Daniel, it was of course about 10 degrees C
(18F) warmer than they're used to.  So for them, it got rather hot to
wait or walk around during the day, especially in the sunshine.  The
good side was that it didn't get cold at all, even in the middle of the
night after concerts.

Since both Mikko and Daniel were wearing their CorrsOnline t-shirts for
the concerts, quite a few people came up and commented on that.  It
happened in the crowd for all three gigs, and also afterwards in both
San Sebastiand and Madrid.

We did a lot of waiting during this trip.  It's hard to express how
boring this actually is, there's nothing to say about it because nothing
happens.  The worst part to wait is the hour or so before the gates
open, when everyone is wanting to get in and so you have to stand in
order to keep your place in the queue.  You can't sit down to rest, and
you're nervous because of the dash to get in and to get a good place.
We can also say that it can be very nerve-wracking to wait without
knowing if you actually will get tickets for the concert which you're
queueing for. :-)

All in all, we can say that the trip was well worth doing. :-)


Mikko & Daniel