The Corrs at The Globe, Stockholm, Sweden
18th November 2000


For this concert there was the biggest CorrsOnline staff meeting to
date.  The following people were present: Daniel and Stefan (Sweden),
Peter and Trevor (UK) and Mikko (Finland).  We had black CorrsOnline
jackets, so our group was quite easy to identify if you saw us.

In addition, I know of several other people who were there too.  From
Sweden: Nicklas and Lena.  From Finland: Jenni and her friend Outi, Nea
and her friend and friend's mother (who I never got to meet).  Toni, and
his two friends Janne and Mika.  And oh, Petri too.  Surely there were
others but I can't possibly list them all. :-)  There was no "big meet"
for the various people from online.


The venue was The Globe, same place as the last time they had played in
Stockholm.  It was a seated concert, and we had places in row 3.  (Some
other people who we knew had places in rows 5 and 6.)  There was rather
narrow space between the seat rows.  It was okay to sit or stand, but
things got awkward when someone wanted to get by to get to his/her seat.

There was an In Blue advertisement leaflet on every seat, except for the
main floor's first 10 rows or so.  We wondered why it wasn't on every
seat -- did they think that people who were at the first 10 rows would
have already bought the album, maybe?

According to a person at the info desk, there were between 13 and 18
thousand tickets sold.  She didn't know exactly, but 18 thousand is the
most the Globe can hold and seemed to think that it was at least 13
thousand.


Picture House was the support act, and they came on stage a little
before 20:00.  Nice show, not too exciting.  We clapped along, and Mikko
showed the "Picture House" banner he had prepared for the band, so
they'd feel welcome in Stockholm. :-)


The concert started at 20:45.  When the intro tape started playing, we
stood up, turned around and started shouting to the other people to
stand up too!  This yelling, combined with arm gestures, eventually did
make most people on the floor stand up, so the band got a standing
welcome as the curtains were drawn away!  (Hmm, we did this the last
time too!  This is getting to be a tradition! :-)

After that, everyone sat down again.  Everyone except us, that is.  We
remained standing as we had planned.  This made us clearly visible of
course, both to the band as well as the audience behind us.  (Yes, we
did that at the previous concert too, only we were at the front row
then.)


The setlist:

(Erin Shore - orchestral intro tape)
Only When I Sleep
Give Me A Reason 
Irresistible
Forgiven Not Forgotten
What Can I Do
Joy Of Life  
Hurt Before  
Somebody For Someone
Dreams
The Right Time
I Never Loved You Anyway
Runaway
All The Love In The World
Old Town
All In A Day
Queen Of Hollywood
Paddy McCarthy
Radio
No More Cry
Breathless 
------
At Your Side
So Young
Toss The Feathers
(Rebel Heart - tape)


The sound was pretty good.  Not too loud at all.  The sound hadn't been
so good for Picture House, but things were very nice for the Corrs.
Andrea's microphone was a bit too high in the mix perhaps, her high
notes and the tin whistle sounded a bit too prominent for us in the
front at least.  Of course the sound must have been different for other
parts of the audience.


Andrea spoke a little after Give Me A Reason, telling how they were
happy to be back in Stockholm and how it was the end of their tour (for
now).  Then she glanced our way (we were still standing alone) and said:
"Don't feel that you have to remain on your seats all night!".  This was
followed by a comment from Jim, spoken half-way away from the microphone
so that it was very easily audible: "Those too!", and he pointed at us!
:-)

We ended up clapping and standing (and jumping and dancing) non-stop for
the two hours of the concert, only stopping for the slow songs.

It's hard to be sure, but to us it seemed like Andrea spent
significantly more time walking around on our side of the stage.  This
happened especially during the first half of the concert, when we were
pretty much the only people standing up.  (Oh, that was how it went two
years ago at the previous gig, too...)

Jenni (who was in the 5th row, and near the left edge of the seating
rows) noted that Andrea didn't often come to the section of stage in
front of her -- the part of stage which was left of Sharon.  She did
move around quite a bit but apparently mostly on the central stage
between Sharon and Jim.

In general, we didn't have that much interaction with the band members.
Only Andrea, who came in front of us to sing several times, and a little
bit Sharon.  The others were too far away.

The performance of Runaway wasn't too exciting.  Apparently the Swedish
audience doesn't know the song so well as some other audiences do, there
weren't too many people singing along.

At the beginning of All The Love In The World, as the band members were
taking their places and Caroline was sitting on the stool in front,
Mikko shouted "Go Caroline!".  He was rewarded with a smile and a little
wave. :-)

The audience response in general was very good, at least for Stockholm.
It can't really be compared to anything like the atmosphere in Spain or
possibly Paris, those are totally different, but it was better than we
expected!  Because of this we didn't use one banner which we had
prepared: "Sorry for the boring audience". :-)  There wasn't that much
singing or shouting along, but there was very enthusiastic clapping
after each song.  Especially the instrumentals rocked, and there was
very loud applause after them.

There were a *lot* of "older" people (30, 40 and older) in the audience.
It's very different to something like Spain, where most of the audience
will be teenagers.

There was an older, more than 40 years old and slightly overweight guy
at the front row.  In the beginning he sat down like everyone, but once
people started to stand up in the front row too during the 2nd half of
the concert, he stood up too and was dancing away and really getting
into the music!  It was quite funny and cool to see. :-)

Talking about the front row people, we were watching them in horror.
Ok, not all of them...  But some of them never stood up during the
concert at all!  Well, maybe for the encores (I forget! I was too busy
to pay attention to things like that), but not at all before that.  It's
such a shame seeing good seats going to waste to people who don't feel
like enjoying the music by getting up and moving to it.  Of course, this
meant that we had a better view, so it was good for us.  Still a shame.

We saw ourselves on the screens at the back of the stage several times,
when the camera operator on the stage filmed the audience.  This
happened during the encores, So Young and Toss The Feathers.

We had the following banners at the concert:

"Can you read this? We only got row 3"
-- which Andrea could read, apparently

"What can we do to get backstage???"
-- done during "What Can I Do", of course

"We bet this is the longest banner that you have ever seen!"
-- this one had the largest font too, it was made up of 18 paper sheets
total

"Paddy rocks!"
-- done during Paddy McCarthy obvious.  Andrea gave a thumbs up in
response for this, twice!  (First during the song and then right after,
when I was madly waving it about.)

"Andrea - setting new footwear trends"
-- when Andrea read this, she smiled and then turned around away from
the audience... It was very cute.

"Next tour: Finland please!"
-- I doubt it will happen, but I had to try, for all of the Finns'
sakes! :-)

Finally, as usual, we tossed feathers up in the air during Toss The
Feathers.  I don't think many people understood at all what we were
doing going by their looks, but we didn't let that bother us. :-) We had
a lot of feathers this time, normally it's just a half of a bag or a
full bag if there's lot of people, this time we used two.

Mikko got the tin whistle from stage at the end of the concert.  It was
almost embarrassingly easy, considering what it has been like at other
concerts.  When the concert ended, everyone just started walking away,
nobody was asking for anything from the stage.  So Mikko saw the tin
whistle left at the microphone stand, and thought "No reason to let it
go to waste".  So he asked and pleaded the stage crew and after about
two minutes a nice person from the stage crew handed the tin whistle to
a security guy who gave it to Mikko.

After the concert, we had a problem getting back.  First we tried to get
a taxi, but that was impossible.  We gave up and went with everyone else
to queue on the underground station.  We got the underground, but it
only went one stop, and then there was an announcement that there was no
service for part of the underground line!  So we had to go out and get a
bus which was provided for the non-running part of the underground.  It
got very full.  Then we noticed that after one bus stop, it turned
around and was going back to where it had left -- it didn't go all the
way to the destination underground station!  So we got out, and were
lucky to get a taxi at that point then.

The other CorrsOnline people (not me) stayed at the Grand Hotel, same
place as the band and their crew.  There were a few interesting chats
with people, but none with the foursome themselves.  But that all is a
different story...


Mikko, with some help from Daniel