Paris - Utrecht review part 2

Part two: Utrecht, the Netherlands (4th Feb 1999)


Getting up at 6 in the morning, with just 6 hours of sleep.  Not fun.
Still, we (Richard, Renate, Helen, Mikko) managed it. We got in the car and
were driving out of Paris before it was 7.  We arrived in Utrecht at Helen's
place around 12:30.  Helen stayed behind while the rest drove up to town to
Vredenburg, the venue.  This was actually located inside a shopping mall, so
waiting was much nicer than last night.  It was warm, and there was no wind!

Richard had to leave, and then Helen arrived at around 2pm.  There were no
other fans around. We found out to our delight that there was only one
entrance with two doors instead of six like the night before in Paris. We
saw the tour buses and trucks outside, and the crew was busy unloading
things from the trucks. They said the Corrs would maybe arrive around 4 or
5.  The crew was very annoyed because the place was so small (the exact
words they used cannot be quoted here *grin*).  The venue holds only about
2000 people, and the stage is in the center and there's not much space.
There supposedly was very much trouble getting up all the lightning because
the venue was not like anything they'd seen before.

When waiting we suddenly saw the guys from Babelfish walking around so we
went up to them and told them the gig from last night was excellent and
talked to them for a while. Their first album is coming out in March.

At around 3pm (?) an English fan called Peter showed up. We had quite a nice
chat with him while we waited. A few other Dutch fans also showed up.

At around 4:15 we noticed there was a security guy outside the stage door,
so we guessed the Corrs might arrive soon. And just five mins later they
came walking down the street.  Jim went in very quickly before anyone could
say anything to him.  When Caroline was going in, Mikko asked her if she
would autograph something for him, and she said sure.  Andrea and Sharon
also got asked to sign things, so there was a minute or two when everyone
was getting autographs from the three sisters. Then they were rushed in.

We went back to sit in front of the door for some more waiting and more and
more people joined us there. At 7pm the doors finally opened and we found
out very quickly after that, that we chose the wrong door as we had to run
much further then the people from the other door, but still we got excellent
front row places, Mikko was straight in front of Andrea and Renate and Helen
were to the left of him. The place filled up very quickly, but it took a
long time before Babelfish came on stage. To our horrow the sound quality
was terrible where we were standing, this because the loudspeakers were
handing high on the ceiling behind us and on the far left and right of us.
All we could hear was the drums and the bass. They all recognized us in the
frontrow and were smiling at us all the time. The performance was good like
last night, even though we didn't hear it so well.

Around 9.15pm the lights went out and the Corrs finally arrived on stage. We
were happy that the sound was a lot better than with Babelfish. We were all
a little disappointed with the Dutch crowd as they didn't cheer that much as
we'd expected from them. Jim tried hard to get everybody to stand up but
sadly failed. :(

The setlist was the same as before. Thank god they mananged to get the piano
in there for Jim's solo, No frontiers and Runaway.

Some funny moments of the concert:
- Jim did an excellent solo on the piano. He started to play something else
after that but stopped. Then Sharon and Caroline came onto the stage and
Sharon was making a "no, no" gesture at Jim telling him not to interrupt her
while she was doing the introduction. We were surprised Sharon did the
introduction of No frontiers instead of Jim. Then Jim started the song with
a little longer intro than usual.
- We'd made signs saying "Don't forget, Sharon" which we showed to Andrea
before she started the introductions. She smiled. During the introductions
she kept looking to Sharon all the time and Sharon at her, just making sure
she wouldn't forget her again, and she didn't. After doing it right she got
a thumbs up from Jim.
- During So young we threw some planes again on the stage like the night
before and they all made it this time, but you must be a big idiot to miss
the stage while standing against it. They were smiling, and Sharon was even
laughing,  Andrea probably didn't like all the planes coming at her. And Jim
even throw one back into the audience.
- During the "Toss the feathers" we threw feather up in the air again when
Andrea was looking at us.
- During No good for me in the part were Andrea sings "And do you love her?"
and there is a pause all of the crowd shouted to her "yes!!!".
- During "What can I do" some guy held up a t-shirt which said "Just be
there" and after the song he threw it to Andrea. Andrea held it up for the
whole audience to see.  She seemed to think it was pretty funny.
- Runaway got messed up by guess who?? Yep, Andrea! :) We know she messed
up, but we don't know exactly what. Anyway, the part were the audience sings
along with "runaway" was left out. And Andrea and Jim were exchanging
glances.
- Andrea spoke some Dutch to us after No good for me. Someone shouted to
them and she said "thank you" and than she realised she should have learned
to say that in Dutch.
- Mikko showed his "Hard Corr Fans" banner to Jim again during the intro to
FnF and Jim gave him a thumbs up.
-During Jim's talk he said that during the first concert(s) he used to mess
it up a lot (not on purposed) and pointed to the right of us and said David
should know becuase he was there. David?? I thought his name was Peter???
Oops.

After the concert everybody rushed out to the artist entrance. The vans were
standing already waiting for them. Because of the large crowd the vans were
drived very close to the exit so they could get in very quickly. A few
people managed to get autographs, but most of them left disappointed without
any. Sitting away from the crowd I still got a goodbye wave from them.

Time to say goodbye to everyone we met and go home...

Nice meeting some new and old fans again: Raymond, Breyten, Michael, Martin,
Guy, Peter (great seeing you agian! Say hello to him from me Deborah!), and
everbody else who's names we've forgot!

Till we meet again....
            Helen  &  Mikko