today, i made a small excursion onto the ütliberg. again, it was very foggy, though it wasn’t really raining as last time. this time i took a lot more photos than last time, and also some panoramas. maybe i’m done with sorting out the stuff tomorrow, in which case i’ll upload some. for the moment, here’s a photo of myself:
yesterday i was visiting the helsinki klub in zürich with some friends, where a concert of the alternative/punk rockers boob from berne was taking place. there were a lot of people dancing to the music, and all of us had a great time. they also gave a longer encore, featuring two hip-hop/rap songs, which was, even though i usually don’t like that kind of music too much, pretty fun!
apparently boob has already played in the helsinki two weeks ago; two of my friends have already seen them there, while i had to stay at home suffering a terrible headache…
i was on another concert today. a classic one. but no classic/metal crossover as before, but a “real” classic one. the orchester accento musicale zürich played joseph haydn‘s cello concert in c major and georges bizet‘s symphony in c major, together with cellist patrick demenga for haydn’s symphony. i really enjoyed it.
today, we had the first flakes of snow which did me the favor of actually staying on the ground:
being late. getting there, still in time. being able to stand in the very front. meeting some guys who i met on anathema‘s last concert. listening to anathema. rocking. having a great time. break, after 45 minutes. looking out for other guys who announced themselves for the concert, not seeing anyone. porcupine tree coming up. having another good time. for around two hours. then, silence, again. crowd flowing to the outside. checking out the merchandize. buying an anathema cd, getting it signed by the band, talking to the band. queueing up to fetch my jacket. meeting another mathematician i didn’t expected to see. seeing in the distance another one whom i knew to be there. leaving, alone. taking the tram. happening to see a friend in his kitchen from the tram window. buying some pizza. writing this crap. feeling good.
thanks for everyone who helped making this evening so great. i appreciate that a lot.
yesterday i attended apocalyptica‘s concert in zurich. supported by the youngsters from sturm und drang, which were acting pretty professional, both from their playing skills, and their stage performance. that was pretty nice, though not exactly the kind of music i like to listen to.
then, after half an hour of sturm and drang and another half an hour of stage rebuilding and waiting, apocalyptica started off with an (as usual) great atmospheric intro. well. the show was simply great. though, i’m still not convinced that drums fit in there; though some songs a great with drums, most i would prefer to hear most songs without drums, or at least with less audible drums. fortunately they played some songs without, but just a very few… at least, they didn’t started to take a vocalist along their tour…
besides these things, though, the concert was really, really great! besides playing songs from the current album, worlds collide, they also played many older songs and also some metallica covers, and edvard griegs in the hall of the mountain king, one of my very favorite songs, declared by apocalyptica to be a great piece of norwegian black metal (i think they said that on their previous concert here in zurich, around two years ago).
after two encores, they finally left the stage, leaving back a thrilled and enthusiastic crowd.
i haven’t felt so young on a metal concert for a pretty long time now, as on today’s dream theater show in winterthur. on the outside, i really felt dressed strangely, as the number of metal t-shirts was pretty small and most people looked pretty normal. inside, the situation looked a bit different, probably the metalheads were a bit earlier :-)
another pretty strange thing was that the wardrobe was located 100 m outside from the entrance. that means, you have to give away your jacket, queue up in the line for the entrance and stay there, freezing, just wearing a t-shirt. but at least it was not raining…
well. besides all these strange things, and also besides the insane pricing of the tickets, the concert was great. even though symphony x had just around 40 minutes to play. at least, the break for cleaning up the stange was pretty short (around 20 minutes), so one had no chance to fall asleep in between… (i remember some breaks which came near to one hour…) the stage was decorated with giant ant puppets, although i couldn’t see them, too many heads in my way… another gimmick was a traffic light hanging above the stage, which showed red, then turned to yellow when the intro music started, and changed to green when the band began to play.
well. dream theater played for almost two hours and, as usual, produced a really good show. they played a lot from their current album, systematic chaos, some other songs and, as an encore, a long medley, going through different epoches of dream theater.
today i’ve been attending a festival in dietikon, eight bands playing in 9 1/2 hours. out of these eight bands, two were crap, and five were pretty good (finsterforst, trimonium, kivimetsan druidi, korpiklaani and moonsorrow), which made this festival quite a success. my two absolute favorites today were korpiklaani and moonsorrow, two finnish bands which were the main reason for me to show up at the festival after all.
the finnish humppa metallers korpiklaani entered the stage as the seventh band. as they started playing, the crowd basically went wild, everyone starting to move, to dance. it was simply amazing. the idea to combine humppa with metal is simply great. and they also played happy little boozer, to which a friend of mine once wants to dance drunken on a table (if you’re reading this: you missed a great concert!). unfortunately, korpiklaani had to leave the stage after one hour… i really want to see them again, and then a bit longer…
finally, as the eight band, moonsorrow—one of my favorite bands—appeared on stage. for 80 minutes. and even after the crowd has already been active for around eight hours of concerts (my bones were hurting, my neck aching, my brain complaining, my feet weary), people still managed to adequately honour the great music and stage performance by banging like crazy, by dancing to the great tunes. it was simply fantastic. unfortunately, it was over at some point. too bad.
conclusions:
and now, it’s time to grab some sleep. thank you and good night.
here’s a list of concerts i’ve been at this year, for historical reasons. not taking in account some classic concerts.
if i’ll find the motivation (and if anyone cares), i might write a few words about some of these.
here’s a list of concerts i plan to attend during the last four months of this year. if i put a link to a bands’ homepage, this means i’m going to that concert to see this band (and as a side effect, also the non-linked ones).
unfortunately, i will miss finntroll playing in the z-7 on 05.12.2007…
