Review

Saarbrucken, Germany

Saarlandhalle

October 17, 2015


[Joachim Richter]

Review by Joachim Richter



First surprise of the evening was... the venue. The "Saarlandhalle" was
built in the end of the sixties, old fashioned, but still very nice.
Obviously it is being kept in good condition. The acoustics are perfect
and the atmosphere did fit perfectly to Bob's "new" old fashioned way of
music. Just read in Wikipedia that the owners are planning to tear down
this nice concert hall to build a new one... what a shame.

This was my 28th Bob concert and the first one in Saarbrücken... it was
the best one in many years. Although it was so good, it is difficult to
write about it. What has happened?

We have a more or less static set list. This may be a bit boring, as there
are no surprises. The band is playing perfect since many years... this
year however, they have reached a new level of perfection. This must have
something to do with the "Shadows in the night" recordings and with the
economical usage of the instruments on this record:  "Less is more".

In the past years shows, you had 20 songs of which maybe 2 or 3 or 5 were
stunning, the rest was nice or average or boring or just bad. In
Saarbrücken we had 20 songs and nearly each of them was perfect.
Interesting that the only songs that were a little below standard were the
few "old" songs. "She belongs to me" and "Tangled up in blue" could have
been omitted, and the show would have been even better. The audience was
obviously very knowledgeable about the new setlist. Nobody booed or
screamed for the old hits. Good!

Of course, all of the above said is not really relevant. What's relevant
is that Bob now uses his voice to SING as he already did in summer. Don't
know why his voice is so good now and why it was so much worse in the past
years or even decades. He does not misuse his keyboard any longer... he
does not offend his audience with upsinging... he does not torture his
band mates by playing or singing strange keys or tempi... someday I might
want the old bad guy back!

Joachim Richter  

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