After coming home in the morning and sleeping all day, I was on my way to the Kaizers concert in Karlsruhe in the evening. Wohoo! They’ve never dared to come this close up to now! Only fourty minutes away (ok, plus traffic jams). The Zeltival area turned out to be very nice, lots of space to sit outside in the sun before the conert started. The concert itself took place in a tent then. And you could see that they had curtained off a part, so it was obvious that the show wasn’t gonna be sold out – but honestly, I had expected fewer people there, so it was absolutely okay in my opinion.

But I have to admit that I didn’t really expect anything from the audience – I was pretty sure that most of the people were folks that always go to whatever is happening at Zeltival – and the Kaizers announcement “sounded interesting”. And: I was right. It turned out just like I expected: The people stood there, listened quietly and without moving to what Kaizers performed on stage, and afterwards they would clap nicely.

In the beginning! ‘Cause then the typical Kaizers effect kicked in, and the audience got more and more excited. And when Kaizers finally arrived at the gypsy numbers in the setlist, the audience was up and dancing. This, plus the clapping sounded really loud in the tent, much louder than it would have outside. So all in all, the atmosphere got better and better, and in the end, we didn’t need to ask twice for encores. =;-)

The setlist was completely different from the one in Switzerland – not aimed at a festival audience this time, but at a Kaizers audience. No wonder, this was a “real” Kaizers concert after all! The list: KGB, Knekker deg til sist, 9mm, Katastrofen, Apokalyps meg, 170, Volvo i Mexico, Sorti, Veterans klage, Ompa til du dør, Bøn fra helvete, Delikatessen, Bak et halleluja, Resistansen, Maestro. First encore Enden av november and Kontroll på kontinentet, second encore Sigøynerblod and Kvite Russer.

Actually, there’s not much to report about the concert. As I wrote before, the audience was very quiet in the beginning, so there was hardly any interaction between the band and the audience, but Kaizer “only” played their songs. But wait, there was one thing I haven’t seen before: Kaizers entered the stage without their jackets, just in shirts, and sleeves rolled up already. No wonder because of the weather though… just a bit surprising. =;-)

And the longer the concert lasted, the more the Jackal dared to talk to the audience. For example, he suddenly found a man in the audience who was smiling at him – and yes, we should all start to smile now please, because they play much better if the audience is smiling! And yesterday in Switzerland, the audience did not smile… “But we played very well anyway! We are professionals!”

Then, when Omen came back on stage all alone after the first break to start with Enden av november, someone in the audience shouted at him: “Smile!” But no, Omen just stared into the audience and shook his head. *lol* But at the VERY end, he actually DID smile. Which was absolutely creepy… =;-)

Before they played Sigøynerblod, the Jackal ordered the guitar players up on the barrels. “Just like elephants in the circus!” And just like elephants in the circus they had to demonstrate then that they could stand on only one foot…

And then the concert was over… but it was obvious that the audience wouldn’t just let Kaizers go off. So the band met for a band meeting in the center of the stage and decided that they would play a last song, Min kvite russer. =:-) And there you could really see that the audience had lost all of their shyness until then. It worked out perfectly, and Kaizers went off visibly pleased.

Ha, that was really really nice again! =:-) And now I’m curious about the festivals – I really hope that Kaizers will be celebrated there as well. (They are the secret headliners, of course. *g*)