Unlike the last days, Kaizers played in a town where they had never played before tonight: in Erlangen. Such concerts tend to be a bit “different”, because for these concerts, Kaizers expect an audience that doesn’t know them at all, and so they sometimes deliver a “light version” of their concert – which is sufficient to get the new audience excited, and at the same time, it’s much easier to do and preserves energy.

That’s basically what I expected from the Erlangen concert. And that’s just what we got – at least during the first thirty or fourty minutes! Just like in Vienna, the setlist started with eight Violeta songs, until they finally played the first song that the audience knew – ’cause yes, even though Kaizers hadn’t played in Erlangen before, there were quite a few fans in the audience! And therefore, even though the beginning was also received very well, the concert didn’t really take off until Kaizers started playing some of the older songs. And of course until the Jackal noticed that the stage was very low and permitted for some trips down into the audience …

The first time the Jackal went into the audience was during Tusen dråper regn. Then, during the quiet part of Bøn fra helevte, he and Hellraizer sat down on the edge of the stage (while Omen was busy positioning the crowbars on the stage floor *g*). And in the end, almost the whole band ended up in the middle of the audience: during KGB, we got a battle of guitarists in the crowd (“Ted, come down here, they’ll love you!”), and in the Begravelsespolka, the Jackal moved the full tap dance off the stage and into the crowd. Yay!

Before Din kjole lukter bensin, mor, Hellraizer was ordered to the mike with the introduction “The king of Norway!”, and later on the Jackal referred to him as “Mr. Norway”. When introducing Jævel av en tango, the Jackal explained that he would now tell us a story – who understands Norwegian? 10 people? “To the rest of you: good luck!” *rofl* The song ended in a little test of how patient the audience was – at the end, the Jackal continued humming the ending, over and over again, waiting for the audience to interrupt him somehow. Which didn’t happen … A beautiful ending, and an unexpectedly great audience!

Hjerteknuser was dedicated to the front row (who is basically the same at all concerts), and the question “Do you feel alright?” to Freddie Mercury. The lyrics weren’t really that important – at the end of Svarte katter, the Jackal just sang “ba ba ba” instead of the real lyrics for quite a while. I guess hardly anyone noticed, and it sounded surprisingly cool. *g*

The most amusing part of the evening came when the Jackal “accidentally” did an announcement in Norwegian. Hellraizer pointed out to him that nobody understood what he was saying, and so he was ordered to translate what the Jackal was saying. Into German! Ridiculously funny … especially when the Jackal started to babble in incomprehensible Norwegian after a while and Hellraizer just invented stuff to translate. Just his “Bayern München will win the Champions League” didn’t really get the good reception he was probably out for – but then, it gave the Jackal the opportunity to use his one German sentence “Aber mein Vater hat in der Bundesliga gespielt”. But that was more than enough hassle – “That was enough German now. I’m sweating already!!”

The audience started singing Bak et halleluja in the break before the encore, so we got it as second song in the encore, after KGB. As mentioned already, the Begravelsespolka was even more awesome than usual since they did the tap dance in the middle of the audience this time. And then we even got Die Polizei as last encore – with the audience singing along very loudly. So impressive!

So all in all, an awesome concert, even though that was quite unexpected. I would never have expected that kind of ending after the first couple of songs. Really cool!

The setlist:

• Aldri vodka, Violeta
• Siste dans
• Din kjole lukter bensin, mor
• Det polaroide liv
• I ett med verden
• Støv og sand
• Tusen dråper regn
• En for orgelet, en for meg
• Bøn fra helvete
• Jævel av en tango
• Enden av november
• Hjerteknuser
• Svarte katter & flosshatter
• Forloveren
  ———–
• KGB
• Bak et halleluja
• Begravelsespolka
  ———–
• Die Polizei