At 13.00 on Monday I had no idea -- I was quietly reading Newsgroups at the University, when my brother cajoled me into joining him in the other computer room saying "you're gonna love this". He had got a message from one of his Melanie contacts saying that Melanie was giving a concert in Utrecht TONIGHT, and that we could be on the guest list if we made a few phone calls. Apparently Melanie and Peter Schekeryk were quite excited at the idea of someone putting together a Web page for Melanie, even if it's still prefixed with requests for information. Anyway, as we were both royally annoyed at missing two previous opportunities to see Melanie as a result of not knowing that she was in fact touring, we just had to go even if it was at such short notice. So my brother made the calls while I dropped everything I was doing, went home and waited for a call from him.

In the message to my brother, which I haven't read very well, and the ensuing telephone conversations was the suggestion that Peter Schekeryk wanted to provide us with information about Melanie's current activities, including the new album. On the train to Utrecht we talked about whether that meant we could get backstage to talk with him and Melanie, and what questions we would ask if we did. Even if we wouldn't get that far, we were thrilled that DJ had been contacted and approved by Schekeryk. The Melanie pages will grow.

So there we were at 8 o'clock, pacing through the corridors at Tivoli wondering who to turn to for the promised free admission. We were eventually told just to wait until the box office opened and then to mention our names to the official there (hey, this was a first for us, right?). We then proceeded to the sales stall to pick up some goodies and to talk to Hans and Walter, who were DJ's phone contacts. Backstage admission did not turn out to be on the cards, but they promised to supply us with the info mentioned.

Safka came on as the support act. Safka are Melanie's daughters Leilah and Geordie, assisted by Clint Bucket on guitar and (towards the end of their show) a bass player whose name I didn't catch but who was pretty close to my own ideal of what a bass player should do: play melodically in the right places. All four of them would later back Melanie, who in fact joined them during the last song. Bucket has a good ear for tuneful guitar leads, but he seemed a bit nervous and made quite a few mistakes during both sets.

Safka themselves were pretty good; the songs were tuneful but nothing special on first hearing, but the vocals were great, especially the harmonies. Melanie couldn't wish for better backing vocalists.

But Melanie...now she's something special. Her set partly structured, partly impromptu and sometimes slightly chaotic. Whenever there was a problem with equipment, strings breaking, guitars going out of tune, she would sing a song unaccompanied, ask for requests, or just talk in her shy, sometimes rambling way to the audience. Shy or not, she did show her great sense of humour throughout; memorable one-liners included "There comes a time in every show, when it's too late, too late to go. ...man, I'm so good", and "...our guitar player, Clint Bouquet. No, it wasn't Bouquet, it's Bucket". Brand New Key, which on the Silver Anniversary album included some spoken commentary about its origins, was extended to the point where it was more of a spoken word performance accompanied by guitar chords and backing vocals, and all of it very witty (ending with:"...so I want you to re-live those times, of the Sixties and early Seventies, by going Oomph ah-ha, oomph, ah-ha"). It sounded better than the original too. Several new songs were played, including the title track of the new album, "Old Bitch Warrior" ("It's my nickname. People call me that. But you can call me Old Bitch for short"). On the other hand, the majority of the songs were from her classic period. To me, those songs sounded as fresh as when they were new; I wasn't around when they were first recorded and nostalgia doesn't even come into the picture. This must have been the case for quite a few people in the audience, BTW; many of them were very young (we actually ended hanging out with a group of 18-year-olds who like us had got missed the last train home). Melanie was in good voice, and in a good mood in spite of all the little problems, and as I said, the backing vocals worked marvelously. The encore consisted of "I Will Survive" which I thought was a slightly odd choice because I don't recall her having recorded it (but it was a hit in Holland fairly recently, so maybe that's what prompted her--it turned out to be a good song for her to sing though) and the choruses from Lay Down.

The general sound of Melanie's band resembled that of the Silver Anniversary album more than that of Freedom Knows My Name, which I think is a good thing; I prefer Melanie's semi-acoustic sound to the more polished sound of her last album. The new promo single "Summer of Love" is promising, because it's a return to that more natural sound.

The concert ended at around ten to twelve...we made a half-hearted and completely futile attempt at catching our train, but we might as well have stayed on and made another attempt at meeting Melanie and Peter after the gig. Well, such is life....maybe next time.

setlist

Reinder Dijkhuis