I've just come in from Nijmegen, drove through the thickest fog I've seen for a while. I hope everyone made it home in one piece, especially Sarah, Norwood and Dion, since where they are going there aren't too many trees to block some of the fog.

On to the show.

This has been the show with the best audience responce I've seen in years. After the first encore Wet Daddy walked up to the mike only to be greeted by such a racket that he wasn't able to say anything for about half a minute. They loved it, and I did too.

I met Sarah (all too briefly...), Ase wasn't there, and she fears she can't make it to the Amsterdam show, as she doesn't want to bring Ase into the smoky dutch clubs. I can understand that to some extent. Unfortunately, not too many of my friends have children, so I don't know a babysitter. We'll see.

They started extremely energetic (although Angelo, who indeed used his walking cane like crutches, mentioned that he was very tired and would go on autopilot again) with some of the coolest tracks...

here's the setlist, as written on it:

XQZ ME (actually, it was a piece that's probably called "Plexiglass", about a plexiglass wall he build around him as selfprotection. About the same time that the band started playing he did a piece I hadn't heard him do before, consisting of simply repeating the phrase "testing, 1, 2".
NUTTMEG WERLD
BEHAVIOUR oh yes.. they opened with the control technician..
DEEP INSIDE
RIOT how is that for an opening trio of songs?
SKANKIN TO THE BEAT
JUST ALLOW
SKANK AND GO NUTTZ
DATE
WIT IT
EVERYDAY SUNSHINE different from the last tour, this version was less funk, closer to the original
KARMA
MA & PA
UGLY
PREMADAWNUTT
CHIM CHIM
SUNLESS SATURDAY
SEVITUDE complete with members walking off one by one
first encore:
PANTS they used Weed Plant lyrics
PARTY not played, instead they played alcoholic, after some debate/joking around
second encore:
ALCOHOLIC played in the first encore :)
DEMON/RED HOt demon wasn't played, instead they made us chant "Fishbone, we're gonna fuck shit up" over a basslick that was a weird 7/8 timesignature... I can't place what it was, but it was funky as hell. They never played it out into a song and simply at one point went into Red Hot.

what else...

I gave 2 SVCD's to the band, one from me and one from Denis, both with the same content: the Skank video and the HenHouse tracks. Why SVCD? It can be played in a dvd player! And they had a dvd player on the bus. They've seen it now, they like it as well, as Angelo mentioned. Denis, I did mention the idea and CD came from you, but I don't think the message came through...

Some short tidbits:
-Norwood almost didn't make it on time in Rotterdam, as he had to travel from Enschede. The same happened in Nijmegen and they didn't have a decent towel, so he performed with some shorts on.
-I don't often see Norwood break bass strings. Tonight, he broke 4. He needs to get a string endorsement.
-Solid Rocket Boosters (hi Slip!) were a lot more energetic then in Haarlem. Much fun! I still think the bass player looks like he's from a different band. It didn't look like he had fun...

About the crowd... Nijmegen is a student town, so there were quite a few stoners/hippies. Some of the girls were up front, but with a twist, as a few were very happy singing along to GAMAB and CCBAR songs. Not the new ones, we need distribution in Europe!

that's about it for now. I'm falling over, but I need to get up in a few hours as the parking is so bad I had to park in a place where it will be towed away after 8am, there should be a space available then.

off to be, good night y'all.

A

Sorry Joop, first my account on the Nijmegen gig if that's allright....
Well, that was for me the best show of FB I saw from the euro tour. Allthough Angelo was indeed a little on auto-pilot, they were having a damn good time on stage and shared a lot of laughs and fun together. First things first, we arrived at 6 or something with our bus and saw the FB-bus, but then again a lot of police and ambulances. As we found the band, they told us that Angelo was getting something from the bus, put open the lid or something, and a biker snashed his head right in the lid, cut open his head from front to back, and was knockout for 15 minutes. I talked to Angelo, and he was pretty shaken by the accident. They were doing their soundcheck ( and I was already skankin, damn those soundchecks alone rock tight!!!!) when the police came in and Angelo had to leave to give some statements. So that was the end of the soundcheck. Then I talked to Walter a bit, who was as nice and funny and cool as tall he was (for me then). He came to see our soundcheck and told me he thought it was some powerful shit, which made me feel really good, I mean, coming from my favorite band...
OK, we did our gig, and indeed the audience in Nijmegen was really into dancing (at least more than Haarlem) so I can imagine that's why we were more energetic. Then FB: we were backstage, and Angelo went on stage to as Walter said as a joke: "share his wisdom with the audience". I hurried up front, and was just in time to see John going bla bla bla with his hand to Angelo with a big smile on his face. Anyway, they rocked, I mean, they really rocked, it was amazing, it was FB, but then again, even tighter. I especially liked the everyday sunshine funk version. Anyway, Arno already gave you the setlist. Met Arno up front which was really cool to finally meet him, and met Sarah as well. After the show, Angelo was pretty fucked up, his knee was hurting so bad, he couldn't smile no more, and was just drinking Tequila. I told him to see a docter, but he said he didn't have time. Talked to Walter a bit more (I don't know why exactly, i guess because he's the trumpetplayer as I am, I mean our drummer was talking to John), told him about CNN, which he thought was real funny, and talked to Spacey about the mailinglist, and he said he didn't have the time to check it out, but he wanted to say to everybody we had to keep up the works and that he appreciated it a lot. I guess I forget a lot more, but this was roughly a sketch of one of the best evenings I had.......
See y'all!!!!!
jens (slip)