Plain Fantastic
After proving former assumptions that he always takes visitors to Turkish restaurants wrong (we went to a nice Italian, with yummy rabbit for a mere 9,5 euros, we went for a warm-up drink across the street of the Universitet der Kunste, and were there two minutes past eight, and were very surprised to hear Blue Chair in the lobby. After recognizing that it was a live version we rushed in, Markus plus friend to a nice first row center seat, and me, I had to notice that mine wasn't first row, but first row of the balcony, so I went for a vacant seat in the 10th row in the otherwise sold-out hall. After the fourth song I thought that maybe Elvis should be forbidden to play decent songs at the beginning of the show, as the sound was rather muddy, which didn't hurt the second song (TOYOH), but it was really a shame about Beyond Belief, which is one of my absolute favourites. The next two were Radio Radio and Button my lip, which both left me rather cold. Then came Country Darkness, and that was the first highlight for me. From then on, the show was plain fantastic, a very well rehearsed band, fantastic backing vocals. Especially the songs from the Delivery Man worked very fine, and better than on record for me at least. Other highlights for me: Our Little Angel and, err, Oliver's Army.
Elvis and band were quite obviously enjoying the show as well, played the
first set of encores without leaving the stage, and the only thing I'd
complain about was that it wasn't as long as at the beginning, just two
hours. On the hand his voice was back okay.
Oh, and that crappy review from the Tagesspiegel was wrong: After the first five songs the sound was fine.