Well, where to begin...
Drove down from Munich to the show in Tuttlingen...thought it would be some 3 1/2 hour drive but turned out to be almost 5 hours due to the winter conditions and the icy roads in Bavaria and Southern Germany.Almost had an accident when I drove at some 100km/h through a forest when suddenly the road turned icy and slippery like hell....My heart was beating and I sent a prayer skywards that I didn't hit anything or crashed my car at some tree when I slipped all over the street with the rear of my car first stopping just centimeters before the raod ended and the forest began...
Had some trouble finding the venue since they have two "Festhalle" in Tuttlingen, a new one and an old one (which is where the show took place).Turned out to be the typical 50s gym right next to a school building from the 30s of the last century..Anyway, found a space to park right in front of the place which left me with only a few steps from the side entrance.Walked in just to hear someone calling me by my first name...It was Nibbs who walked up to me asking me how I was and how my trip has been.He also told me that Biff and Doug went to Hamburg after the Berlin show december 14th and drive down to Tuttlingen by train arriving later that night (around 7pm).When we ended the talks he went back in the bus to grab some sleep before the show.
Next person I saw was Ulli (Saxon soundman for many, many years)..Got to know each other over the years and had a nice chat about what happened in both our lives ever since we last saw each other at the april Saxon shows in Kaufbeuren and Salzburg..
Got back to the car to bring in all my gear, set up everything and made a few tests during the CIIC soundcheck.Next was Doros boys soundchecking without Doro (she was still in the bus with a bad throat due to the cold weather in Germany and probably the afterglow of her 20th birthday party two nights before on Duesseldorf).They only did "Burning the Witches" and left..Saxon did no sounchecking at all since half of the band was still somewhere in a train in southern Germany.
Doors opened around 7pm and to my surprise it was not Dionysus (they didn't play because of an illness of their german singer) but CIIC that took the stage first at around 7.15pm...Rumour had it that they split up in november and I had my doubts that they would actually play here. But it was actually Zak Stevens voice I heard starting off with "Out of Reach" when the mystic intro came to an end.Zak remembered having played that very same venue some 10 years ago wth Savatage and mentioned that it hasn't changed a lot in the past decade."Lies" was next followed by "The Circle" and "Face to Face" . The played a very strong 50minute set with several Savatage tunes (Nothings going on, Edge of Thorns,..) among songs from their first album "Watching in Silence" (Face to face, Into the wind, Sea of White, Watching in silence,..). Oli from Doros band joined in on keyboards for the last three songs.
Next up was Doro...Never was too much of a Doro fan really.But I won tickets to her show last year in Munich so I went and I must say that I enjoyed her show back then (almost 2 1/2 hours) quite a bit.It was her second show in Tuttlingen this year since she played an Open Air earlier this year inside a beautiful ruin up in the hills way above the city...Well, saying that what other song could start her set but "I rule the ruins" back from her Warlock days directly running into "Always live to win"..."Metal Racer" was next, followed by "(Stay hard)True as steel"..."Hellraiser" and "Burning the Witches" came on with "Doro, Doro, Doro" chants in between songs."Love me in black" was the first slower song, liked it a lot ...beautiful ballad.She introduced the band before the next song and Nick Douglas (bass) introduced " For the past 2 decades the undisputed Metal Queen of the World"..."Für Immer" and "Out of Control" were to come..."Fight" was dedicated to Regina Halmich, the german female world boxing champion who is a very good friend to Doro...the always play that tune before her fights when she enters the boxing ring."Burning up with fire" and "All we are" ended the regular set....One more encore ("Earth shaker rock") ended an enjoyable 70 minute set and the stage was now all set for the main event.
After the intro Saxon opened the show with Heavy Metal Thunder much like they did at the other 2003 shows I've been to (always a great way to start a show, imho)...One of my alltime Saxon favs was to follow up:"Dogs of War"...Princess of the night was next.Biff made Paul stop the song after a few seconds and continued not before Biff considered the crowd to yell loud enough for it.."This next song is off the very first Saxon album...it's called Backs to the fucking Wall"...Paul again had problems with his guitar....wonder if I'll ever see a Saxon show (and I've seen quite a few in the past years!) where Paul doesn't play around with his guitar until it's finally totaly out of tune..
Biff mentioned the Berlin show two nights earlier and called it "OK"...from what I heard it was one of the worst shows they played for years...totally uninspired and probably still dead from the Doro birthday the night before they were confronted with a crowd that simply isn't a great rock crowd...Berlin isn't a good place for Rock n Roll,cities like Nuremberg, Offenbach, Hamburg or Bochum is where the heart of german metal lies.
"Eagle has landed" was to come, always a highlight for me even after so many years..
Now I was finally up for something "new" like Rock the Nations or Stallions but they did "Travellers in Time" , one of my favourites off "Metalhead" together with Song of Evil and the title track...Love the simple but impressing guitar work on that track!
When I saw Nibbs walking to the very front of the stage playing his bass I knew it was time for "Strong Arm of the Law"...People loved singing "Stop, Get out!" everytime it was the time to do so.
"Solid ball of Rock".....No sing along part in the middle this time, Biff asked "Mr.Randow" to "bring these people in" without the usual "Ehhhhhh Ehhhhh" thing.
People were asking songs and yelled many tunes like "To hell and back again" but Biff insisted that "he's the boss and the one to pick the songs"..."20.000 feet"
Still no sign of the "5 or 6 new songs" Biff promised us over the Message Board for these upcoming shows....
"Conquistadores" with the Drum solo part (a bit shorter than usual) was next...after Fritz had ended they decided against playing the rest of Conquistadores" but rather ran into "Motorcycle Man"
One hour into the show still no "Rock the Natíons", "Stallions" or whatever surprise they might hold for us fans in Tuttlingen..
"The thin red line" was next , not always in the set in the past years but not what I'd consider a real surprise here...
"Crusader" again was a crowd pleaser, people were demanding it the entire evening already (much like always..)...never been one of my favourite Saxon songs but I understand that they need to do this one, no doubt...it ended the regular set early after only some 70 minutes.
For the encores Doug came on playing his 90 second solo which finally ran into Wheels of Steel...With all the crowd singing parts this usually spreads to some 11 minutes but not tonight...8 minutes only...
Biff asked if they should rather do new songs or old songs....Although people asked for "new songs" they did "Dallas 1pm"...Great song, I never get tired of hearing this one!
After 80 minutes still nothing new, nothing unexpected or rare up to now...but at least no "Court of the Crimson King" this time......It's way too late in the show for this one I thought....the second I ended thinking,they did it.......Crimson King was next and I decided to go for a drink...Heard this song on the past three tours now and although they don't do a bad job on that one here, I'd rather hear on of their own compositions instead..
"Denim and leather" ended this encore...this one and FINAL encore...after 95 minutes everything was over, the band left . hall lights went on and Ulli turned on the music...
I was really a bit disappointed, to say the least.......I've seen at least some 20 Saxon shows in the past 5 years but this surely was the weakest one, no doubt...I now can imagine what the show in Berlin was like...Totally uninspred, just another show on the schedule...it simply didn't match the (high) Saxon standards.Maybe my expectations were too high for this show here but this show was substandard, sorry...From what people post here on the board the previous shows in France, Croatia or Greece must have been way superior...I heard about songs not played for years at other shows...not here...I heard about a duet by Biff and Doro doing a Priest cover (You've got another thing coming)...nothing here.....and 95 minutes is also the shortest headling show I've seen by Saxon so far...
Maybe they had a bad day, maybe Biff was still tired from the horrible train trip (probably some 8+ hours) from northern Germany (Hamburg) all down to Tuttlingen close to the Swiss border, maybe they were a bit disappointed by the crowd of only some 3oo people or maybe they still suffered from the Doro birthday show, I dunno...
When I drove home, still under the impression of the disappointing show they put on I decided against driving up to Switzerland the very next night also I already made my plans for that one as well....Need to check the review of the Pratteln show on
www.z-7.ch later that week to see if my decision was good or if I should regret having missed that show...
All in all it was an "OK" night since CIIC and Doro were really good...Hope you guys have more luck at some of the upcoming shows...
