Onder Zeeniveau

Dit schreef ik voor het Concert Forum voor Melanie’s Beautiful People website:  http://www.melaniesmusic.com/forums/index.php 

Setlist Darmstadt – Jagdhofkeller

• Beautiful People
• Love to lose again – Love to live again
• Smile – great audience participation
• Some Say I Got Devil
• People In the Front Row
• Hushabye
• Angelsong
• Nickle Song – she is getting into it, breaks a string
• Animal Crackers on Beau’s guitar
• Look Ma
• I tried to die young – with Melanie’s new definition of the word Old
• Leftover Wine with audience singing oohhoohaa – beautiful
• Ruby Tuesday – audience going wild
• Lay Down
• Leaves stages
• Encore Zugabe
• Extraordinary – thrilling version, spine tingling, goosebumps – you could hear a pin drop
• Peace Will Come – amazing – had me crying
• Make it Work
• Brand New Version of Brand New Key

For the past eight years I have tried to participate as Melanie’s personal assistant in several countries in the world. I have always loved doing this, running around, sweating, taking care of her and of Beau. Even though I was present at a lot of concerts I was not a part of the audience, something I have been since I was 16 and went to my first Melanie concert ever.

When I would sit at a Melanie concert, it was like being in a Melanie pool, dive in and let myself be swept over and carried away by her voice, and by her songs, her lyrics and her guitar playing. And of course by Melanie herself, a magnetic stage personality who connects to my soul through layers of my not feeling accepted in society, my feelings of loneliness, my struggle to survive. Melanie would make me feel connected, if sometimes only to her.

This emotion of feeling connected has been part of my life, ever since I first heard Melanie and every time I went to see her.

This is what happened last night again.

This time in Germany Melanie has other people taking care of her so I am part of the audience, a familiar place, I am part of you and it feels awesome – again.

The Jagdhofkeller is a cellar where they used to hang rabbits, deer and other animals that were killed and hunted. A round stone ceiling, wet, moldy, cool and medieval. A lot of lit candles on chandeliers, that made it hard to take good pictures. The stage was low so it was impossible to see Beau if you were not in the front row. But I heard him and that was mighty fine. Melanie I could see, just her head, as I was sitting on the stairs.

The cellar was packed, not with animals but with humans, some young, some older, fans from all over Europe.

It was Melanie’s first concert on the tour, there were some problems with the sound but as the concert was going she got more and more into it and she brought it to a screaming success.

I was taken by her voice to a place I had not been for some time so after her amazing and moving version of Extraordinary, I cried my eyes out when she sang Peace Will Come – it brought me back to the concert I was at when I was just a young girl and I was overflowing with gratitude – for being alive and for being a lifelong Melanie fan.

I can’t wait to go to the other concerts.

See you there

(I am the crying one when she sings Peace Will Come)