Live Review : Trabendo Session

Recorded May 9, 2007 for Europe 2 TV channel, at the Trabendo.
The show is a sort of "MTV unplugged" but not on MTV. The gig was shorter than their usual, unplugged, performed in front of a small audience of 300-400 lucky few who had won their tickets in various contests (not me though. So many regrets...).

Set list

1. Stich ins Glück
2. Ubers Ende Der Welt
3. Heilig
4. Reden
5. Ich Brech Aus
6. Durch Den Monsun
7. Der Letzte Tag
Encore
8. In Die Nacht (just Tom and Bill on stage)
9. Rette Mich

Review

This was the turning point of my being a fan of TH. Until then, I listened to their CDs and it provided me much fun and energy (or as Bill would say, ganz Energie), but I didn't take them very seriously as a band.

I knew they were not as much as a marketed boys band as most people think at first sight. But they were my guilty pleasure band, from whom I just enjoyed the music but wouldn't have given them much credit for. Almost anybody can sound good on a CD. And for the few bootlegs excerpts I had seen on YouTube, I hadn't been overly impressed with their stage stuff.
Yet again, most of those bootlegs are hard to listen to because you hear more fangirls shriekings than the music or Bill's voice.

When this show aired on French TV, it was a rare opportunity to hear what they were worth live for free and without facing the ridicule of being the only 30+ years old at a gig of them without kids to chaperon, so I took it.

And boy oh boy, was I stunned and impressed. Sort of "... Wuah? Is that how they sound live? I mean, it's not a 'fake' live?". I spent some time looking at the close-ups of Tom's hands on his guitar and all to make sure it wasn't arranged, because I couldn't believe that they could pull it off so well. I even looked up for more live versions of their stuff, in case they would have had a "pre-recorded live" version for that kind of occasion. But no.

They do have several live versions available (... "available". Some officially, some not, look up on YouTube), and they're all slightly different. Their management might have invested time and money into pre-recording (and making them learn by heart to convingly lip-synch) as many different versions as they needed to fake it.

But that wouldn't account for the TV shows where they unashamedly (and badly) DO lip-synch. So you end up thinking that nope, it's really them playing. Occam's razor and all.

And you end up thinking "Dude, they sound better than half of my 'respectable' bands, where do I buy tickets for their next shows?".

The audio files extracted from the video have been on my MP3 player ever since.

More to the point :

- acoustic set = much love. It's more intimate and even the fangirls scream less, so you can hear everything (voice and instruments) better. Which probably partly accounts for Bill's perfect pitch. He doesn't have to strain his voice.

- In Die Nacht, the "twin song", throws fangirls in awe. It's so sweet.