Believe it or not - they are getting better from show to showThe 5 guys from Philadelphia definitivly have a sense of humor: after countless rumours about a re-union tour in the last couple of years they call this year's tour simply the "Belive it or not - The XX Anniversary Tour". Some general remarks concerning the Hooters-less years 1995-2003 can be found in the review of the Bonn show. Let's focus on Stuttgart...The show took playe on the "Wasen", a fairground in Stuttgart which is normally used for the Stuttgart version of Munichs well known "Oktoberfest". This year the fairground is used in July for a festival featuring a couple of differnt bands. Imagine one big tent for the bands surrounded by same typical fairground stands and you have an idea of the "WAS'n stage" festival. At 6:45 pm Jonatha Brooks from NYC entered the stage. Jonatha suports the Hooters before and sometimes during the Hooters show. Originally scheduled for 8 pm Jonatha had to deal with the fact that only approx. 100 people where in the tent when she started her show. That doesn't seem to bother her: what followed was a good 30 minutes gig with a cover version of Alan Parsons "Eye in the sky" as one of my personal highlights. Between Jonatha and the Hooters another support act from Germany called "Lizard" was on stage playing sort of southern rock. At 8:15 opm the stage was ready for the Hooters starting the show with "Brother, don't you walk away" from "Zig Zag" followed by "Southferry Road" from "Nervous Night". A good choice to start the show: especially "Brother" indicated what will follow: a big, big party where the band and the audience acted as one big unit jsut like during the excellent shows during the 93/94 tours in Germany. The band at least really acted as a unit, much better than in Bonn, where from time to time something was not as perfect as in Stuttgart. Everybody seemed to have great fun, (especially Eric) making it hard to point out some highlights of the show: "500 miles" certainly was one and of course "Deliver me" turning into "Private Emotion" / "Heimliche Sehnsucht". Eric and John had so much fun with these song that "Private Emotion" turned into "All you need is love" before turning back to "Deliver me". Of course they played all their hits: "Johnny B", with "Give the music back" used as intro and "Satellite" for instance. But the best songs were the "classic live performances" from the band: "Karla with a K" made the crowd jumping and afterwards nothing and nobody seemed to stop the band: drummer David left his drum kit to use everything on and beside the stage as drum kit like the stage floor or the scaffolding for the lights. "25 hours a day" on the other hand seemed to be Erics favourite song: he replaced some of this guitar solos by flute solos while John and Fran had fun drinking water and spitting at each other. A big, big party with room for new songs: "Until you dare" from Erics solo debut album "The Optimist", which in my opinion does not fit to good int the Hooters show (but maybe this will change in the future) followed by "Gimme a stone" from Rob's solo project titled "Largo" which sounds to me like a typical Hooters song. "Gimme a stone" also shows a kind of preference for Bible related lyrics: telling the story of "David and Goliath" it was clear that it was followed by "All you zombies" which covers some stories from the Bible's Old Testament. Like in Bonn there was time for songs which have been written by the Hooters for other artists: "Time after time" and "One of us". Jonatha Brooks came on stage supporting Eric during "One of us". But even the best show had to end, for me the show ended way to early with "Day by day" in a very, very good rocking version. So hopefully the story does not end here: let's hope the 5 will make a new album and will go on tour again because live they are definetely one of the best. Some Links: Hooters Homepage: www.thehooters.net Rob's Homepage: www.robhyman.com Eric's Homepage: www.ericbazilian.com The Fan Page: www.TheHooters.de 
© 07/2003
by Hans-Georg Krumm |