I already posted a bit about the show after it had happened and I don’t have a lot of good photos to share this time. Here are the few who are kind of okay-ish.
Default Gallery Type Template
This is the default gallery type template, located in:
/www/htdocs/w00e4cf6/blog/wp-content/plugins/nextgen-gallery/products/photocrati_nextgen/modules/nextgen_gallery_display/templates/index.php.
If you're seeing this, it's because the gallery type you selected has not provided a template of it's own.
There is another one from my phone, which is also kind of blurry and not really that good, but it’s quite special anyway… more on that later. I plan to also share another more introspective post about being a fan or a fangirl and all kinds of thoughts and emotions about this show and Frank and fans in general later this week. So these are just a few more random tidbits from the show.
It really was a tiny venue. I expected that, but I had no idea that the stage would be even closer than it was in Cologne last year. There were no barriers, so I actually leaned against the stage itself. Which was pretty cool. There were about 300 people in the audience, I guess. But I’m bad at guessing attendance. It was tiny, that’s all I’m saying.
It was a good crowd though, I thought: very active, but not rowdy. Lovely people all around me (Thanks again to the unknown girl who helped me up when I lost my footing at the jumping up part in Photosynthesis! I’m such a clumsy klutz sometimes) And I met some really nice new-ish fans who had flown up from Germany as well. Nice!
Frank had switched the set list a bit from the January tour, which was a great thing to see. Not that the set back then had been bad, because it hadn’t. But it’s always nice to spice things up a bit and bring older songs back in or to drop songs.
When I thought about the setlist afterwards, I realized he had dropped “Glory Hallelujah”, “Peggy Sang The Blues” and “Wessex Boy” to just name a few of the ones I thought he would never ever drop from his set. I admit, I didn’t really miss them that night though. They are good songs and they have great sing-a-long parts, but maybe that’s why he dropped them for these smaller venue in countries where he isn’t so well known yet. And the show still had a great flow to it. It felt right!
He played “Tell Tale Sign”, which he seemed to have giving a safe spot on the setlist these days (according to setlist.fm at least). I was really surprised about that, because I always assumed it might be a too personal song to make a regular appearance? I love the song, even though (or maybe because?) it’s a personal one and a rather dark one in parts. But I can relate to so much of it and it has so wonderful lyrics. So hearing this made me happy.
“Casanova Lament” was another “first” for me. Frank summed it up as a song “basically about being a dick”. LOL Which I’m afraid, he probably has been to quite a few girls in his time . But… It’s a lovely song regardless and I enjoyed hearing it.
Frank talked quite a lot of Swedish that night. Well he read it off a page and it was the usual “My name is Frank Turner…” and so forth but up till the show number, which he said in Swedish as well. Pretty cool! Of course he did Eulogy in Swedish, obviously in a new translation, because “the last time I did this nobody understood a fucking word” I was curious to hear which Swedish artist he would name instead of “Freddie Mercury”. And I was laughing out loud when it wasn’t a singer or musician, but Zlatan Imbrahimovic, who is the best / most successful Swedish football player. And Zlatan is quite the unique character, like a lot of football players are. I kind of like him though, maybe I have a thing for the (seemingly) bad guy :-)
All through the evening Frank seemed to have been having problems with his in-ear-monitoring equipment. It was either the in-ear piece or the transmitter, which he has in his backpocket. Or some of the wires, maybe? I have no clue about how any of this works. But this was the first show I ever saw, in which Frank actually called for kind of a time-out to get his stage manager up on stage to replace some pieces or to re-wire him or whatever. That happened at least twice and they also seemed to have tried to solve this problem in the intermission before the encore. At which Frank obviously couldn’t be bothered to put his shirt back on and that’s why he played the remaining four songs without wearing his shirt. That definitely was a first for me as well :-)
As it was going to be my birthday I had dared to send Frank a song request once again a week before. Three songs actually so he could choose the one that would fit the set the best. Fully aware that at recent gigs the birthday girl/boy was sometimes asked up on stage to do the crowdsurfing during “Out of Breath”. Crowdsurfing isn’t really a thing on my bucket list, so I wasn’t disappointed at all that this didn’t happen on Sunday.
But I admit that of course a part of me would have loved for Frank to acknowledge this birthday in any other way. Which he didn’t do out loud. But he did play one of my songs – Sailor’s Boots – as the first encore and as this is a rather rare songs, I just claimed it as my birthday present. Either way it was so amazing to hear this song in this setting. He was so close to me up on stage and I was just casually lounging against the side of the stage, chin propped up on my hands, gazing up at him in awe. And it honestly had nothing to do with the fact that he wasn’t wearing his shirt :-). Some of the comments I read on Instagram made me feel the need to clear that up. I don’t care about Frank’s bare chest – one way or the other. I was in awe because he was standing so close, playing his acoustic guitar, singing one of my favourite songs. On my birthday!
I shared a few okay-ish photos at the top of this post and like I mentioned there is another kind of blurry one from my phone. When Frank did the whole “laying down on his back” routine during Four Simple Words, he did it right in front of me, and of course I had to take a shot of that.
I posted it on Instagram that night.
Then yesterday, this happened…
Oh. My. Fucking. God!
And it doesn’t really matter anymore that I didn’t get the chance to catch Frank after the show. This does sooooo makes up for it… :-)