Wednesday evening I was in London for a warm-up show of Alkaline Trio. They played in a little venue called The Garage. This was my first UK concert and additionally I was pretty stoked meeting some of the members of the Alkaline Trio fanclub „Blood Pact“.
The opening bands have been „The Exposed“ & „Off With Their Heads“. I hadn’t heard of any of those before and „The Exposed“ had a pretty hard job as starters but had some good tunes. „Off With Their Heads“ were great and when they left the stage and the roadies built up the set for Alkaline Trio we we’re really warmed-up.
There seemed to be some technical problem and Alkaline Trio entered the stage pretty late. They took the stage to „The End“ from „The Doors“ which aroused a very awkward feeling in some people as thoughts of the band splitting up seem to be quite regular. To my great pleasure they didn’t start with „This Addiction“ but with „Armageddon“ which was a really good opener for the show. The setlist was different from the previous European shows:

01. Armageddon
02. Clavicle
03. Emma
04. Dine Dine
05. We’ve had enough
06. Mercy Me (für Rosie)
07. I lied my face off
08. Time to waste
09. My friend Peter
10. She took him to the lake
11. American Scream
12. Sadie
13. Blue Carolina
14. Private Eye (für Matt Steinke – Guitartech)
15. Crawl
16. Goodbye Forever
17. This could be love
18. Radio

Due to the fact that they were already a bit late they skipped the encore break and played on without leaving the stage at all. Curfew was at 11.00 p.m and they had to stick to that which may explain why „Queen of Pain“ which was on the setlist didn’t get get played. I hope there will be a chance to hear this live for me sometime.
The band made an awesome show, one of the best I’ve ever seen from them. Matt Skiba talked a lot to the audience and they seemed to enjoy the time as much as we did. The UK audience was different to the German or Belgium audiences from the European show. They pogoed a lot which was great. I will definitely take the London concerts into my plans for upcoming shows from now on!

I had a really nice time and I have to thank CJ, Scott & Nina for spending it with me. It was nice to meet you all and I hope it hasn’t been the last time we met for such a concert!

To my great pleasure I had won a ticket for a festival called Rocco del Schlacko which took place near Saarbrücken. I had never heard of that festival before and the only reason for travelling there was originally the fact that The Gaslight Anthem were going to perform there.

Rocco del Schlacko is one of the smaller festivals with about 25.000 people. The line up for Friday included Bad Religion and The Hives after The Gaslight Anthem and so this promised to be a great evening.

Indeed it was. The sound was extremely good (never had such a good sound at a festival) and the bands seemed to have fun as well. The only problem was the area the festival is taking place. The ground was quite dusty so it was hard to breath in the front rows or in the circle pits…

Nevertheless I stayed there for The Gaslight Anthem and this was the first time I saw them live and I was more than impressed.  After Pearl Jam definitely one of the best live bands I’ve ever seen!

They played a bunch of songs of the new album and some of the classics from the 59 Sound and to my great pleasure a cover of Pearl Jam’s s“State of Love & Trust“. Absolutely awesome and with closed eyes it was hard to believe that it wasn’t Eddie Vedder standing there on stage. I would have never believed that this is possible but Brian Fellon made it happen… Thanks for a great show…now I’m pretty stoked seeing them again in Cologne and Neu Isenburg this year!

The pictures have been taken with the iphone again…so poor quality…