The Pipettes live in concert

This is going to be one of my few posts in English on this blog. Over at root42, I default to English. So last week I had been at a concert by The Pipettes in Cologne. I must say, this was the strangest concert I have been to. And I have seen quite some artists. Well, to be fair, it was not so much the band's fault, as much more... well, I do not really know whose fault it was. Long story short: We were twelve people in the audience. Yes, twelve. That is the number right below thirteen, which is a nice prime number, and right above eleven, the other nice prime number. All three numbers are really, really small when it comes to concerts. The venue would have been large enough to host 200-300 people I would guess. So it felt quite empty...

However, the concert itself was not bad per se. I must admit it takes a lot of guts for a medium famous band as The Pipettes to still play the concert in front of such a small audience. So what about the show? The songs were --I would guess-- 50-50 from the old and the new album. I haven't made a setlist, but I did recognize a lot of old stuff, and I haven't yet listened to the new album. The songs were all snappy and short, which is what I expect of this band. The new lineup with the two front-women Ani and Gwenno Saunders did put up a nice choreography, the backing band was technically mostly flawless (for my amateurish ears) and a good support. The two girls tried their best to get us, the "crowd", into a good mood and actually move to their music. And we did. At least sometimes.

After the show, we all met at the merchandise booth, and chatted with Ani and Gwenno, who were very kind. I even got my 7" copy of the new single "Stop The Music" signed by both girls, with a personal note. Well, if that didn't make up for everything that went wrong that evening, I do not know what else could. While I'm already talking about the single: A nicely packed 7" red vinyl. Mastering is ok-ish, but I have the feeling the dynamic range is (again) too much compressed. My poor Ortofon Concorde is struggling with the record. I tried Depeche Mode's red Wrong 7" for comparison, and I have the feeling the dynamic range on that record is much better. But still, the music is good, and I particularly like the B-side: "Who Made You The Doctor", I think it's actually a stronger song than the A-side.