Arena — Paradiso, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 16 October 1996

Ed Sander

The support act was PTS, which I saw live for the third time. These guys have really got their act together. Some of their stuff is pretty good!

The set list for Arena was as follows:

I'd never been to the Paradiso before. It's a nice venue with rather good acoustics.

The first two Arena songs were actually not that good. The mix of the instruments was still not perfect (bass too low, keyboards too high). Furthermore, ... Wilderness suffered from terrible drumming by Mick. I'd lost all hope, and thought this was going to be a terrible concert.

Thankfully, things turned out for the better. Although the next song (Empire ...) isn't one of my favourites, it was played rather well. All the other songs of the evening were played very well except the final bit of the middle part of Solomon, which sounded very distorted.

A lot of fun went on, on stage. During Jericho (one of my favourite Arena tracks), Keith and John gave each other "russian cheek-to-cheek kisses" and John even used Keith's hair to dress up his own bald skull. During Crying ... 4, John took Keith on his neck. Later in the show, Paul took John on his neck, who in his turn swam through the air.

During the last encore, Clive wore a baseball cap (effectively turning him into a perfect hobo look-alike), Keith wore a funny hat with a fish, and John a hat with an elephant head. Great stuff. I hope The Cage took enough pictures.

Things turned into complete chaos with Clive playing keyboards with one hand and hitting Mick's cymbals with the other. At one point Keith and John were playing guitar lying on their backs.

Not only with Crying ... 7, did Paul prove to be a great live vocalist.

Just like during the previous tour the Grendel solo and He Knows You Know were played. Last time the reason seemed to be lack of own material. Even though I love the songs, I don't think Arena needs to play these any longer. They had enough songs they didn't play, and some of the Crying ... parts would be really nice to hear live. The concerned songs being a partial Pointer composition is no excuse; Arena do not play any Shadowland, Asia or IQ either.

I didn't like the Arena medley last tour, and I didn't like it this time either. It seems a bit useless. Why not play another song or (if they really prefer) another cover. Some of the transitions like the constant Jericho / Wilderness switch at the start is absolutely awful.

But all in all, it was a very nice concert.