Shows

Against all odds

What a day this was!
Friday looked so promising, everything was set up: show almost sold-out, program well prepared, time scheduled aligned, all arrangements done.
And then on Saturday everything went wrong right from the beginning. Band members suffering from a sore throat, feeling sick, almost collapsing on the way to the concert location. Finally everyone made it to the venue when – once again – the mixing console wasn’t working as expected, leading to a 1.5 hours delay. Soundcheck was supposed to start before 4 p.m. and still no drum was hit until 5:30. When the sound engineers decided to get a backup mixer, re-wire everything and go without a proper check of the monitoring a delayed start of the show was inevitable.
Finally at 7:30 our special guests PAMM kicked off the stage and got the audience from the first chord of ‘Killing In The Name’ until the final hit of ‘Enter Sandman’. 30 minutes of finest 90’s rock and metal helped to compensate for the waiting time – the four young gentlemen received their well deserved ovations.
Some of us still groggy, we started our first set shortly after 8:30 p.m., struggling a bit to keep up the power of Metallica and Co. with an Eros Ramazzotti opener. But latest with the second song ‘Blackest Eyes’ the energy was back on stage and the bees were on track. The singers in blind flight without proper monitoring did a tremendous job through the first couple of songs. The climax of set one was without doubt an Austropop classic in new apparel: The version of ‘Fata Morgana’ renewed in 2006 by E.A.V. hit the audience with a surprise and made their heads bang to the heavy beat. Closing the set with Dire Straits’ masterpiece ‘Brothers in Arms’ we went to a short break to recover.
Set two gained traction with Anouk and Flying Colors before taking breath with Eros & Anastacia to be prepared for the heavy section. The highlists were two new songs: ‘Bring me to life’ was demanding everything from Sandra’s voice and Rammstein’s ‘Sonnne’ came unexpected but with a bang! The regular program was finished with ‘Uninvited’, which has become one of the most adored songs by the audience.
The encores saw a very emotional “When A Blind Man Cries’ in the live version of Paris 1996 performed only by the male bees, before the ladies joined again for a final Vodka-Martini in ‘You Know My Name’.
In the end we were grateful for a very brave audience staying and celebrating until 11 p.m. and we would like to thank our special guests PAMM as well as Motte and Finki for sound and lights making it a successful evening after all.

The debut

A first step for bee-kind.
It was intended to take place at the Mo.xx venue and should be a premiere in front of our families and friends with support of the recently formed ‘JAZWerk Orange’. But about four week prior to the gig we got informed that the reservation got lost and the slot was already given to someone else. So we had to look for a new venue on short notice. Luckily we were made aware of the reopened party location at the latin american restaurant MiCasa. When we went there for the first time to make the deal, the stage was just about to be built – everything was small but looked nice and everyone was very friendly, so we went for it. There were a couple of compromises to be made. We were limited to 90 guests, little space for two bands and we had to organize the PA equipment ourselves. But on the positive side was a very intimate and friendly club athmosphere. After some remarkable and partly irritating dialogues with the man behind the mixing consoles during sound check, we were all set for a great evening.
JAZWerk Orange opened the stage with a well appreciated 30 minutes set of covers and original songs, kickstarting the audience and setting up the MiCasa basement for the first stage appearence of “The Bee-Ciders”.
And then we started – smoothly with The Corrs’ ‘Dreams’, imagining the crowd to be safe before smashing the silence with ‘Blackest Eyes’. Then we had the attention to move forward through a very diversified first set including The Pretty Reckless, Chris Isaak, Pink and The Spin Doctors. The highlight seemed to be Gary Moore’s ‘Still Got The Blues’ which for sure is not a B-side, but still rarely heard in live concerts these days. The set ended with the rather unkown but well received ‘The Storm’ by the Flying Colors.
After the break, the Roxette classic ‘The Look’ did its job to refocus before rushing through another colorful journey including Extreme, U2, Sam Brown, Hubert von Goisern, Deep Purple and many more.
Encores were demanded – we provided them with Queen and a shaken, not stirred ‘You Know My Name’ from Casino Royale.
Despite technical shortcomings on the monitoring it was a successful debut show and a proof of concept. We enjoyed the evening very much, thanks to a wonderful audience and great supporting act opening up the evening.