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Halle Münsterland, Münster, Germany
22nd November 2006
Silbermond, Do you mind

SILBERMOND is one of the many young German bands which have risen over the last two or three years to gain immense success in their home country. The fact that most of them are fronted by a female vocalist singing in her native language already has become some sort of cliché and a formula that major record label use to sign more and more bands of that kind, hoping that they have the next big thing at their hands. We checked out SILBERMOND’s “Laut gedacht” tour to see if this band has more to offer than just a few radio-friendly Pop tunes.


Do You Mind

For the “Laut gedacht” tour SILBERMOND made a very nice move and had for every city another young, unsigned local newcomer band for the support slot. Actually pretty cool if you consider how hard it sometimes is to get gigs for young bands, and as SILBERMOND are playing the big venues and arenas these days supporting them in front of a few thousand people must be quite an event for any newcomer. Prior the tour there was an online voting done by the magazine Lenz for every gig, and out from the top five of this voting SILBERMOND themselves chose the winner who was going to support them at the specific show. Out of a total of 44 bands, DO YOU MIND managed to be among the top 5 for the Münster show and were picked by SILBERMOND to perform with them. http://www.doyoumind.de/



Music
DO YOU MIND are David Sestendrup (vocals, guitar), Jürgen Sestendrup (bass, backing vocals), Ralph Bittner (guitar, backing vocals) and Johannes Tennagels (drums) from Dülmen, a small town near Münster in Western Germany. They call their music “highschool punk” influenced by American bands like GOOD CHARLOTTE or BLINK 182. DO YOU MIND started as a solo project by David Sestendrup in 2003 and became a full-blown band when the others joined in summer 2005. In less than a year there were quite a few achievements for such a young band. DO YOU MIND won a few newcomer contests, did a number of gigs including a support for German Rock band REVOLVERHELD and using the internet quite cleverly to spread their music. The SILBERMOND show was surely the highlight so far but you can be sure that there will be more to follow.



Performance
I doubt that anyone in the band has already hit his twenties, and if you keep this and the fact, that the current line up of DO YOU MIND has been playing together for hardly more than one year, in mind, it’s quite astonishing how professional they actually are. Their music is pretty generic and it could be from any Californian skate-punk band you see on MTV on afternoons. But hey, for such a young band it is okay that they still have to develop their own profile! So I was rather impressed how perfectly they mastered their instruments, and that they are already good songwriters even though they never left the formulas of their genre. Their stage performance made them look as if they were doing this every day but their glowing, excited faces told you that this was a pretty special event for them. Obviously they told everyone at their school and all friends plus their whole families to turn up at their SILBERMOND support show – the reactions to DO YOU MIND’s show proved that they brought their own fan club, and many SILBERMOND fans happily joined in. Actually many headlining acts would be satisfied if they’d get such a reaction. A long way to go for DO YOU MIND but perhaps they are the next poster boys of Alternative Rock.

Rating
Music: 6
Performance: 8
Sound: 9
Light: 7
Total: 7.2






Silbermond

SILBERMOND (German for “silver moon”) are brothers Johannes Stolle (bass) and Thomas Stolle (guitar), Andreas Nowak (drums) and front woman Stefanie Kloß, who came together in 1998 in East-German small town Bautzen under their first band name JAST, which is simply derived from the first letters of the band members' names. After they started with Rock music with English lyrics, the band decided to use German lyrics exclusively and changed their band’s name to SILBERMOND in 2001. http://www.silbermond.de/



Music
SILBERMOND made their breakthrough as the opening act for German Pop starlet Jeanette Biedermann, and they became increasingly popular in Germany and Austria last but not least by constant touring as well as by massive airplay on German radio and German music television. Their debut album "Verschwende deine Zeit" ("Waste your time") - released in 2004 - spent unbelievable 69 weeks in the German Media Control charts. SILBERMOND’s mainstream-oriented Rock appealed to the masses, especially to a teenage crowd, and of course the German lyrics helped a lot. In fact SILBERMOND has become part of a new wave of German Pop/Rock bands singing in German and with a female singer. This new trend has been started by WIR SIND HELDEN and their singer Judith Holofernes, who had an unexpected national breakthrough with “Die Reklamation” in 2003. This was something new – at least for those too young to remember the “Neue Deutsche Welle” in the early 1980s – and indeed WIR SIND HELDEN sounded fresh and cheeky and offered some sophisticated yet playful German lyrics. Berlin band MIA. Had a similar approach (and a female vocalist too) but a more punk-ish attitude – and with “Hungriges Herz” a major chart hit in 2004. Record labels happily ran after the trend and signed any average Rock/Pop and singing in German - preferably bands following the pattern “female vocalist, backed up by a few boys in slackly sports wear, singing more or less inventive lyrics with some juicy or pseudo-rebellious puns every now and then”. Of course the music and lyrics shouldn’t do harm anyone, as the stuff is supposed to sell, big time!



Many bands came and were away within a few weeks, but SILBERMOND – as well as their business rivals JULI – were to stay a bit longer. Of course their record company (major label BMG Music Publishing) wanted to milk the success of SILBERMOND’s first album and released the DVD "Verschwende Dein Zeit - Live" in April 2005, which reached gold status. More touring followed, now of course as a headlining act and on July 2, 2005 SILBERMOND were part of the massive Live-8 concert in Berlin. On April 21, 2006, SILBERMOND released their second album, "Laut gedacht" (“Thinking Aloud”), from which the singles "Unendlich" and later, on July 7, 2006, their second single "Meer sein" were released, both reaching high positions in the charts. The third single, “Das Beste”, even reached #1 in Germany. SILBERMOND is by now one of the biggest bands in Germany, and even the hardest critic has to admit that SILBERMOND know how to write a good Pop song. As a matter of course you can’t expect ground-breaking, innovative ideas from a band like SILBERMOND, neither musically or lyrically, but we were curious to see what else this band had to offer. A live show was the best way to do that.



Performance
The show started with the best part of the whole night: the intro! The huge stage was hidden by a see-through curtain and dimmed light gave little away of the stage and the band. A few visuals were quite effectively  projected on the curtain – the funniest was the line “Laut Gedacht tour in…” followed by picture of the band standing in front of a place name signboard with “Münster” on it. The band must have taken this shot outside Münster a few hours before the show. Pretty cool idea, I have to say. And people loved it! The see-through curtain now gave away the silhouette of Stefanie Kloß while she started to sing the first lines of “Das Ende vom Kreis”, a rather balladry track. The audience cheered and the teenage girls screamed at the top of their lungs. A very clever, effective and well choreographed start for a show, for sure. In the further course of the show SILBERMOND proved that they know the bag of tricks of pop-stardom and that they are quite willing to use all the obvious gimmicks and Rock poses. Pretty professional and experienced live act, one might say. And their audience – mostly young female teenagers who found a role model in singer Stefanie but also people in their 30s or 40s who are simply looking for some nice entertainment – loved it that way.



After the quite moody start the single “Meer sein” followed, and SILBERMOND showed that they want to rock out. In fact I got the feeling that the band wanted to show that they are more than a polished mainstream act, that they are a “proper” Rock band. Technically they were absolutely perfect, and the bass solo in “Nein danke” later in the show and other sonic details showed that they are actually damn good musicians. But somehow you get the feeling that they did not allow SILBERMOND what they would like to do the most, as they have to serve a mainstream audience who doesn’t like a challenge or too complicated things. People were here for things they already knew – from other bands and other shows – and not for something daring that could disturb the entertainment. They want to sing along to dodgy love lyrics. Rock clichés like stage diving, performed both by singer Stefanie and bassist Johannes, doesn’t exactly make you look a dangerous, exciting Indie act. The low point was a solo by the drummer called “Das Lied mit nur einem Akkord” (“The song with just one chord”) which was meant to be funny but it was only weird and clumsy. When the audience cheered because they wanted more of that I decided to buy a beer at the bar. The song “Schick LOVE”, which started with samples of a TV ad for ring tones and was meant to be critical of this plague, was just another clumsy moment. Yeah, bands like SILBERMOND need their insubordinate moments every now and then, but please in such an in-viscous and harmless way that the parents don’t mind their 14-year-olds to go to the show.



Enough bashing, as the concert had its good moments. The best of them were when SILBERMOND stopped trying to be true Rock and returned to ballads. A song like “Symphonie” is in fact a beautiful Pop song, and of course a highlight of the show. And there were those little moments like the above mentioned bass solo when the musicians displayed how good they actually are. Singer Stefanie does also deserve some credit for a perfect vocal delivery, and the way she works her audience and really commanding it without coming across like an arrogant, aloof star was quite nice. When she said “Jump!” everyone jumped. When she said “Sing!” everyone screamed the words of the song. When she said “Lemme see ya hands!” all hands were rising and clapping. All in all exactly the show you would expect with only few surprises (did I mention the excellent bass solo yet? *g*) and a very excited audience leaving the venue with happy faces.



Setlist
01. Das Ende vom Kreis
02. Meer sein
03. A Stückl heile Welt
04. In Zeiten wie diesen
05. Lebenszeichen
06. Durch die Nacht
07. Kartenhaus
08. Nein danke
09. Zeit für Optimisten
10. Schick LOVE
11. Das Lied mit nur einem Akkord
12. Verschwende deine Zeit
13. Symphonie
14. Wissen was wird
15. Unendlich
-------------------------------
16. Bruderduell
17. Wenn die Anderen
18. Das Beste
19. Ich wünsch dir was

Rating
Music: 4
Performance: 8
Sound: 9
Light: 9
Total: 6.7



More pics at Black-Cat-Net
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