Prime Club, Cologne, Germany24th April 2006
Midge Ure & Christina Lux
What do you do when one of the heroes of the 80ies is coming to town? You go and visit the concert, no matter what happens. Best known as the voice of ‘Ultravox’ Midge Ure announced some acoustic concerts where he would perform alone only with his guitar. Sounds promising and great? It was! In fact one of the most intense concerts I have seen this year so far.
Christina Lux
Christina Lux is a solo artist – a woman, a guitar and a voice. And that’s how she came on stage. She released her debut in 1998 and her recent album ‘Coming home at last’ was her fourth studio album so far. Her songs are sometimes painful and very honest. For her first song ‘Arms wide open’ she took a seat on a bar stool while she stood behind her microphone from the second song on only enlightened with a few steady red spots. The set was quite short – 30 minutes – and all in all very calm. Her dark and intense voice reminds somehow a bit of Tracy Chapman. Of course she mainly played songs from her recent album like ‘Healing Waters’, ‘To the world’, ‘Coming home at last’ or ‘Endless Fall’. Her appearance was a good introduction into the evening.
http://www.christinalux.de
http://www.myspace.com/christinalux
Midge Ure
The Scotsman born in 1953 is rock guitarist, singer and song writer in one. He had his biggest successes in the early eighties. First he started with the band ‘Slik’, later on he was guitarist in ‘Thin Lizzy’ and in 1980 he replaced John Foxx as singer in ‘Ultravox’. With Midge as singer the band had its break-through with hits like ‘Vienna’, ‘Hymn’ or ‘Dancing with tears in my eyes’. Even though he had huge success with ‘Ultravox’, Midge walked on different musical paths. So he was co-founder of ‘Visage’ (‘Fade to grey’ was one of their biggest hits), wrote the Band-Aid hit ‘Do they know it’s Christmas’ together with Bob Geldof and released several solo albums from 1985 on – only to name a few: ‘The gift’, ‘Breathe’ and ‘Little Orphans’.
http://www.midgeure.com/
Music
The special thing in that show was that Midge did not bring a big band with him. He only had his guitar to accompany his chant. The whole gig had something of a recital – it was very intimate in the small prime club and people were very close to stage. Midge’s voice was brilliant and clear. Additionally with the guitar intonation it gave a very new flair especially to the old ‘Ultravox’ hits. The set list contained besides Midge’s solo work also the biggest ‘Ultravox’ hits like ‘Vienna’, ‘Dancing with Tears in my eyes’ and ‘Hymn’ as the very last song of the set and of course ‘Fade to grey’ by ‘Visage’. Also the big solo hits like ‘Cold, Cold Heart’ and of course ‘If I was’ have been performed. The sound was excellent too and so all people had the perfect musical experience.
Performance
At 21:45 Midge entered the stage carrying his black guitar and taking his place behind the microphone only lightened up by one white spot from the front while the back of the stage was coloured by some blue and red lights. Midge’s first words addressed this bad light situation: “I can’t see anything, it’s so dark. Turn a light on.” Some laughter followed. Of course the performance was not made up for a big show. But that wasn’t necessary. The music was the counting item. In-between the songs Midge told quite some stories and past experiences he made. His Scottish accent was really nice and made me smile a lot. For example he told us that ‘Cold, Cold Heart’ was recorded with heavy drums and we should just imagine them… because they were obviously not there at that night. Furthermore he moaned that Germans cannot clap so we better shouldn’t do it along with the song. But people did it anyway and quite good what even Midge appreciated: “Good clapping!” The mood in the club was really good. People were singing along all songs and clapped and cheered a lot. 'One small Day' was announced as follows: “If I had a Top10 of miserable sad songs I’ve written, this one is in the TOP2. It’s from the new album… no today you say CD.” 'Man who sold the World' was created for the soundtrack of a movie. Midge told that he was very satisfied with the song… until he saw the movie. “It was bad.” You really could see how much fun that man had on stage. He smiled a lot and made many jokes… mostly some ironic words about the presented songs. Next song ‘Leaving’ he wrote “about something that never really happened, but could have happened”. Besides that he was often asked in interviews what he thinks is the best song he has ever written. So he introduced 'Lament' to answer the question with “This one is one of the most beautiful at least; though the guy who had it written is not a great writer or singer but guitarist. I hate those people…hahaha.” With the next song we went back to the eighties. The story to the song ‘Spielberg sky’ was that he had seen “Indiana Jones” and wanted to create a comparable mood with a song. This did not work as he wanted, he said. And so he wrote one of his “happy tunes… about the end of the world”. ‘Breathe’, which followed shortly after, got a great response too. Midge said that it was quite different to play it here in a small club. Last time he played that song in Cologne it was short before Christmas with a big band and a choir. Towards the end he unpacked the real pearls of his work. ‘Vienna’ earned massive applause. The following 'All fall down' was “recorded outside of Cologne, in Neuenkirchen. You can join in if you want.” And of course people wanted and sang as loud as they could. Last song of the main set was finally the very intense ‘Dancing with tears in my eyes’ what made the audience sing as one big choir. The mood was great and you really could get wet eyes. Midge came back twice to perform ‘If I was’ and the great ‘Hymn’ as the very last song. This was really a fantastic concert!
Setlist
01. Waiting days
02. Dear God
03. Cold, Cold Heart
04. Little Girl in Bloom
05. Song for while I´m away
06. Fade to Grey
07. Let me go
08. One small Day
09. Man who sold the World
10. Leaving
11. Man of the World
12. Lament
13. Spielberg Sky
14. Trail of Tears
15. Breathe
16. No Regrets
17. Vienna
18. All fall down
19. Dancing with tears in my Eyes
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20. If I was
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21. Hymn
Rating
Music 10
Performance 8
Sound 9
Light 4
Total 8 (8.4)
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