Pioneers over C.

Finally, I was able to make a trip to one of the world's most famous venues, a musical temple in a very literal kind of way. Paradiso was the venue, Amsterdam the city.

As far as I'm concerned, everyone should go to Paradiso at least once in their lifetime, just because it's such an amazing experience. It isn't a big venue at all, but still it manages to capture this very unique atmosphere, which is not much of a surprise when you come to learn it used to be a church in its early days. Along with that, so many of the biggest bands played Paradiso. The Doors, Nirvana, you name it they most likely played one of their most legendary gigs in Paradiso

Obviously, the band was quite something too. A good reason to go to such a great place always makes it even more of a perfect experience. My band of choice were one of the true gods of Progressive Rock, even one of the big inspirators of modern rock music. For instance Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols stated in an interview after mentioning them he had really revealed it all that way.

The band was Van der Graaf Generator, no less. Van der Graaf managed to prove you can be fresh and astonishing even after forty years. They've been around since 1967, and while there have been some breaks, they really managed to astonish every single person in the venue - through new and old songs!

It was a hot and sweaty night at Paradiso - just under 30°C - and both crowd and band were extremely concentrated. Moments of extreme intimacy, followed by proper hard rock guitar (and others) moments at the perfect pace, performing extremely long songs without ever boring the crowd (on the contrary, it was completely and utterly silent), only very few and very big artists manage to do that!

The tension was immense, obviously, and it seemed they as well as us enjoyed that a great deal. After every song we got to see smiles from ear to ear, and Peter Hammill really enjoyed playing Paradiso too, it seemed. It really was impressive how his voice still hit every note the right way, after all these years. Even more so as Hammill's way of singing is one of the things I love so much about the band. Sometimes perfect with a very 'educated' singing voice, sometimes screaming like his life depends on it and all that perfectly effortless. Perhaps the only downside was David Jackson no longer partaking on saxophone and flute so these instruments had to be keyboardised. On the other hand they perfectly made up for that!

So, obviously, I enjoyed it a great deal, and gladly point you in the direction of the video stream available soon through fabchannel!