By: Karin

I missed Manhole. Moonspell was, well, old fashioned. Dwelling far too heavily on a purported satanic image. The music was, well, familiar. Nothing I'd never heard befor, more a case of mixing whatever somebody else has done before. And the mixture was not particularly striking. At one point there was a projection on the backdrop of a purple pentagram, while the singer introduced his next song with 'oh, evil one!'. During the song he insisted on casting his eyes heavenward after each line he'd finished. What did he _think_, the jerk? That god himself would strike him with lightning for pissing him off?

After a long break the lights went low. The jackhammer noise started. Lightning. Had god waken up, finally, and decided to punish the wrong singer? No. The light was being emitted from enormous lamps that were sitting on top of a huge range of loudspeakers, and they were totally blinding the audience. A yell. More comfortable light. A huge welcoming applause. The band!

Type O launched into Prelude To Agony. They did Love You To Death immediately after, and beyond that I've forgotten about the set list. But one of the boys is sure to help me out. [and in comes Gerard: Cinnamon Girl, Christian Woman, Bacchus, KATWP, Wolfmoon, Too late, MGG,Light My Fire, Black No.1]
The sound was not really up to scratch. Drums and bass were beautiful, but Peter's voice tended to be drowned in it, and the organ sounded a bit shrill - never a full sound. And the backvocals tended to have the same lack in lustre. I was amazed at the audience's reaction. Whenever a somg that had been MTV'd was played, everybody cheered louder than usual - and when Type did Christian Woman, the audience took over and sung the refrain. (I already commented on that in my Nov. 1993 review of Type O at the Melkweg: it's nice that they're not being puked at by everybopdy anymore, but hey, this is not a campfire - yet.) Part of the audience was bent on doing the sing-along and yes-you're-a-great-top-ten band thing. Steele clearly resented this: after he was done with Christian Woman, he snidely remarked 'Glad that you helped me out with the lyrics.' The audience did the same with MGG and Black No. 1.

When they did Too Late, Frozen, two hoses on each side of the stage started squirting little white fluffy things, turning the scene into a snowcloud. It actually looked lovely, although I feared that it came a bit to close to the romantic image Type O currently seems to be cultivating. (And since it snowed on Peter the hardest, and since from the shine on his hair it was clear he's washed it today, I couldn't help wondering whether the fluff would stick into his hair, forcing him to wash again. He could do with a shampoo sponsor, methinks.)

About ten or fifteen minutes before what turned out to be the end of the show, they suddenly broke up, after Peter had announced that on evenings like this, when (I didn't catch that one) he always needed to take a shit, so would we please excuse him, they would be back in a few minutes. (I remember they pulled the same trick during a festival this year. Was it Dynamo? Reading? Can't remember.[It was Dynamo '96, they left after the first song. JG]) The audience was slightluy flabbergasted. The older fans knew that this was just part of Type O's scheme of teasing users, so we waited. And yes, they came back. Another song (or two [nope one: Black NO.1]) and then Peter threw his bottle - he'd not been drinking red wine; the bottle was transparant, not green; and it was square; I'd guess it was whiskey - into the audience. And suddenly, all of the band started throwing rolls of toilet paper into the audience. First one, then two, three, hundreds of them. The audience of course threw them back, and there was this slot of ten minutes in which everybody was behanving as if we were class and the teacher had just left. It was funny, it was authentic - everybody teasing one another. After ten minutes of playing around, Peter took the mike again and wanted to do a little speech. His second or third sentence was 'We of Type O Negative feel -', and while he uttered the word 'feel' he was hit straight in the face with one of these toilet roll, and everybody laughed - Peter and the band included. They fooled around a bit more, and yes, they went, after a "Well, we'd really love to do another song, but as the French say: 'no!'" - and they left.

But after ten minutes - lights on, music blaring - Steele returned to the stage. He had a crate with him. He trew another toilet paper roll into the audience, grabbed in the crate again and came up with a can of Heineken beer - only to thrown that one into the audience as well. And then cans of coke and Heineken and wet paper rolls emerged and were thrown into the theatre.

groet,
Karin Spaink.

-  I write, therefore I am:            http://www.xs4all.nl/~kspaink
Scientology is sueing me. Support fund Spaink et. al. v Scientology:
   Vrienden van K., giro 450 9627, Amsterdam