1997/07/20, Supercrash festival, Rendsburg, Germany

Written by Gianfranco Sciacca (g.sciacca@ic.ac.uk) for Dominion mailing list

It was extremely pleasant to be around for this gig. The surroundings where spectacular, it was simply a lovely place. The canal thing which you could cross with a 1/2-minute ferry ride was absolutely beyond my expectations. So was the fact that Doktor Avalanche took the stage at 9 am and began performing Flood II, adding track on track, drums first, then piano, strings and so on.

Then Ribbons, Dominion, Giving Ground, Alice and more stuff, some guitars appeared and so did Eldritch (for the cultors of esthetics he was sporting a St. Pauli jersey).

The bits performed only by Doktor Avalanche (about 80% of what you hear during the concert) where the highlights of the morning, whilst sipping our Bailey's based breakfast. The message straight from the speakers was loud and clear: get a flesh and bone bass player and possibly some proper guitarist. But a very nice way to wake up after all.

Catastrophe Ballet and Projekt Pitchfork shared the same bill with the Sisters; guess some restrictions didn't apply to this event, as they didn't back in Glauchau.

The gig itself was truly powerful; rain pouring down, nobody seemed to care. Pity there was no body electric, one of my live favorites. Four encores where certainly way beyond our expectations as well, considering also the nasty weather, so it was the Sister Ray thing with Louie Louie and other bits (I didn't seem to recognize Ghostrider fragments); nice reworking, but I couldn't tell if the main body of the song was actually Sister Ray or something else.

The band was scheduled to play for about 90 minutes, I believe they went on for at least two hours. Best gig in five years, I guess, wasn't it?

Written by Dennis Ohrt (Dreams.Never.End@t-online.de) for Dominion mailing list

It was a long wait in rainy Rendsburg to see The Sisters on stage, but it was worth every minute of it. And every cold you catch... But Eldritch noticed that and told a few words about it (You all had to suffer very hard tonight...). Some of his comments as this one were in German, which was really great.

The setlist was really good, I think, with Comfortably numb as opener Eldritch will always win the audience, I think (it's my fav Sisters cover version). Nice to hear Giving Ground again!

We were all disappointed when the band left the stage so early, but they were in a good mood and returned for a lot of encores, a fav one with the audience was of course This Corrosion with everyone chanting along. And Confide in Me was a nice surprise, I didn't expect them to play it again.

Of the two new songs, I really prefer Summer over War on Drugs from the first listening, but that's hard to judge I think. A bad thing was the version of Temple of Love, which never really made it, unfortunately, they have played much better versions.

All in all a really good gig, and they again filmed parts of the show!

Written by Anders Blixt (samblixt@algonet.se) for The Sisters of Mercy Tours site

Having seen only one Sisters gig before (Brixton I this year), I was very satisfied with the setlist. It included all the songs deserved to be called Hits. The audience was much more local (German) than I expected, and we only saw one Scandinavian during these days (We have your bottle, Sverker!). Anyway, I found the indoor concert at Brixton better than this one, because Sisters truly is an indoor band, with all their smoke and lights. Also I found the audience to be more of a convinced Sisters lot at Brixton, even if you perhaps could blame the bad weather at Supercrash.

Eldritch seemed to be enjoying himself in a long version of Sister Ray at the end of the gig, where we also could hear some Lucretia lyrics. Having read a couple of interviews with him, I wonder how good he could be as an author. My guess is super.

Written by Chris Beal (Chris.Beal@uk.Sun.com) for Dominion mailing list

I've just got back from this weekend (2700 miles in 5 days - beat that Pete).

Overall it was really good. Rendsburg was stunning. 15 minute slow version of Sister Ray, a bit of Kylie, Alice, Jolene (basically everything they have played all tour but in one go). It was Wet, muddy and smelt really bad, but after 5 minutes no one seemed to care. Plus I got on shoulders for Summer - which I've been wanting to do for the last few gigs.

Rendsburg was definitely one of the top gigs of the tour.

Chris Sampson:
> Now I'm really pissed that I didn't go.

Shame you didn't make it Chris, but I'm sure they'll be a next time.

Written by Sven Togni (togni@pandora.be) for Dominion mailing list

> Btw, does anybody know who attended the gig where this camera team was from that
> filmed Andrew and his fellows on stage and also the spectators? Maybe there will
> be a report on TV or so.

They work for Andrew and they have no idea what he'll do with it... they were at every concert and apparently AE has editing facilities at his Leeds home, which to my knowledge costs approximately 33.000 pounds.

But it's the best quality at an affordable price, even the BBC made some programs with this. Knowing the BBC used this, means it can be considered as Broadcast material.

At least Andrew can watch each and every show at home. Please make me a copy Andrew... :-))

Written by Sverker Wahlin (lucretia_reflect@hotmail.com) for Dominion mailing list

A question to all of you who was at the Rendsburg gig: did you see that waterpistol thingy that AE had? I'm wondering if what I saw really was a waterpistol or what the hell it was, I just saw him reaching out his hand and squirting at the audience...

By the way, 10 points to the guy who screamed "so when the rain comes down, would you choose to walk or stay..." when we were waiting for them.

Picture at the top of this page was taken and scanned (together with the ticket) by Jochen Upheber (MERCYMAN@t-online.de). Full version of the picture is available at http://halinux.rug.ac.be/~jochen/rend1.html.