1998/07/04, Bands für Bands festival, Tankhaus, Reuterstadt Stavenhagen, Germany

Written by Chris Sampson (Chris@cgs123.demon.co.uk) for Dominion mailing list

Pretentious Quotes:

"Happy Birthday, United States of America" - Eldritch, introducing Dominion

"It'll never rain again" - Eldritch, between Mother Russia and Summer

"Rule 1: Never, ever go to a gig where there are fewer than 1 million people living within a 10 mile radius of the moshpit.
Rule 2: Never, ever forget Rule 1
Rule 3: There is no rule 3." - The Sampson guide to doing German festivals

Let's get this straight: Stavenhagen is not in the middle of nowhere. Far from it - it's actually where people in the middle of nowhere go to get away from the hustle and bustle of the middle of nowhere. We're about 120 miles North of Berlin, it's 1AM, it's raining, it's cold and we got lost on the way. Why on earth are we doing this?

Unusually for a 2 day festival, there was no camping site, or indeed any decent parking space at all. The site was really small for a festival - I'd say about twice the size of the Brixton Academy floor. The word "Amateurish" sprang to mind about the set up, although to be fair to the promoters they had gone to the trouble to set up two stages side by side, ensuring a swift changeover between bands, and a relentless barrage of thrash metal early in the morning. Ace.

The line-up before the Sisters was fairly anonymous, with only Think About Mutation familiar. The crowd was pitifully small with only about 500 people there in mid-afternoon, though the rain and the World Cup may have put people off arriving early. Spirits were raised when the news of Germany's 3-0 stuffing at the hands of Croatia filtered through.

The Sisters took the stage spot on midnight, and by now the crowd had grown to around 4000 or so. The sound was really good - even better than the second night of the Forum. They'd got the bass sound working for a change and Von's vocals were clear amid the bastard wall of guitar noise. The lad Pearson in particular playing a blinder, possibly the best I've heard him play.

The setlist speaks for itself - loads of the quicker rabble rousers early on, then a slowing down towards half-time, with Susanne a considerable highlight, before the pace picked up again with Dominion and an excellent Summer. Eldritch was in buoyant mood - lots of quips in between songs, many in German, and a highlight was an extended piece about Mike Varjak making women "moist and satisfied" before Flood II. Very funny stuff.

There were piles of encores. Vision Thing was a bit of a shambles with Von getting lost half way. Comfortably Numb was excellent and was then followed up by the boogie version of Sister Ray with all sorts of lyric references in there. The whole shebang dragged on for about 15 minutes and Adam had to go off half way through for an emergency piss-break, so the guitar roadie took over for a while. Splendid stuff. Overall they played for just over 2 hours.

So it was worth going after all. As usual.

There are two new T-Shirts both with the new head and star in orange/yellow on the front and SUMMER/SISTERS above and below. Black shirt for the short sleeve (going for a reasonable 30DM = 10 quid) and a white long sleever in extra large tent size (it adequately covered Robbo's beer gut which will give you an indication).

Thanks to Speedy Dave for doing the driving and picking me up at Berlin - much appreciated.

Written by Christian Wojtysiak of Head and Star for The Sisters of Mercy Tours site

Chris Sampson mentioned in his article that there was no camping site around. That's wrong: you had to cross the street opposite the entrance and walk a few hundred meters to reach those two muddy fields (I have a receipt for paying the fees for placing a tent there to prove that).

A friend of mine was in the backstage and he told me that it was not an "emergency piss break" forcing Mike to leave the stage but some kind of food- poisoning, thanks to the bad "kantine-food" there.

Written by Chris Sampson (Chris@cgs123.demon.co.uk) for The Sisters of Mercy Tours site

>Chris Sampson mentioned in his article that there was no camping site
>around. That's wrong

Yeah maybe. We eventually blagged into the "bands-only camping site".

>A friend of mine was in the backstage and he told me that it was not an
>"emergency piss break" forcing Mike to leave the stage but some kind of
>food- poisoning, thanks to the bad "kantine-food" there.

This is bollocks. First up it was Adam, not Mike who went off. Secondly, we were backstage after the gig talking to Adam the roadie who took over guitar duties (as opposed to Adam Pearson) and Pearson deffo went off to have a piss half way through Sister Ray. Pearson may have made up the "food-poisoning" story to cover his embarrassingly weak bladder, but the UK fans partook of the canteen (correct spelling here) food with no ill-effects. We were chatting to Adam Pearson after the show and he looked in fine fettle.

I thought it was quite funny that Adam wasn't quite telling the truth.

Written by Christian Wojtysiak of Head and Star for The Sisters of Mercy Tours site

Regarding the "emergency piss break" story in Stavenhagen: I got it from Robin Colman. Nice to hear another version but in the end I don't think that this is important in any way. Chris' versions sounds realistic and it was interesting for me to hear that it was Adam who left the stage.

I was standing on the right side and I just could not remember that Mike was leaving during Sister Ray so I found the whole story a bit strange. Now that I heard that it was Adam who left I know that I had no black out 'cause I was looking at Mike and Andrew most of the time and was sure I had seen them during the complete gig.

Written by Tobias Dorf (heartwork@wtal.de) for Dominion mailing list

Around 5,500 visitors joined drunk Andy after Germany lost the football match.

Andi (speaking German): "Did you watch the match? Oh oh..."

(returning later): "Did I mention that they played 0:3?"

Sister Ray length: 14:35.

Written by Anthony Chefles (tony@phys.strath.ac.uk) for Dominion mailing list

> "It'll never rain again" - Eldritch, between Mother Russia and Summer

Aaahhhh! So that's what he said between the same two songs at the second Forum gig (preceded by 'You should be so lucky'). I'd misheard it as 'We will never play it again'. That got me a bit worried.