Live in Ebensee, Austria, 31.05.2003
Text written by Manfred Maier
Photos taken by Eric Ryan
Thunderstorm and lightning everywhere when we started our trip to the "Kulturkino Ebensee". Heaven opened its gates to spit water and hail and the mountains around the Traunlake throwed rocks against us but even this couldn't divert us from our way to see Robbi Robb.
So at least we arrived at the Kulturkino at about 7:00 pm, and, surprise, there was a concert poster hanging on the
wall. The first we saw so let us ask the question: Why was the promotion for this concert such a fucking
shit?. But more about this a little bit later. As we were too early (Robbi and the band made sound check at
this time) we went to a Chinese restaurant to have some food and to relax from our "Driving - Adventure".
We came back at 8:30 pm (the official beginning time) and the next surprise. There were only about 10 to 20 people sitting around and possibly some of them were from Robbis crew. It's not that there are no more fans of Robbi in Austria, but I'm sure that 90% of them (also the bavarian fans) didn't even know that there is a TAT concert nearby. The rest of them are "Too Old To Rock'n Roll And To Young To Die" and forgot their past.
They will not play
, my friend said but they played and how they played! At 9:00 pm
the door to the cinema hall was opened. You must know that this was a real cinema hall with seats in it and a canvas in
front. The stage, of course, was built in front of the canvas so we had the greatest look at a stage ever! (Sorry for
shooting no photos but I didn't excpect being allowed to).
Tribal music was played through the P.A when we heared some "drum noise" from outside the hall. It went louder and louder and suddenly Kelly appeared at the door with a black painted face playing some kind of hand drum. He walked through the whole croud (30 people maximum) playing and screaming something (I also didn't understand). As he reached the stage, Richard came up and started playing drums with the same rhythm running into 'Bury Me' and 'Ice Below' with the rest of the band now arrived.
Thunderstorm is back
I said to my friend but this time it was a "musical thunderstorm",
a celebration of music that we never heard before! The sound was perfect (that's the advantage of a cinema hall
acoustic) and the guys didn't do this boring thing "sterile playing as on the album", they
improvisated and jamned as most of the songs were more than twice as long as known! Robbi seemed to be possessed by
some kind of spirit and as they played the 'Astronomy Domini' cover, we were really surprised how perfect
Robbis voice fitted into this song. And so the concert went on with 'Build A Subway', 'Out Of Control', 'Uh-Oh' and
many more and after 10 minutes more than 1 ½ hours were gone. That made us think that somebody speeded up time!
Although there were only 30 people or less and although the break they wanted to make was shortenend to have a drink (German tourists don't like loud music), we think they liked to play there.
For us, it was one of the best shows ever seen. Let us hope, we hear something from the tour on CD and let us hope, Robbi comes back soon with a better promotion team.
