Wouldn't It Be Good

Nik Kershaw played with band at Zeche in Bochum, Germany on Saturday 16 May 2009. We drove up to Bochum in the early afternoon, arriving in our hotel around half past three. The hotel Schmidt-Mönnikes was nicely situated, about a five minute drive from the venue. Also the hotel is in a nice suburb with a beautiful park full of rhododendrons. We had a nice walk through the park and afterwards, after returning back at the hotel, had dinner at Vitrine, the restaurant which is in the same building as the hotel.


We arrived at the venue at a quarter to eight and had to wait for half an hour before the band and of course Nik Kershaw came on stage. They opened with Wide Boy.


Close to the stage the voice of Nik was drowing out. Furtherup in the venue his voice was better, but sounded more shrill and sharp. Also I had the idea that he looked tired and the sound was way too loud. I don't know if this was to mask the mistakes which were made during the first twenty minutes of the concert or that the keyboards were out of sound. I had the idea that Simon Carter was hired at the last minute to play his parts, cos he played all from paper and sometimes was out of tune. Compared to Paul Geary and Adam Evans his performance was poor.














Still I liked the concert and was singing along most of the time. At least he played my all time favourite Get Up. It was a bit overwhelming thou that so much of the uptempo songs were in the setlist and that the sound was mostly guitar orientated. The interaction on stage between Nik and Paul was great, and Paul was having a lot of fun.


















Overall a good setlist which covered most of his work and had enough hits in it. To me the highlights were The Riddle, Get Up and Somebody Loves You. The build-up to the end of the setlist was well done. The Chesney Hawkes hit The One And Only was a nice surprise in the setlist, which was remodelled to the Kershaw trademark. Great to end up with Human Racing and I Won't Let The Sun Go Down On Me as encores, cos they're of course public favourites. Great too to finally hear Oxygen in a nice played acoustic version.

Band:

Nik Kershaw - Vocals, guitar
Paul Geary - Bass, b. vocals
Bob Knight - Drums
Simon Carter - Keyboards
Adam Evans - Guitar, b. vocals

Setlist:

Wide Boy
Oh You Beautiful Thing
Radio Musicola
Times Like These
Dancing Girls
Have A Nice Life
Loud, Confident And Wrong
Get Up
Bogart
The Riddle
Promises Promises
Don Quixote
Somebody Loves You
Billy
The One And Only
You Might
Wouldn't It Be Good

Oxygen (acoustic)
Human Racing
I Won't Let The Sun Go Down On Me