This show seemed very promising beforehand. One of the reasons for this was Morphine's concert last year in the Effenaar in Eindhoven. This is still one of my all time favourite concerts. If you add Moondog Jr. as support act, then we are really in business, so a decision was quickly made to make a trip to Rotterdam this evening.

Because one is obliged to buy a membership card in Nighttown, we arrived a little late to see the start of the Moondog-performance. But because it would start at 21.00h, we only missed a few seconds. If I'm honest, I must say that I was more looking forward to see the support act than headliners Morphine, partly because of the briljant debut album by Stef's second band.

The first song was a musical intro, the title of which is not known to me. This brings me directly to the setlist:

? (instrumentaal)
Bombo
Moondog
Moondance
TV Song
Cachita
Ice Guitars
?
Love Is A Heavy Brick
Jo's Wine Song
The Ricochet
Love 609

This set leaded to approximately one hour of pure ecstasy. Rather quickly I noticed the different character of this show, compared to Moondog's breathtaking performance at the Lowlands festival. In Walibi everything sounded very quiet and modest, and here I was surprised by a wall of sound. Not that Moondog's sound has become more powerful, but the high volume coming from the loudspeakers resulted in a somewhat less refined overall sound.

It was no big surprise that Morphine's saxophone player Dana Colley came on stage during Moondog's show. He participated in the song Moondog. He is no stranger to being on one stage with Stef, taking into account his appearance at dEUS' gig at the Pukkelpop festival in '94.

Although TV Song was played in much the same way as on the album and as during former acoustic sessions, this beautiful song was unfortunately 'violated' by the loud volume in the rather small concert hall.

Ice Guitars sounded totally different from the album version and the aforementioned (acoustic) session versions. On Everyday I Wear A Greasy Black Feather it is full of diversity: at certain moments it is very calm, and at other moments it sounds very energetic because of the powerful drums. In contrast with this, this live version was done in one tempo, which made a slightly less convincing impression on me.

Through a smooth bridge, Ice Guitars passed into an other song. This sounded very familiar to me, so I think it is a cover, but I was not able to recognize it exactly.

After the nice song Love Is A Heavy Brick, also Jo's Wine Song was done. This surprised me a bit, because I expected that this song would not turn up during live shows. I don't know why I think this; maybe it has something to do with the somewhat electric atmosphere of this song.

The last song of the show was the first song on the album, Love 609. I think this is not the best choice, because in my opinion Ice Guitars, when it is stretched for several minutes, would be a perfect end.

It may be clear that I was very content with this support act. I even dare to state that this was the best support act I experencied in my entire concert career. Nevertheless, I think that Moondog's Lowlands-performance was even better.

At the end of Morphine's regular gig, they came back on stage, accompanied by the five members of Moondog. Together they performed You Look Like Rain. During this, Stef was creating ping sounds with some small toy instrument and Benjamin Boutreur joined Dana in his saxophone playing. Not realy surprising, but this collaboration put a nice end to a great evening.