Last night (31/10/95) I went to see Moondog Jr. for the first time. The concert took place in The Botanique here in Brussels, in the 'Cafe-Theatre' which is in the cellar of the building, brick cave like structure giving a good athmosphere, unfortunately with a very low stage, so it was rather difficult to see the band members perform (it would have liked them to play in the 'Orangerie' which has a higher/bigger stage and a nice ambiance anyway, I saw, amongst others, dEUS and Morphine here before :) ).

I will quickly skip the supporting acts, because the were not really very interesting to my opinion.

Then it was time for Moondog Jr. themselves. When they came on stage it became clear that they had some difficulties with the monitoring sound on stage as Stef Carlens pointed out to the public and the soundengineer in the back... anyway then he started with 'Shall I let this good man in', which was played solo on guitar (so different as on the record) . The sound was very good (as it did the whole concert to me, so their on- stage problems where not really noticeable in the audience).

I do not have a complete tracklist, since during the concert I was kind of carried away by the music and I'm writing this the day after so the order of the songs is not 100%.

After the first one, the whole band joined in for the next which was also a track of the album (don't remember), and immediately the 'vibe' was there... they really play well live, clear sound and with a lots of conviction.

Afterwards 2 songs followed, which I didn't hear before (maybe 1 of them was a cover - kind of a blues song). These were followed by a number of tracks of the album (I heared all the songs of the record during the concert):

Moondog & Ice guitars was played more or less as on the album, then followed a brilliant version of Ricochet (with Stef doing his now famous dancestep why not call this 'Moondance'?), Bombo (not really 1 of my favourites), a overwheling version of Cachita, real energetic, on the record i didn't really appericiate it (kind of messy) but this live version was REALLY something else.

Jintro & the great luna was played faster then on the album, and also the whole band joined in. Blues for Sammy, TV Song (of course), 'Love is a heavy brick' (one of favourites on the record, amongst others) were then also played, also a couple of unknown(new?)songs to me and Jo's wine song.

The concert ended with 'Waitin till you're gone'... but (of course) they came back after an enthousisatic crowd reaction, for 2 more songs: a cover (I think the same as was talked about in the other reviews -the Tom Jones thing) and then 'Love 609'. This gave an end to a very good concert, and despite of the above mentioned technical problems the band also seemed to have enjoyed themselves (I certainly did anyway!!).

There was one thing what seem to annoy some people in the public, that was that Stef addressed the public in French (I don't really care, as long as its understandable - for those who don't know, Brussels is bilingual French-Dutch spoken), so after a while inbetween 2 songs somebody shouted "Parlez Anvercois" ("Speak Antwerps", in French that is :) ). So afterwards he kind of spoke sentences mixed in dutch, french and english (maybe this would have been more clever to start with?).

Anyway, if Moondog Jr. is playing in your neighbourhood I would certainly advice you to go and see them because they are really a very strong live band, not only because of the on-stage presence and voice of Stef Carlens, but they really play brilliantly together.