[kj] Oslo gig

[jpwhkj at aol.com]

Sounds great.  Maybe I'll do Oslo next time... ;-)



-----Original Message-----
From: Neil Perry <65snoopy at gmail.com>
To: A list about all things Killing Joke (the band!) <gathering at misera.net>
Sent: Thu, 1 Dec 2016 14:51
Subject: [kj] Oslo gig




















Well that was a fucking fantastic show. When we walked out

I was a bit lost for words... they are in the form of their lives. Big smiles

all round, obviously enjoying themselves, bit of amusing banter onstage

between them, it was a pleasure to see. Set list was the same as the pics of

the set list that I've seen except for the encore, which was TD&RS and Pandemonium.



Crowd was pretty decent considering. Rockefeller is one of those

older theatre type venues with the balcony stretching round - the upstairs

was closed as we expected but downstairs was pretty full, probably around 400 at a guess.

So it was nicely crowded but not too packed so us old 'uns could get

relatively close to the stage and not take a battering...


Oslo crowds are notoriously stand-offish - we saw PiL at the same venue

a few years ago, similar deal, not sold out, less people than for KJ in fact, and 
much of the crowd spent the whole gig stood still with their arms folded - which is

how this one started, but by the end everyone in there had their arms in the

air shouting their heads off.


Weirdly the sound did the same as the Roundhouse gig last year - started off

pretty bad (Geordie too quiet, Paul too loud) but by Requiem was sorted.

It was fun watching the crowd - a fair few hardcore fans but a lot of curious

people I think - when they started with The Hum a guy next to me went from

standing still to apeshit in about half a second, saw another guy do the same

thing when Unspeakable started.


Some moments: Jaz did his scary face shouty WARDANCE!! intro... then nothing

happened, he turns round to see Youth fiddling with his amp. "Youth what the 

fuck are you doing?" Youth looks round sheepishly, Geordie starts laughing.

I completely revise my opinion of  Autonomous Zone - I never really got it 

before, but after last night I do. There's that drum break about 4 minutes in, both

Geordie and Youth went and stood round the drumkit while Paul hammered away

like he was trying to break through the earth's crust. Just an immense display

from him all night - even my wife, who rarely takes notice of such things, nudged me

at one point and said "He's a very good drummer isn't he?"


Jaz seemed in a great mood, didn't take off his smart frock coat all evening but

put in some serious dance moves. He introduced Eighties by saying, 
"things have changed since we were last here!" Before Complications he

started going on about waking up in the morning in a dark Norwegian winter and

how you'd want to kill yourself and Youth shouted "What a load of bollocks!"

Later introducing Turn To Red he said, "We haven't been here since 1983, but this

is from 1979!"



Only Exorcism didn't work - the vocals have got all that echo on them and it

was a bit of a mess, although at the end Geordie marched across the stage and 

had a go at someone in the wings so maybe something was wrong. 



Highlight for me was Change. They have that rhythm nano-second tight. I don't know if anyone here knows or likes the New York band Endless Boogie. I have a soft spot for them, the

clue is in the name - first time I saw them they played for 80 minutes and only did

four songs, one was 30 minutes long, and I could have watched KJ do that with

Change last night. During the guitar break section Youth and Geordie stood facing

each other up close, grinning, with Jaz almost between them throwing out some dance shapes

and generally losing himself - it was just a pleasure to watch, the sound was

razor sharp and heavy by this point, just phenomenal. TD&RS was also superb.


During the Pandemonium intro Jaz started talking about how beautiful Norway was,

pointing at people and telling them they were the guardians of the forests and fjords.

Then he broke into a huge smile and everyone started cheering, it was a weirdly

warm moment that I have never previously associated with a KJ gig! The big softies.


At the end, my wife found a fellow north-Norwegian staff member and sweet-talked him into

giving her the only poster for the gig that we could see in the whole place, which they already 
had in a frame on the wall. So, result.



Would love to know what the band thought about it, but that's one of the best KJ shows

I've seen, at least in this century.


n





































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