Rearviewmirror

For my mum’s (and a bit for my own) birthday I bought two tickets to the Mark Knopfler concert in the Heineken Music Hall in Amsterdam. I was looking forward to this gig for almost a month already. But today we finally got the chance to see him perfoming live. You could say that Dire Straits was the soundtrack of my youth. The music still recalls of a lot of memories of my early years and of how innocent life used to be. When I was little, my father once showed me the album On Every Street recorded by them. He told me that it was just a guitar that made the music and that it sang by itself. I believed this for many years, haha.

Mmm'kay, the trip

I went to my mum’s house at about 2 PM for our little road trip. We small-talked and ate something, before I kissed Cheakz (dog) goodbye to go and sit in the car already. Mum drives this minuscule white convertible, which looks really funny on her. But when she told me about the ‘crash’ she had a couple of days ago due to glazed frost, my nerves got a bit pinched. I took a look at the damage (which you could see very clearly) and I was like ‘hmmm, what are the odds of us not getting in Amsterdam in one peace?’ I got a response that wasn’t a positive thing for my composure at all, so I said a quick hail mary before I finished that awkward moment with: “hit the highway, woman”.

101 FM

It was kinda fun, though. Of course, I turned on the radio as soon as I could. I wasn’t allowed to change the frequency and had to listen to Sky Radio during the whole trip. God, how can people listen to this? They say in their commercials that they’re so variating and innovative. WHY LIE TO AN ENTIRE COUNTRY?! Mehh, but okay - I heard Prince’s Purple Rain drop by in the playlist which was a good compensation to all the crap I had to listen to earlier. My mum’s radio player is quite a laugh, actually. It has this rebellious feature to annoy about every five minutes, or when there’s a bump in the road or when the car takes a turn. It simply stops playing or adds so much distortion to a song, that the outro of Paradise City by Guns & Roses is nothing compared to this raging thing. But then again, we would just hit it every time and then it would bring us those ‘fine’ tunes again. Hehe, what a hoot.

Villains

When we made it to Amsterdam, we parked our tiny automobile in the parking-lot of the ArenA. We looked like tourists when we made some pictures in front of the building where the concert would take place. (And by the way, there were people waiting hours before the gig started) Then we left to the centre of Amsterdam for a bit of shopping. On our way there in the metro, my mum was pretty anxious, since we actually ghost-rode to the destination, haha. Because of the small periode of time we had, we decided only to go to one store. Oh well, to be accurate: I decided this. And yes, it was the Zara. I quenched my addiction to mini-skirts by buying the cutest garment I’ve ever seen. Mum didn’t buy anything, but paid for the food, though. :G

Well, we headed off to the HMH for it was almost time for the concert to begin. We met some people in the metro who where going there as well, which gave us a subject for a conversation.

Gee, how it was crowded at the HMH. It took about half an hour(?) before we could hang our coats and find ourselves some nice foundation in the room. In the meanwhile, we met some other ‘fellow fans’ and I tried to hook up my mum with the man of her dreams. Unfortunately, he (and nobody else) was qualified.

Jam it

And then, when the clock magically struck 8 PM, the first signs of a live-performing Knopfler appeared; brilliant sounds of a skilled musician hitting his instrument filled the room. Obviously, this came along with a loud applause. The kick-off didn’t include any of the songs I knew, but still… It was nice. We hadn’t settled yet and mum and I got in a heated conversation already. When I go to concerts, I always make sure that I have a front-row place to stand. No matter how crowded the joint will be, I shall make it to the front. But she didn’t want to go all the way up there, so we stranded at like 2/3 of the room. Which was okay, after all.

Rockaway

The thing that I noticed right away, was that Knopfler’s rockabilly image was totally gone. I kinda kept this in mind, but I still hoped to observe a degen with worn-out jeans, a red bandana and a sweaty tee that hadn’t been washed in days. But no, none of this was true. He didn’t look notorious at all. He had just a clean-shaven crown, while wearing a perfectly ironed striped blouse. In my opinion, he looked more like a mathematician than an artist. Blugh, I can see my English teacher thinking already: “HA! Didn’t I tell you that he’s booooring” (He keeps telling me that Dire Straits is such a dull band. And this makes Knopfler dull as well. Ugh, freaks me out.) Well, he's not that extravagant (anymore), so excuse me for him not being a 50-yr old Angus Young who still strips off his clothes on stage.

Hypnotic

However, the music was really exalting. The sounds that came out his guitar were like braille to the crowd. Everyone read it the same. There was this unanimous feeling in the air, which blew some sort of calmth in the room. Of course, he played some uptempo songs like 'So Far Away' as well to keep us enticed. What I found extremely crafty, was that he switched guitars during and between the songs. I lost count somewhere, but he made at least six!!! guitars sing. Variating from acoustic to like the same one RaSZi has. This didn’t surprise me that much, since his setlist existed out of folk, country and blues songs. Have to say that that was an art alone, the metarmorphosises. Shangri-la!

From all of the songs I knew and recall at this moment, he played as mentioned before: So Far Away, Romeo And Juliette, What It Is, Sailing To Philadelphia and Telegraph Road. The last song in that list was also the last song he played……..before he came back and gave us another three songs! That was so beautiful. Knopfler and his five-headed support left the stage, but after a (standing) ovation of over five minutes, he came back and instantly started playing Brothers In Arms. I can’t describe what that song still does to me, but it was so transcendental and pure. I kinda felt morbid and enthusiastic listening it at the same time. During the song he played after this, I called Deebee. I know he fancies his music as well, so I almost felt obligated to share the feeling with him. But in a positive way, ldo!

Telegraph Road:

Brothers In Arms:

I know, the quality sucks and it looks like we're miles away from the stage, but it's a nice memory.

Sticky-icky

The final song was Going Home. Mum and I both love that one so much, that we hugged and danced together. Even though our feet were glued to the floor due to dried beer, it didn’t stop us from jumping along the beat. It was really nice.

He played a little over two hours, which is –I think- quite long for a concert. In the beginning I wondered why there wasn’t a support act, but then I realized: it just wasn’t necessary.

Déjà-vu

When the crowd parted after the second and final g’bye, we went upstairs to get our coats. Although, that wasn’t as easy as it may sound. There were people everywhere and I got a flashback of Lowlands last year. We were waiting in line for TOOL to perform and we wanted front-row places, doh. I almost got squeezed to death when the gates were openend. It was very unpleasant and scary, but here in Amsterdam mum and I managed pretty well and joked around. In another room where people were given the chance to chitchat about how they experienced the concert, we drank, smoked and danced a little bit. That was fun!

Melancholic

Every start has an ending, so, off we go… Yep, we had a 180 km drive still ahead of us. In the dark. I had these false premonitions of us landing somewhere in a ditch where even God wouldn’t find us. Eon blue apocalypse, right? Hehe, I’m fond of disastreous thoughts. They feed me. (j/k) But, on the way home I kinda let my mind drift away by watching through the window. I seriously couldn’t recall the last time since I've seen it been so dark outside. And I still can't. I live in the city, so there’s always something that’s illuminating. Profound darkness kinda frightens me, actually. I really like the night and all of his mysterious secrets, but darkness only makes me vulnerable in a certain way. I turned to my mum for a chat, who was just chilling and listening to the rebellious radio. She dropped my off at my digs at about 1 AM, quite in time!

Synopsis

All and all, the day was great. I loved sharing quality time with my favorite parent the whole trip through. Pronto<3

Tomorrow or any day soon, I’ll add some extremely amateuristic and shaky clips I made during the concert. It just takes too much effort at this moment, haha.

For good or ill,
Q.