Steve Kilbey in Majorca

August 1998

My name is Evelin, and I am a multimedia producer/musician (TripHop/Electrofolk) in Hamburg. I was born in Germany, but half of my family is Australian, and I have lived in Australia when I was five and when I was nineteen. I was on a holiday on Majorca, and I went to Sa Pobla to see Steve play. Nobody's written about the gig yet (and I'm a bit late, sorry) - so...

It was a strange experience. One thing is, I've never seen any solo gigs by Church members, another is, I have last met Steve 8 years ago and didn't know what to expect. And then, of course, I did not expect to ever see Steve Kilbey play open air in a Spanish small town...

Imagine a rather dusky place with narrow roads and closed windows. In front of the town hall is the Placa Major, decorated with white garlands, and framed by trees with thousands of birds which at certain sounds would start chirping like mad, fly around rather disoriented and return. The audience is 99.9% Spanish (just my estimation) and seated in white plastic chairs (chairs! I can't get over this.). I've talked to one of the locals whom I had to convince that this was definitely NOT to be a JAZZ concert...

I had the impression that there were hardly any people who knew that guy on stage - or were even able to understand his comments. I don't know whether Steve didn't realize this or just didn't care, in my opinion, he was rather cynical - at times I would think "this is not funny - or is it?" - like this:

Steve: "Are you a ROCK?"
Audience: "YEEEEAAAH!" (probably only understanding that this had something to do with ROCK, like rock music)
Steve: "I'm an Australian..."

Well, I had to laugh because it was so absurd.

All in all, the concert seemed a bit "fast-forward" to me as there were hardly any breaks between the songs. As I have never seen any solo shows by SK before, I am not in a position to actually judge this one. And of course, the music was brilliant and the musician was, too - despite his arm which he said was still "fucking" hurting.

Here's a set list for those who are interested - it's probably not complete, and I'm not 100% sure about Antenna and Comedown. It's not the actual running order, but Providence (one of my favourites) was definitely the first.

LOVE AND PEACE,

Evie

 

Many thanks to Evie for sending this in - this must be the first show of Steve's that only ONE Seance list member attended !


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