My friend and I spent a wonderful holiday in Russia! We went to Moscow first and afterwards to Saint Petersburg. Both cities are well worth a visit. The St. Basil’s Cathedral on the Red Square is probably the most beautiful church I’ve ever seen. And in Saint Petersburg, the whole inner city is extraordinary! Well, it’s a UNESCO world heritage after all. The Winter Palace and the Catherine Palace are more than impressive – forget about Versailles! To top it all off, we got to know a lot of wonderful people – and we saw Robbie in concert!
After his “Swings both ways Tour” tour, on which he had focused heavily on his two swing albums, he now performed his greatest hits and toured in places he had never visited before of hadn’t been to in a long time. Saint Petersburg was one of the places he had never played before.
Well, what can I say? Robbie plus greatest hits equals singing along all the way – from the opener “Let me entertain you” to the encore “Angels“. I guess the only song that has never been a hit was “Mofo”, a song he had written for his son Charlton Valentine. It’s quite different to “Go gentle“, which was written for his daughter, but it also has some beautiful lines about parenthood, e.g. “I pray our weakness makes you strong”. I have to admit that I respect Robbie as a songwriter more and more. He has some awesomely honest and deep lyrics full of stylistic devices. Oh, and I also love that truly artistic approach of just putting some good music out because of being too excited about it without waiting for any big label to market it, as he did with “Under the radar I” recently.
As for the concert, I definitely could do without the “bad boy”-behavior. I don’t need to see his underpants under his skirt. For me, he has long grown out of that image. He has so much more to show and give, he doesn’t need these “I want attention”-gestures. However, I guess there are still some people expecting him to do this.
Which reminds me… A few days before the show I was on his website checking some info for the concert and ended up in the chatroom when suddenly Robbie joined. Apart from other stuff, he wrote one sentence that made me think. He said something to the effect that he wanted to find out on this tour what he means to people now. There’s a lot in this statement if you think about it. I hope he will find a satisfying answer during the tour and, maybe more importantly, an answer that will fit with his own ideas of who he is or wants to be!
music, the world & me 