The Parlotones, Zoom Frankfurt

This was my second time seeing The Parlotones live and when the local football team (Eintracht Frankfurt) defeats Bayern Munich 5:1 on the same day South Africa wins the Rugby World Cup, the evening at a club concert with an originally South African band promises to be great. And indeed, the concert evening concert turned out great. And having seen The Parlotones once before, as part of their 20th Anniversary Tour (also at the Zoom club Frankfurt, I could have already guessed that the guests and band are very relaxed anyway.

When I went to see the band live for the first time, I had only joined my colleagues and their friends & families (a good part of them are actually from South Africa) I didn’t know the band at all (they were not within my music scheme) I had just taken a little time to catch some of their music on YouTube or Spotify, I didn’t want to come completely ‘unprepared’. And although I only tagged along again this time, I was looking forward to the concert (by now I knew them a little).

My enthusiasm is still with electronic music of course, but little by little I went to see the odd concert by bands that didn’t match my usual listening habits. And some of these bands (e.g. Beatsteaks, The Parlotones, Prime Circle), I’ve actually experienced live because somebody said, “Chris, why don’t you tag along” (and then you just do so, what bad could possibly happen anyway :-)). And when I take an honest look at ‘my’ usual bands, (e.g. OMD, Yello, Alphaville, etc …) they are also using ‘real’ instruments (by now) and Depeche Mode do so since ‘Violator’ anyway (more so when playing live but guitars have been part of every album since). And at some point the realization grows that there is good music outside the synthesizer universe. Not that you change your taste, but you broaden your horizon and ‘out there’ are also interesting bands to discover, The Parlotones with their ‘Melodic Independent Rock’ are one of them.

The concert was supposed to start at 20:00; the band (including live-keyboarder Rob Davidson) actually entered the stage 15 or 20 minutes ‘late’ (convenient for us as we were late ourselves).

If they played a shortened program at the last gig at the Zoom club (due to the fact that ‘Club’ time was scheduled to start at 22:00), this time they played the full set, officially containing 22 songs (you will find the full list at the end of this post). In reality, the band (with the participation of the audience) played an additional song (and with this, I refer again to my opening statement regarding the won Rugby World Cup). To celebrate South Africa’s victory, the band – with the immediate and enthusiastic support of about 1/3 of the audience – performed ‘Shosholoza’ (you can read more about this song in the ‘Links’ section of this post). This also shows that a good part of the audience (200 – 300 people in attendance) was probably South African or at least knew South Africa very well. A bit of a ‘home match’ for the band.

22 (23) songs, that’s a good number and this evening they used the available time almost to the maximum and if the evening hadn’t been limited by the ‘club time’ starting at 22:00 they would probably have continued performing (if you look at their catalog and the set-list from their last visit to Frankfurt there’s quite a bit more they have to offer). Personally, I was most looking forward to ‘Antidote’ being performed (it was actually written by live-keyboarder Rob Davidson and has distinctive keyboard sounds and I have to stand my ground … at least a little). Now, after repeated listening to the set-list, ‘Can You Feel It?’ has become my favorite and if someone doesn’t know the band at all, this song is my listening recommendation.

The evening was characterized by a good mixture of songs that reflects the band’s spectrum. There were the band-typical independent-style ‘Buckle up’, ‘Life Design’ & ‘Overexposed’ as openers, the melodic ‘Can You Feel It?’ & ‘Antidote’ (both with nice electronic parts) and also ‘Beautiful’ & ‘Baby Be Mine’, both with a touch of folk music. And of course ‘Push Me To The Floor’ couldn’t be missing (as already mentioned), not playing this song would probably be like Depeche Mode not playing ‘Enjoy The Silence’ or Yello leaving out ‘The Race’.

All in all, The Parlotones managed the evening masterfully. This became evident in the way the songs were presented, but also when they remained completely in control (and very relaxed) when lead singer Kahn Morbee broke a guitar string just before performing ‘Push Me To The Floor’. While replacing the guitar, bass player Glenn Hodgson responded with ‘it hasn’t left the case for at least a year’ in addition to drummer Neil Pauw bridging the time by having the audience translate the title ‘Push Me To The Floor’ into German for him. Everybody then enjoyed singer Kahn Morbees following attempt to keep the spare guitar out of tune, commenting the resulting sound with ‘Heavy Metal’ (it could also have been ‘Death Metal’).

I’ll skip the topic ‘album distribution’; I can probably do a much better job in regards to this with ‘my’ bands, but the fact that the set-list contained six songs from their last album ‘China’ (without this being a tour promoting that album) probably shows that the band themselves think highly of this album.

The stage was kept simple, there was only a banner with motives from the ‘China’ album in the background and also stage lighting was provided by the Zoom club using the in-house system (at least that was the impression I got). But there was no need for a special stage setup or lighting anyways, the band compensated nicely and masterfully for everything that was missing in those regards.

As you might know, at concerts, I’m always a bit of a hunter-gatherer, but since there was no tour book being sold (which is always my favorite souvenir), my ticket to the concert will be treasured (which this time was a real ticket, not one from the printer – greetings to my friend & colleague Robert :-)). What also compensated for the missing tour book was a copy of the set-list handed to me by the man behind the mixing console (actually I just wanted to take a picture of his copy to get the songs of evenings songs and their order right). In fact, he even went backstage to get me a copy, thanks for that! (You will notice, that the first encore on the list was replaced with ‘Beautiful’)

My summary of this evening: I will definitely come back when The Parlotones visit Frankfurt again! Maybe even at a (slightly) larger venue, they would deserve it!

The evening’s set-list: Buckle Up, Life Design, Overexposed, Can You Feel It, Shake It Up, Beautiful Life, I’ll Be There, Leave A Light On, Dragonflies & Astronauts, The Stars Fall Down, Giant Mistake, Disappear Without A Trace, We Were Just Having Fun, Here Comes A Man, Bird In Flight, Antidote, I’m Only Human, Push Me To The Floor, The Whole Of The Moon, Downtown Love, Beautiful, Baby Be Mine.

Links:
https://theparlotones.co.za/
https://zoomfrankfurt.com/
https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/the-parlotones/2019/zoom-frankfurt-germany-4b9d13a2.html

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shosholoza
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shosholoza

Post last updated on 29. August 2023