REPORTS/PICS/VIDS: Mika @ LKA Longhorn, Stuttgart Germany - March 30, 2010

[Yuna]

This is how I sing ONE FOOT BOY:

 

What's the matter with going places...yadda yadda yadda full verse

 

(bold bits is where I sing )

 

I'll say nothing on your microphone

Till you swear to take me home

There's a one foot boy, eleven stone sitting on my shoulder

I'm too scared to look away

Comes here almost everyday

And everyday I push him off and tell him boy we're over/my oh my

 

I think my mind is gone...(high harmony, not low)

 

One foot boy! One foot booooy! One foot boy! One foot booooy!

 

Etcetc...

 

One foot boy doesn't have to be hard to sing. Let the backing singers do their job and let Mika sing the main bit. Yes I know there are a lot of layers in the song itself, but it's a live concert and Mika is allowed to change/alter it slightly so that it's easier for him. Mika tried to sing everything in the states last year and the dude can't split his voice, y'know? Backing singers and layers is what he needs. Mika just needs to concentrate on the main vocals

 

Mika singing "Don't staaaaaaaaaaaay too close to meeee..." with the crowd repeating "one foot boy! one foot booooy!"...I can see it

 

I don't think it's that hard The hardest thing I can think of is the "I'll say nothing on your microphone..." bit because you don't have time to pause for breath

 

But that's his own fault and he needs to deal with it

 

love the bolded words.....

but apart from that, OFB is so hard to memorize whole lyrics....

so....so....much complicated....except the part One foot boy~~ One foot boooooyyy~~~

[CazGirl]

love the bolded words.....

but apart from that, OFB is so hard to memorize whole lyrics....

so....so....much complicated....except the part One foot boy~~ One foot boooooyyy~~~

 

That's all the crowd need to sing, right?

[Mikaleyshialicious]

I would have died without ty! As it's one of my alltime Mika favs. I would have nothing against ring ring again and of course the ueberaddictive kick ass live!!! Loves it verrry verryyy much

[Yuna]

I would have died without ty! As it's one of my alltime Mika favs. I would have nothing against ring ring again and of course the ueberaddictive kick ass live!!! Loves it verrry verryyy much

 

I loooovvvveeee TY too!! He should do it allllllllll the time

and wish bring back the breathtaking silhouette dance too.....if possible

when he did that , I was just like...:swoon:

[nikjass]

I'm back home, let's see what I remember.

 

 

On another note (and I didn't really want to ad that to my report, as it doesn't really belong, but then it's part of my personal experience of the gig and so it does in a way): When we were sitting in the front suddenly an obviously blind guy darted through the crowd in front of me. (Of course.) He literally ploughed through the people with his stick not checking the floor but the air/people in front of him. My initial thought was: Yeah, cool, there goes my front spot. My second thought was: No way. My third thought was: How (the hell) does a blind person benefit from standing front row centre at a concert? So he stood behind me during the gig and I thought this would get me enough bad karma to be reborn as intestinal bacteria. He started asking the people behind me all sorts of questions about how the stage looked like, how far it was away, what instruments were on it and are the lights out already. It turned out that he goes to like 50 gigs a year. And at first I was amazed how he managed doing that all on his own. Then I thought I understood why he needed to be so close to the front. So he could ask the seeing folk what they see. The couple behind me got a bit tired of replying to his questions (I think), so he faithfully turned to me for further questions. Impossible to not answer them, right? (The man was blind after all.) I quite happily did so in the beginning (before Mika got on stage, that is, and before it got really annoying). So Mika came on and I got my shoulder patted and asked is he here now and what does he wear, does he move and if yes, how, where on stage is he now and is there a video wall, it's something about his school years, right, was he bullied and what exactly do they show on there. I missed huge parts of my dearest moments of the show due to being kind. *sigh* Like during I see you, with the umbrella - what exactly does he do? He's standing there, lifting a glitter umbrella up in the air - what kind of glitter? - like silver confetti - what is it now, why are people cheering? - He got onto his piano - ah is he still up there and what does he do now...

I just thought: well, if I can be of any help. But what a f*cking challenge is it to try and explain Mika's visuals to a blind person? How do you do that? It's impossible.

I must admit that there were two situations that made me almost lose it. During Happy Ending the guy thought he had to tell me how this song was not really Mika's but just nicked. And at the beginning of Over my Shoulder. My GOD. One would assume that if you can't see, this song must be a thousand times more intense to your ears than to a seeing person with average not specifically challenged hearing. Obvously not. - Is that song on the new album, too? No, it's on the first? Aha, where exactly? Which track is it?

I mean is it like that? Do you have to just stop being kind so people stop taking advantage of you?

 

I love the story about the blind man.. but I can imagine how annoying it must've been... not sure how I'd handle it..

[Louiza]

ok fab, see ya in paris then! i might for a change not be busy there with working on dresscodes/presents, or organizing the queue, like i was on the german gigs (they wouldn't understand me anyway, as i don't speak french! ), so i guess i'll have time to chat.

 

great!! see you there:)

[violet_sky]

and wish bring back the breathtaking silhouette dance too.....if possible

when he did that , I was just like...:swoon:

 

and I didn't see that.

[Marianne84]

Aww... Did he do that silhouette dance on the North American tour? I didn't get to see it either!

[mellody]

Aww... Did he do that silhouette dance on the North American tour? I didn't get to see it either!

 

nope, only in asia and i think australia, where he had that video screen. would've loved to see it live too, it looks so fab in the videos!

[violet_sky]

I love the story about the blind man.. but I can imagine how annoying it must've been... not sure how I'd handle it..

 

You know, neither was I. In the end empathy (not pity) won over. Becoming blind myself is definitely among the things I know I couldn't bear. I'm too attached to everything visual. It's part of why I'm that smitten with Mika and his approach to his work as a Gesamtkunstwerk. I was quite torn between trying not to miss anything myself, especially those moments of visual poetry, and trying to put in words what happened on stage. And then I was brought up like that. Something's got to give.

On the other hand it is true that the constant questioning was very rude. And you don't have to be blind to miss the beauty of the setting. If you're short and a few rows back you won't get it all already. I don't know what I will do if I get into that situation again (which is not very likely )

 

BUT you always get a package at a gig. You never know how it turns out, you can take influence on the spot you end up to a certain degree, but you can't know what the crowd is like or if you get wet in the queue. Mika is sort of a constant, though, can't go wrong there. Even if he's ill, he's fantastic. If he's happy, well, I have no words for that.

I wouldn't go so far to say my gig experience was ruined. Far from that.

[Shine]

newspaper reviews:

a positive one: http://www.schwaebische-post.de/481916/

and those 2 aren't really negative either, but the journalists didn't get him - "only for teenagers" the first one, calling him gay the other. sigh.

http://www.suedkurier.de/news/kultur/kultur/art410935,4232443

http://www.pz-news.de/Home/Nachrichten/Kultur/Die-Buehne-als-Selbsttherapie-Exzentrischer-Pop-mit-Mika-_arid,185532_puid,1_pageid,21.html

 

Seems that the reviewers don't give that much credit to the artistic values of his music. And that's pitty. It turnes that Robbie Williams is a serious artist comparing to Mika.

Edited April 5, 2010 by Shine

[violet_sky]

Seems that the reviwers don't give that much credit to the artistic values of his music. And that's pitty. It turnes that Robbie Williams is a serious artist comparing to Mika.

 

It seems like they don't really get him. And it is like that since he first popped up.

 

Although the reviews are not really negative, they seem a bit condescending. Just blank out 'sugar', 'sweet', 'very young girls', and children's bday party and it should be fine. Nontheless...

 

Dear press, please allow yourself an hour or two and do some research on the artist before you write your half-baked reviews that seem like you watched with only half an eye and no ears at all. Kaythanks.

Edited April 3, 2010 by violet_sky

[Shine]

It seems like they don't really get him. And it is like that since he first popped up.

 

Dear press, please allow yourself an hour or two and do some research on the artist before you write your half-baked reviews that seem like you watched with only half an eye and no ears at all. Kaythanks.

 

That doesn't surprise me at all cos here in Serbia is very similar reception. Think that his appearance at the Exit festival will move it on in a right direction. But I've got impression that German media mostly took him seriosly and respected his vocal abillities at least not questiong him about his private life like in some other countries.

[violet_sky]

That doesn't surprise me at all cos here in Serbia is very similar reception. Think that his appearance at the Exit festival will move it on in a right direction. But I've got impression that German media mostly took him seriosly and respected his vocal abillities at least not questiong him about his private life like in some other countries.

 

Yes, true about the private life. I've got that impression, too.

There's also a difference between gig reviews and interviews. While the first are often written by people who don't really know anything about him and just watch the show or part of it, interviews mostly tend to be not that far off. (Not that mp3 interview, though, don't really get that).

Back in 2007 German media really didn't know what to do with him. Still he had quite some TV appearances. Makes one wonder what comes first - the egg or the chicken or the egg - the hit or the media attention or the hit. It's a bit of a vicious circle IMO.

I really don't want to see him reduced to GK. It's so funny, a lot of gig goers just wait for that one, screaming for it at every occasion during the show. When he did it at the first show I went to for this tour, I just thought "oh right, there's that one, too."

[Shine]

Yes, true about the private life. I've got that impression, too.

There's also a difference between gig reviews and interviews. While the first are often written by people who don't really know anything about him and just watch the show or part of it, interviews mostly tend to be not that far off. (Not that mp3 interview, though, don't really get that).

Back in 2007 German media really didn't know what to do with him. Still he had quite some TV appearances. Makes one wonder what comes first - the egg or the chicken or the egg - the hit or the media attention or the hit. It's a bit of a vicious circle IMO.

I really don't want to see him reduced to GK. It's so funny, a lot of gig goers just wait for that one, screaming for it at every occasion during the show. When he did it at the first show I went to for this tour, I just thought "oh right, there's that one, too."

 

Well it's simptomatic that in some of these reviews (the second I think) the reviewer explicitly says that his second album doesn't have some smash singles like the previous one. And that exactly fits with what you wrote about reducing him to GK hit maker. Yes, the interviews with him were always very serious cos I have been following German press about him. And there was a lovely one in the German Vanity fair from 2007, I think so. Really meaningfull.

[violet_sky]

Well it's simptomatic that in some of these reviews (the second I think) the reviewer explicitly says that his second album doesn't have some smash singles like the previous one. And that exactly fits with what you wrote about reducing him to GK hit maker. Yes, the interviews with him were always very serious cos I have been following German press about him. And there was a lovely one in the German Vanity fair from 2007, I think so. Really meaningfull.

 

Yes, the Vanity Fair interview was the one that immediately comes to my mind thinking about the more positive and deep media coverage he got here

[suzie]

I'm too attached to everything visual. It's part of why I'm that smitten with Mika and his approach to his work as a Gesamtkunstwerk.

 

This is off topic, but since you mentioned Gesamtkunstwerk I want to tell you a story how a guy in Berlin gave him an invitation to festival in Beyreuth in August and they started chatting while Mika kept moving on signing stuff for fans in the queue. At one point he almost reached me but he was still talking to the guy far away and asked him "so what festival is it?" and I answered "Wagner" before the guy

..so I decided to move towards the back so that I can grant myself another 'speaking part with my own message... :naughty:Anyway, I thought he would have heard of the Wagner festival in Beyreuth as he does refer to Wagner's synthesis of arts as one of his influences.

 

Seems that the reviwers don't give that much credit to the artistic values of his music. And that's pitty. It turnes that Robbie Williams is a serious artist comparing to Mika.

 

Robbie Williams is a mass-produced hamburger compared to Mika. I like his live shows though (I mean I have only been to one so far:teehee:) - they are fun and good entertainment but in terms of musical compexity they are rather shallow. So, I really don't understand how music critics don't see the difference

 

It seems like they don't really get him. And it is like that since he first popped up.

 

Although the reviews are not really negative, they seem a bit condescending. Just blank out 'sugar', 'sweet', 'very young girls', and children's bday party and it should be fine. Nontheless...

 

Dear press, please allow yourself an hour or two and do some research on the artist before you write your half-baked reviews that seem like you watched with only half an eye and no ears at all. Kaythanks.

 

Yes, indeed. I don't understand how they even write the audience consists only of teenagers when it is clearly mainly the age group of 20-40 in the audience. it's like they have already written the article before the show or their editor corrects them to write what they are expected to write about a Mika show. So I don't really understand why they bother turning up if they already have a preconception.

[laura*]

Seems that the reviwers don't give that much credit to the artistic values of his music. And that's pitty.It turnes that Robbie Williams is a serious artist comparing to Mika.

 

 

Best joke in the history of jokes!

[Mrs. Deer]

Will nicht drängend klingen oder so, aber dauerts noch lange mit dem Video? *g* Bin sooo neugierig.

[mellody]

Will nicht drängend klingen oder so, aber dauerts noch lange mit dem Video? *g* Bin sooo neugierig.

 

i'll ask graciosa, as of course i don't wanna upload her video on my account without her consent.

Edited April 5, 2010 by mellody

[mellody]

asked graciosa, and uploaded the video, here you go, lollipop and kick ass from stuttgart:

[BubblesPurry]

asked graciosa, and uploaded the video, here you go, lollipop and kick ass from stuttgart:

 

thanks very much to both of you !

[Mrs. Deer]

thank youuu! hahaha so funny.

[mellody]

positive newspaper review: http://www.swp.de/metzingen/lokales/metzingen/art5660,432104

[mariposa]

positive newspaper review: http://www.swp.de/metzingen/lokales/metzingen/art5660,432104

 

Ah, they call Mika the new "messiah of pop"

 

lol, but they also use the term "glamour boy"

 

But all in all a very very positive review (almost enthousiastic ) - Yay!