How do you rate the Silver bullet tour ?

Gig reviews, set lists, thoughts, comments and observations on the mammoth 2006 25th Anniversary tour.
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Obviousman
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Let me see...

As pointed out, as most of us I have the extra dimension of meeting people, which is always ace, but then come the gigs themselves, obviously :lol:

Paris was really good, enjoyed that very much - crowd and performance-wise. Brussels I, still a bit in doubt, guess it wasn't what we could expect really. Brussels II though was absolutely top-notch stuff. Really enjoyed that one, and hope I'll get to see more gigs like that one.

Enjoyed everything, people, performances, smoke, mirrors, the only downside is my ears. Still ringing :eek: Hope it isn't anything permanent :urff:
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libby
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Obviousman wrote:Let me see...

Enjoyed everything, people, performances, smoke, mirrors, the only downside is my ears. Still ringing :eek: Hope it isn't anything permanent :urff:
Think there might be another cause :lol:
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Obviousman
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:eek:

Which one then?

:lol:
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malphadour2500
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itnAklipse wrote:Maybe just admit you like Bauhaus these days more and perhaps some people don't like Bauhaus as much as you do?
Erm what??? K? and WTF??? Whatever you are taking you need to stop now. My point was that Bauhaus were good, and SOM were awful. If you want to know my musical preferences, I have listened to FALAA about 20,000 times and each Bauhaus album about 10 times; I like Bauhaus but I was brung up on The Sisters which is why I am passionate about how crap they are now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and another 50gazillion !'s

So nerrrrr
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malphadour2500 wrote:f you want to know my musical preferences, I have listened to FALAA about 20,000 times and each Bauhaus album about 10 times;
Therein lies the problem. FALAA is The Sisters then.

This is The Sisters now, which, as he said, you like less than Bauhaus.

Now had you listened to the 1997-2005 bootlegs 20,000 times, then that defence might hold water, but the Sisters have, for better or worse, come a long way since 1985 and comparing a contemporary live performance to a 25 year old album from which they played no songs is at best apples and oranges :|
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James Blast
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Nup! can't agree having seen both combos live, in concert, this year.
Bauhaus were very angular (if ye ken whit I mean) and played some 'difficult' tunes. The Sisters Of Mercy are a rock band, again. The Leeds and Glasgow gigs were a tonic - Never Land (less of a fragment). Now all I wanna do is ROCK!

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OK, Bauhaus were better, happy now?
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I too have, to date, kept my silence but malphadour2500 you have pretty much summed up what I experienced. Is it fair to benchmark against Bauhaus, I don’t know? However, I do know that according to many, the Bauhaus gig was ‘the perfect hour’, whereas the Sisters ~ sadly, eminently forgettable.

To be fair, I thought the Leeds gig, marginally better than the Manchester gig and both of those better than the Paris gig. I guess that’s subjectivity, so doesn’t really count.

When I went to reclaim my cloak, at the end of the Manchester gig, there was a couple complaining to the attendant about how poor it was, how they couldn’t hear a thing and where do they get their money back? I asked the attendant, who looked well pissed off, if that had been happening a lot that night, and indeed, in general. She replied more that night than any other she could recall.

I’m not knocking the ‘new’ sisters for the sake of it; I think they’re great guys and good at what they do. It’s just I don’t think they’re as good, or as relevant as the ‘old’ sisters. Maybe the ideal would’ve been the ‘new’ sisters at around 2000, when people still gave a damn. After all, it’s not their fault they inherited the s**t end of the wicket.

Would I go to see them again? I always do. Would I get as much out of them as in previous tours? Sadly, I really doubt it. There was a time but it’s long gone when the sisters high would live on and on and on… No more :?
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The fact that for once it's a regular poster that has doubts about the 2006 tour gives his remarks some degree of credibility. I'm a bit fed up with complete strangers who show up here just to complain about the tour, tell us how the Girls are crap and how they should just stop...
I'm just wondering : would all of this happen if the Girls had had a couple of releases in the last few years ? It seems that this major misunderstanding is a direct result of the absence of studio output : people who aren't huge fans (i.e. don't follow the Girls on the road, don't collect boots...) go to gigs hoping that it will sound like the Girls they know from the records. Too bad.
Well of course some other folks will probably say they were informed, they accept that evolution and that the gig was still awful. I only have one answer then : Paris and Luxemburg (and a couple of boots) rocked. :von:
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RobF
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PIB's definitely not the only old school fan with doubts these days, I 'll always love the Sissies to my core, but c'mon, not everyone who's complaining is some kind of troll. That's just nonsense. A lot, and I mean a lot of people have decided the Girls have really lost it these last couple of years. Frankly I'm still on the fence, but just. Once in a while the old magic shines, but it really is once in a while. I've enjoyed myself at some Sisters gigs this year, but I've also heard them slagged senseless if a few different languages. Which is a real fukin' shame.
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czuczu
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I thought they'd blown it in '97, in '03 I really did give up on them cos 3 out of the 5 shows I saw were pretty tedious but I wasn't getting that vibe this time around - even in London... How much of the slagging on this tour is due to their hardware/s**t sound and how much is down to performance, new axemen etc.?
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James Blast
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I never saw The Sisters Of Mercy back in the day (accidents of disorder) but Wake is burned (indelibly) in my head.
I really liked the 'cock rock' years. Now there was a live rock action combo!
It went really flat after that. The Barrowlands 2003 gig was one of the most 'going thru the motions' shows I have ever seen and I've been going to gigs since 1972, so that tells you how dull it was.
This new line-up is a real tonic, they kick 'erse, I like the 'stunt' guitar licks but most importantly - they look like a band again.

Is that alright?
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Badlander
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czuczu wrote:How much of the slagging on this tour is due to their hardware/s**t sound and how much is down to performance, new axemen etc.?
Some is also due to the fact they played places they'd hardly ever or never played before, so people didn't know what to expect. Or rather, they didn't get what they expected, i.e. some goth nostalgia act. Just look at the bad reviews in the French press after the Paris gig.
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czuczu
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James Blast wrote:I really liked the 'cock rock' years. Now there was a live rock action combo!
If you mean the Tour Thing line-up that was the best thing I've ever seen.

Ever.
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James Blast
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czuczu wrote:If you mean the Tour Thing line-up that was the best thing I've ever seen.
That line-up was special, totally different from the 'crushed velvet' days but still very relevant.
Thank you Stu, but I fear many may disagree.
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czuczu
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James Blast wrote:
czuczu wrote:If you mean the Tour Thing line-up that was the best thing I've ever seen.
That line-up was special, totally different from the 'crushed velvet' days but still very relevant.
Thank you Stu, but I fear many may disagree.
Only the pointy shoe brigade and they're all a bit 'touched' :twisted: :innocent:
Last edited by czuczu on 19 Jun 2006, 23:39, edited 1 time in total.
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million voices
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I saw the Sissies at Nottingham and had a thoroughly enjoyable time, but in my opinion theyhave two big problems. These are the sound and the lack of new product.
The sound was apparently better than some previous gigs but was still absolutely sh*te. The support band were far clearer. I cannot understand in this age of techno wizardry why a live band can sound far worse than their bootlegs of 16 or 20 years ago. It even crossed my mind whether this 'mushing' up of the sound was deliberate - some kind of audio complement to the dry ice - as the band disappear from view, so the songs disappear from recognition
The second problem, the lack of new materal, must lead to a lack of enthusiasm on Vons part - churning out virtually the same old songs tour after tour.
Still, seeing as its unlikely thre is going to be a new album, concerts with p*ss poor sound is all thats going
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robertzombie
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going on a point million voices made:
Apparently there was no sound engineer at the London show, and yet The Ivories sounded great, every single instrument was clear as day, and then that man came out after the ivories and checked the microphone, and then as soon as Andy started singing it all went down hill.

the only explanation I can think of is they turned the amps down, or he sung quietly :urff:
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He always sings quietly - it's apparently quite a battle to get him loud enough without nasty feedback :|
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robertzombie
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He sings loud enough on most of my bootlegs...
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Obviousman
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robertzombie wrote:He sings loud enough on most of my bootlegs...
Most of the time that's the bootlegger singing along actually :lol:





Seriously, I think the stillness of his voice might be a problem indeed. But then again, he reckons it's a problem himself, doesn't the site say something along the lines of "sing silent but with control for a long while, or just make a lot of noise for a short time" :?: Guess it's tricky for the technicians indeed to get the exact balance between getting him loud enough and not getting feedback :urff:
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mugabe
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I'll just add my €0.02 to this. I went to the Malmoe concert and quite enjoyed myself, despite the rather abysmal sound and the barrage of "new", tedious songs during the middle of the set, as it was fun to hear all my favourite songs in a live setting.

It didn't really whet my appetite for more, however, and the general consensus of the 30-plus-year-old audience seemed to be that The Sisters are way past their prime, but that it was fun to go see them one last time.

Actually, it felt more like a farewell, and not going out with a bang, either, but with a whisper. Literally.
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I only saw the DC show, and it was very good. I thought that the sound quality and AE's voice were good, and that the amount of smoke was just right. I do have to agree with some of the reviewers as far as the lentgh of the show. While I do think that the set-list is generally long enough and actually enjoy the heavier edge in some places, I must say that I am not a big fan of two minute songs, generally not shortened due to speed but due to leaving some parts out.. That's the only complaint.

So it's 8/10. At any other time, I would have given this tour a higher mark, but then I saw the Cult, which put on probably a couple of best shows I have ever seen, and the Sisters couldn't quite compare.
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The Drowning Season
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I also only got to see the Washington, DC, show this year, but I can only imagine that it was basically the same deal everywhere else. Yes, it's never going to be FALAA again, we've accepted that, but apparently it's not going to be as good as Vision Thing again either. Whether Von's voice was loud enough or the sound was mixed right or not, the "band" isn't cutting it. There's no new music for us to get excited about. I know that after buying Vision Thing I couldn't wait to see them perform those tunes live, and I did get to see that tour in Washington, DC, and it kicked ass. I was bored to tears for most of the show this year, and damnit I didn't want to be. I wanted them to make me excited again, to make me want to love them as much as I have since FALAA, but they didn't...they fizzled...and I truly wonder if they'll ever recapture that magic again. God knows I'm a fan, my damn band wants to be them so bad it's silly! So I'm speaking from my heart when I say that I hope Andy will finally put out some new music and let his fans recover some of that old Sisters magic before another live jaunt.
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PipoTheClown
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I saw them the first time in '91. That show was incredible, really really good. I saw them again in '92 at Pukkelpop. They didn't have a bassplayer by then and the show was not so good... I saw them again in 2001, 2003 en now in 2006. I'm not goth at all, but I guess I liked them a lot better when the Sisters were "goth" :D

Anyways, things have changed (like all things change), it's good there are still people around who like them.
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budapest was f**king amazing :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy:

they were firing on all their own cylinders, plus a few dozen extra they must have borrowed from god-knows-where.

superb. best sisters gig i've been to. utterly. :von:
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