The concert in Almaty
April, 16, 2006
Night club “5 oborotov”, Almaty, Kazakhstan

The recollections of E. Pashneva specially for www.thomas-anders.ru.
Published according to a kind author’s permission
Translated by beilie

Besides the concert Thomas had one more non-advertised event: the store “Meloman”, the sponsor of his coming, organized the meeting with Thomas in one of its central stores in the afternoon.

Thomas came in a big white limousine (depicted on a ticket), wearing sunglasses (during the whole meeting), light-brown suit and a white shirt. He looked nice! It was a crowd of people, but he took a seat in the middle of the paled hall and started signing posters of the same image with a black marker. And then the official distributed them among customers. There were big and small posters; I took both. The people were standing silently, taking pictures with their cameras and self-phones.

There was the only girl who communicated with Thomas and asked something; she turned to be from the paper “MK in Kazakhstan” – so, probably, we’ll see an article later. I could hear that he replied to her that he hadn’t been here for 15 years, and our city had changed much (as if he remembers it!) Then she asked him about his favorite meals and about our national meal “beshbarmak” (of course, he hasn’t even heard such a word!) But he said he loved salads, chicken, fish and “all and sundry”.

He also said that it’s much easier to get into touch with the audience in the small halls, but he hoped to have a big show here some day as well. Someone tried to palm off their own pictures for the signature upon him, but it’s better to hide THESE pictures away: an old copy from the 3rd MT album, pasted by scotch tape, for example. When Thomas noticed it, he could hardly remain on his chair! Well, probably, it was a good memory for someone. He was suggested to sign up the huge guestbook. After signing around 100 posters he walked to his limousine very quickly, and that’s it.

In the evening there was a concert, which has started a half of an hour later, as usual, and lasted for an hour. The stage was waist-high, and Thomas didn’t leave it. The hall was crowded, and the audience was allowed to dance before the stage at first, but then it was dispersed. However, I was lucky to have a good seat and could see everything quite well.

His musicians were so ugly! One mug wore a ski-hat with the white plush switches from under it – such ugliness! There were two bald-headed guitarists, a shaggy drummer (with waist-long flowing hair); and a keyboarder (I suppose, from MT) was the only one with tolerable appearance; the rest were like by contrast with Thomas.

Thomas was dressed in black: a shirt and a suit. He was almost the same as in Moscow, in Kremlin in 1998. But, however, the second chin damages his image, and he’s got more wrinkles as well. I suppose, he even shaved his beard that day.

I’ll not repeat the track list, I’ll say the first one was TITN, and the last one was YMHYMS. There were 13 songs in total; besides these two there were his IG, King of Love and This Time. He also sang his “Just Dream” (ballad version) and said that it was written for the ice-show in Moscow, with nice costumes, dances and so on. He sang a few MT songs as well: You can win, Cheri Lady, Brother Louie, Atlantis is Calling, Cadillac, In 100 years and No face, no name (and he made a comment that it’s very hot outside, a lot of green, and it reminded him Spain. And as the Spanish note there was “No face...”). All these songs were performed in a different way then in albums; and he didn’t finish refrains quite often: it has happened with Cheri lady, Brother Louie and others. Before singing Cheri Lady he remembered Brother Louie’s sister. And I liked his nonstop passage from In 100 years to King of love; right after L.O.V.E. he unexpectedly jumped from one song to another. It was great!

He didn’t talk much with audience. It was so hot – Thomas sweated himself! Someone presented him a kind of national puppet – rigged up, but so exotic for him!

Well, I told you everything, I suppose. The audience romped and yelled wildly. The sound was deafening!

Oh, I forgot to write the most important thing: Thomas’s singing was “live”! Dieter’s parties were recorded and absorbed, and his musicians covered them with their own voices. But Thomas sang himself, and it was obvious. He cannot sing the high notes as easy as before, but, however, his voice was really beautiful!

While Thomas’s autographing a guy handed over a CD to him and said: “Please, don’t throw it away, OK? Just listen to it!” And Thomas replied: “No, of course, I will not throw it away!”

And during the concert he noticed a little boy with a stick, and was moved so much! One could see that he also has the same kid: “That’s my youngest fan? What a stick you have!” And his face turned to be so interested by this boy!

Some lady shouted: “Brother Louie!”, and Thomas couldn’t understand it and asked, what it was. She was too shy to repeat, and he said: “It was wonderful regardless of your words!”

It was funny when he thanked for the flowers on English, then on Russian, and then he began to recollect all common Russian words he knew: “thank you”, “you’re welcome”, “good health!”, “yes-yes”, “champagne”, “dear friends”. Of course, people liked it very much!

I didn’t explain well concerning the unfinished refrains, I suppose; I mean, he repeated them much more often than he ought to. But it was really great – it was fiery! And he sustained a high note at the end of “Just Dream”, but his voice didn’t let him do it well, I think...