Paul's review especially for Henrik's Modern Talking Site

Concert in Hammerstein Ballroom (Manhattan, New York, USA)
April, 16, 2005

The concert took place on April 16, 2005 in Manhattan, New York. There are relatively few seats in Hammerstein Ballroom, therefore the majority of the attendees were standing on the floor including me. I arrived earlier and thus I could be very close to the stage. Meantime, before the concert, a DJ was playing some European dance music. There were 2 bars where you could buy soft and alcohol drinks. There were also Modern Talking "The Final Album" DVDs (NTSC - the North American video format) and CDs as well as Bad Boys Blue "Back" CDs for sale.

Concert started at around 6:25pm with the "Bad Boys in the mix" intro. Then "Come Back and Stay" started with John McInerney running on the stage. He greeted everybody: "Hi, I’m John. I’m Bad Boys Blue!" and then he sang the song. After it he apologized for being alone because his partner (Andrew) couldn’t make it to the concert.

After he left, there was a 15 min break, during which DJ played some more dance music. Meantime the stage was being prepared for Thomas Anders. Then his band appeared on it. It consisted of the guitar player Lars (the same guy who played with Modern Talking and even Blue System), a very young looking drummer with long hair (he has been with Modern Talking since 2002), a keyboard player, a new bass guitar player (a young guy with hair with a Mohawk, sort of like a punk rocker) and a blonde girl (a back vocalist). They started with the intro to "Tonight is the Night" with a heavy guitar (played by Lars). Then Thomas went on the stage. He was wearing a black suit and I think he grew his hair a little bit. "Independent Girl" was the second song, once again with an addition of nice guitar riffs. Then Thomas greeted everybody. He said it was his first time performing in New York. He assured that there will be Modern Talking songs. "In 100 years" was next (a new version + heavy guitar) which gradually merged into "King of Love".

The vocalist girl sang female parts of the song and danced with Thomas. Then there was "You Can Win if you want" (a nice new version) followed by "No Face No Name No Number". From his solo career Thomas also performed "Just Dream" and the Barry Manilow Medley (including "Mandy" of course). From Modern Talking he also performed "Atlantis is calling", "Geronimo’ Cadillac", "Jet Airliner", "Win the race", "TV makes a superstar" (with a nice extended intro with a guitar solo by Lars which included a little bit of "Walk this way" of Aerosmith), "China In her eyes", "Brother Louie" after which Thomas and his band ran from the stage. People started screaming for him to come back. After a couple of minutes he re-appeared and sang "You’re my heart, you’re my soul" and finished the concert with "Cheri Cheri Lady" whom Thomas called the sister of Brother Louie. While singing the last song he even managed to sign some autographs. The audience was clearly having great time, especially in the end of the show when it felt like everybody was in ecstasy, screaming, dancing, jumping, and singing.

It was a great concert. Both John and Thomas were in a great mood, joked, and established a very good contact with audience right away. People in audience were of different ages: from little kids to senior citizens, and as far as I can say, everybody was happy including me.