Bob Dooley Sees Andre Rieu In Concert
Bob Dooley's Andre Rieu Concert At The M.E.N.
On arriving I handed over the portrait at the MEN then went for a meal at the Printworks which is a huge network of restaurants. The whole complex used to be owned by the newspapers.
I arrived back at the MEN at about 7:00pm and met Ruth but could find no sign of Jean. I bought what I thought was a program but was in fact a collection of photographs at a cost of £15 UK money the program was just a A4 piece of paper with a watermark of Andre and what was going to be played on the night. The whole organisation of the concert was somewhat very lacking considering the average age of the audience. Only one lift for the public in the whole arena. About 20mins before the start they opened up the staff lift. All this meant people were coming in 30 mins after the start.
The CONCERT ANDRE AND THE J.S.O. were Fantastic and the whole of the night was not long enough for me they could have gone on for another two days. They played 21 tunes plus a extended encore with balloons.
What spoiled it for me was the arrogant style tactics by some of the staff, they stopped me using my camera because it had a removable lens although I was not using flash unlike everybody else. The guard on our section would not let anybody go down and dance. I will not go too deep into it but lets say that I fooled him into opening the gate so that people could get out.
My honest opinion of the concert is that I would not have missed for the world but having said that I will never go back to the MEN ever again even if it meant that I could have an audience with the Man Himself. I hope that the next time I see him will be in His Homeland. In fact I will be landing in Amsterdam on my way to China later this year.
The tunes he played included:
1 Voices of Spring
2 The Skaters Waltz
3 Heal the World
4 The Snow Waltz
5 Vienna Blood
6 The Blue Danube
The List goes on and on and on and on ----------------------and on
Dear Bob,
I am so sorry about your portrait! But, I am glad that you had a wonderful concert!! André will always be a great entertainer. Love your photos, they are magical!! Thanks for sharing your concert with us. Hugs from Deirdre xx
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Hi Bob, The report of the concert is great and your photo's are brill, a lot better than my 3!!!!!. It brought all my memories back. Thank you Ruth
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I really enjoyed these photos and I thank you. I am not familiar with the Men. Is it an arena and I too, would not like it if I couldn't use my camera. But, as you say it was an enoyable evening to hear Andre and the JSO playing those lovely songs. My best wishes to you and thank you once more.
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Am I alone in thinking that Andre Rieus Tour in Oz at the moment has had minimal media coverage?
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Yes Harold you are right, hardly any media coverage other than a several t.v.and radio interviews before the concert. I cant understand it. I emailed Andres custermer service to ask if a dvd was being made in Aust of the concerts... but no! which I find strange. At the after party they were all off limits except for the photo with Andre which was great. They were sitting behind a cordon. Only Tanja came and spoke to me as she remembered me from the last concert which was a thrill. I asked Andre to sign my violin music book which was an arrangement of xmas songs I got from his website.... well I got the ultimate rejection.... He said : I have signed your photograph: and promptlyu walked off. I was so embarrassed! They charge so much for the experience of the soundcheck, dinner, seat in first 2 rows and the after Party which is supposed to be a meet and greet thing, They shoiuld make themselves available. Anyway the concer itself was magical, I think the best ever. Maybe now Andre has established his concerts here he is not giving or getting the exposure. Regards Maureen Hunter.
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I so hope there will be a DVD of the concert. In fact, I was counting on it.
We didn't go for the first time because things are a bit tough financially for us at the moment and we were sure it would be on DVD anyway. I hope his customer service made a mistake?
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Harold you are sooooo right Andre gets no publicity He was on 2 morning shows TV BRIEFLY & He gave an award at the TV logies, there was an article in a magazine that one gets with the sunday telegraph, but thats it, the sad part about this world is good & happy moments are not news worthy, now IF & I stress If Andre' were to have a torrid love affair that would make news, we are sadly lacking in happy news, also anything related to Andre' we just don't get thank The Good Lord for this blog site, it beats all the newspapers & media;
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Glad you had a good time, as we did in London at the 02, the camera / photgraphs thing seems to be a UK Arena/Stadium "illness" (can't think of another word), In Europe you can take almost anyhting in to take some pvs and vids, and as has been said before Andre does not have an issue with this, as it gives him even more publicity/awareness when they end up on You Tube! and as a result more CD's / DVD's sold and more go to the concerts, yet arrive at a UK venue and you are made to feel like you are a criminal, when I rang the 02, they said "Yes" as long as it's a very small camera, and on arrival there were big notices saying NO cameras... not that anyone seemed to take much notice!
Another thing when we go to Koln/Dusseldorf/Saarbrucken, staff fall over themeselves to help (wife disabled) yet at the 02 there was what seemed like a 6 mile hike to get to the seats, and down a big flight of stairs to the ground floor, with no handrails, we questioned the stairs, which took the staff back a bit, then said there was "a lift" but wouldn have to do the "6 mile hike" round to the other side of the 02 ! Needless to say, we simply struggled down the stairs, but of course it was all worthwhile, a cracking evening indeed!
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Hi Steve, I quite agree with what you say, it is no wonder artists like Andre do not want to come to this country,some of the staff at these places do not seem to be very helpful, mind you they are probably on min. wage and it is just a job. We also have the PC brigade in the UK, which does not help. Jumping of the soap box now. luv Ruth
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Good and honest reporting about your experience Bob. And brilliant photos! At both our Sun City concerts in South Africa (last year and this year) we were allowed to take our cameras in, and we experienced not a single problem with the staff. In Cape Town last year, the "venue" wouldn't allow cameras! I know for sure Andre doesn't mind! It seems at certain venues, the management and staff are either ignorant or plain rude, and in the process spoil the experience somewhat. We were just fortunate to have gone to a great venue like Sun City both times we attended his concerts. And I agree with you that being in Maastricht has to be the ultimate venue - and God willing, I'll be there in 2012. Thank you once again for your report and great pics.
Kind regards and thank you Prudence!
Marianne Dijzel
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