Ralphy's Concert Reviews: K's Choice

I've been an admirer of this Belgian band for a long time and I was really looking forward to see them perform live again. Yes, it was the second time I visited a concert from K's Choice. The first one was on June 1st, 1998, when they were among the artists performing on the Pinkpop-festival 1998. They played the best set there in my opinion (second best was Garbage), but I heard they were even better performing in smaller venues, so I wanted to experience that too.

My friends and I arrived at about 20.30 hours and we missed the opening act Green Lizard, except for one song. I didn't care about that. That one song gave me a pretty good (bad) impression of this metal-band and they weren't really what I was coming for anyway. The crowd was very anxious for K's Choice to start and at 21.20 they came on stage and started with "A sound that only you can hear", followed by their latest album's title song "Cocoon crash". With those 2 slammers they immediately captivated the crowd and as before on Pinkpop you could see that they themselves were enjoying it too. Singer Sarah Bettens's voice is extraordinary and it was indeed even better in this smaller concerthall (sold out, +/- 2,000 visitors, I think). They varied between their heavier and their softer songs and played songs from all 3 albums. I enjoyed it immensely and couldn't take my eyes of the stage. Their performance send shivers down my spine and Sarah's voice gave me goosebumps. At one time a guy climbed on stage and kneeled in front of Sarah and took her hand. She gave it willingly and he just stayed on his knees before her until security kindly asked him to leave. I'm usually not a fan of this kind of fan-support, but K's Choice and Sarah were the masters of music this evening and the whole audience wanted to kneel for this much excellence and this fan pictured out our respect perfectly.

Highlights (to me) were the songs "Butterflies instead", "Not an addict", "Too many happy faces", "Believe" (at which time a tear of joy sprang in my eye) and especially "Hide", which I kept on singing in my head until the next morning. For the first encore they played the fragile "Breakfast" and their usual closer "Something's wrong" which they performed together with Green Lizard. After that Gert (who luckily has completely recovered from his illness, he had mononucleosis) and Sarah came back one more time and played "God in my bed" acoustically, which was a bit of an anti-climax after the first encore. The concert, probably the best one I ever saw in quality, is rated by me with a 9.5. Why not a 10 you might ask, well they played for about an hour and 40 minutes and I would have liked to see (much) more.

**The Complete Setlist (as far as I remember it):**
	Song	Originally from Album	Year
1	A sound that only you can hear	Paradise in me	1996
2	Cocoon crash	Cocoon crash	1998
3	In your room	Cocoon crash	1998
4	Butterflies instead	Cocoon crash	1998
5	My record company	Paradise in me	1996
6	Halleluyah	cover from Jeff Buckley
7	Elegia	The great subconscious club	1996
8	Zombie	cover from The Cranberries
9	My heart	The great subconscious club	1994
10	Song for Catherine	Paradise in me	1996
11	Not an addict	Paradise in me	1996
12	If you're not scared	Cocoon crash	1998
13	Too many happy faces	Cocoon crash	1998
14	Quiet little place	Cocoon crash	1998
15	The ballad of Lea & Paul	The great subconscious club	1994
16	Hide	Cocoon crash	1998
17	Paradise in me	Paradise in me	1996
18	Believe	Cocoon crash	1998
19	Mr. Freeze	Paradise in me	1996
20	Everything for free	Cocoon crash	1998
	End of regular show
Encore 1	Breakfast	The great subconscious club	1994
Encore 2	Something's wrong	Paradise in me	1996
	Another short break
Encore 3	God in my bed	Cocoon crash	1998