IQ, November 23rd, 2000
Zeche, Bochum, Germany
By Ed Sander

The tour went fine until the gig of the 22nd in Strasbourg. Peter had caught a cold and was losing his voice. Halfway the gig they had to change the setlist because Pete could hardly sing anymore.
When I arrived in Bochum the next day I bumped into Pete on the parking lot. He was in a rather (understandable) bad mood and had just visited the docter for some medicine. By this time Martin had also caught the nasty virus and was coughing his way through the soundcheck as well.

Things sounded very bleak during the soundcheck; Pete was hardly able to sing and his voice almost completely died out after trying a couple of lines. The rest of the band rehearsed some alternative songs with less vocal power or more instrumental sections, creating a completely new setlist along the way.
Darkest Hour, Wurensh, The Seventh House and Awake and Nervouse were exchanged for It All Stops Here, Leap of Faith (instrumental 2nd half) and Overture & Provider.

The gig started right on time, and for a change I had conquered a spot at the edge of the stage. Zeche is quite a nice venue, complete with balcony and expensive drinks. ;-)
Tour manager Arie walked on stage and explained that Pete had a cold and Martin would therefore sing part of the gig.
During the intro tape Andy McEvoy was projecting some computer animation footage from 'The Lawnmower Man' movie on the backdrop screen. The band came on stage and Martin took the vocals on Outer Limits. This is actually an interesting occurrence, but not the first time for Martin to do lead vocals at an IQ gig. In 1990, when Pete had not yet re-joined the band, Martin did vocals on ALL songs once.

Peter came on stage to do It All Posts Here (sic) and the new Erosion (great track - too short !), after which he walked off and the rest of the band continued with State of Mine, which (unlike the gig in Zoetermeer) flowed seamlessly into The Magic Roundabout (again sung by Martin).
Pete and Martin shared vocals on Failsafe. Pete got another pauze to take some breath while the band played the instrumental section of Leap of Faith.
The by now well-known footage of Overture was projected on the screen while the band went through this instrumental, followed by Provider and Subterranea (with the reggea ending and 'Ole !').

Only two new songs were played, the second one being Guiding Light. Fortunately The Enemy Smacks was not dropped from the set. When the band started playing this song all-time-pranksters Fabian and company pulled another one by bombarding the stage with little cotton balls ! Very funny ! Peter later 'took revenge' by grabbing a handful during a theatrical moment and throwing it back at them.

First encore was The Wake (after the cha cha cha version of Came Down). Second encore was Human Nature (idem). The crowd went nuts and was jumping and singing along, more than willing to help Peter out with the difficult bits. As far as atmosphere was concerned this gig was much better than the one in Zoetermeer. As a matter of fact, the audience refused to go and when they kept shouting 'IQ ! IQ !' Mark and Kala, who were already unplugging the equipment, looked at eachother, plugged the stuff back in and went to get the band back on stage for an unrehearsed Gateway (Middle Section).
After this the gig was really over, even though the audience kept yelling for more.

Pete had done remarkably well compared to the soundcheck; seemingly the medicine had done its work extremely well. Nobody in the crowd seemed to mind Pete's absence during some songs or the occassional skipping of a couple of words or lines. The atmosphere was marvellous !

Because of all of this and my experiences at De Boerderij last week I enjoyed this gig much more, even considering all of the circumstances.

I has a couple of short chats with band and crew afterwards but when we stepped innthe car ready to drive back home we found the tourbus was blocking the exit. Nothing else to do then go back in, where I bumped into Mike who was downing some beers in the pub of Zeche. After promising to try to make it to one of the UK gigs we quickly jumped in the car because this time it was us who were blocking the way. ;-)
The Red Bulls I drank to keep my eyes open behind the wheel had me 'awake and nervous' for the rest of the night. ;-)

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