The Divine Comedy - Haldern Pop Festival - Berlin Germany

Truly a religious experience for me, kinda like Moses seeing the burning bush. I've gotten so much joy and inspiration and insight from this guy over the past years, seeing him live was something I can't explain. This was a three pronged night, this gig being 'Prong 1.'

I'm eating white asparagus before the gig with our new friends Christoph and Bela, bout 10.00 I start booking it to the 'Haldern Pop Festival,' which was a logistical nightmare to find, come to find out its a tent in back of a music venue off Alexanderplatz. Yea easy you say, but try finding this stuff one day. The outside venue looks like something from WW2, an amazing looking venue, some of these places, I've never seen anything like it.

I arrive and The Divine Comedy is 20 minutes deep into the set, the door dude tells me I can just skip the entrance fee of 30 bucks because it's late, I'm like 'f*ck yea!' I head to the back of the building and see the tent and 'Generation Sex' is blarring from the tent as I run frantically inside. Inside is pure joy, as Neil and his 8 piece band produce a full rich sound.

Many old favorites were played, and the new stuff sounds amazing. Neil and his sweet Martin, a brilliant keys player, violin, upright bass, skins and misc instruments made this a magical night.

50 minutes deep into the set, the music stops, some butchy German lady says the show must stop because of noise. This was met by a deep "BOOOOOOOOO!" by myself and other Divine Comedy hardcore fans. Neil could barly get out any closing sentiments, and unfortunately his subtle wit flew right over the German speaking audience.

I met some really cool people at the show, will describe in 'Prong 2' of the evening. And for the record, I did do the tourist sh*t the first two days too.

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Video - Generation Sex - I did manage to capture this short video, the rest of the time the goosebumps were too out of control to manage this camera.

The new album comes out Juneteenth, go out and make a record store visit for this one, it won't be a disappointment from the stuff I heard. Tracklist is as follows.

1. To Die A Virgin
2. Mother Dear
3. Diva Lady
4. A Lady of a Certain Age
5. The Light of Day
6. Threesome
7. Party Fears Two (cover version of The Associates's song)
8. Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World
9. The Plough
10. Count Grassi's Passage Over Piedmont
11. Snowball in Negative