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Events and Reports - Saga - Live at Skanderborg festival, August 12th 2005
Except for Alice Cooper, Saga was the only Rock band to visit this years Skanderborg festival in Denmark. Saga are one of the few bands that always play Denmark on their Tours and therefore many people had taken place in front of the main stage this afternoon.
Saga has lots of die hard fans, which typical are middle aged. Therefore the crowd was atypical for a festival and draft beer was replaced by red wine as the preferred concert drink.
To the smell of pipe-tobacco original members Jim Crichton and Ian Crichton entered the stage along with keyboardist Jim Gilmour performing a long musical intro.
Saga's symphonic rock created a very positive vibe. Sparkling lead singer Michael Sadler was in great spirits. With lots of Saga fans and Sadler as a driving front man you couldn't help to get a little carried away in the atmosphere even though you weren't a Saga fan.
Since Sadler is the main attraction on stage, the stage show suffered when Sadler went to play keyboard along with Jim Gilmour since the keyboard was placed back in vertical line with the drum kit. Sadler really impressed me with his vocals and abilities as a musician - besides keyboards he also took over bass duties for one song. Sadler tripped over a monitor, but took it like a professional since he kept singing without missing a note. After the song he commented on his elegant footwork.
Sadler made a reference to Saga's live album "In Transit" which was recorded in Copenhagen 1982. On that tour they played tracks off their very first album and people of Skanderborg festival was going to get a track from that album as well.
The setlist was a circular tour of Saga's catalogue. They only played one song from the latest studio album "Network, which was received well - but overall the emphasis was on older songs, which the crowd recognized. The strongest was You're Not Alone with a sing along part, but also Wind Him Up and the last but one On the Loose were sounded great live
Ian Crichton is a splendid guitarist and technically perfect. He rarely plays simple chords, since he is more of a note/riff player. Often the guitar and keyboard followed each other making the sound very pompous. Visually Ian Crichton looks kind of funny with the guitar hanging just under his chin literally.
During the whole concert I saw people nearly the age of my parents going crazy and in ecstasy because of Saga's music. After the show the ground was full of empty red wine bottles and pipe cleaners. Just experiencing the audience made the entertainment value top notch. Saga is a band that still has lots to offer their fans since they still sound great and consist of skilled musicians.
| Click pictures for a bigger version
All pictures taken by Martin Borg | Written by Michael
Monday, October 17, 2005 |
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