News

The Church of Bruce

After 2 more shows last weekend–Düsseldorf last Thursday and Rotterdam yesterday evening–Springsteen’s Devils & Dust tour is over for me.

Düsseldorf was another excellent show: 3 tour premieres and another 4 songs Springsteen didn’t play in Brussels. I Wish I Were Blind just knocked me off my socks. And I was just as impressed with Incident on 57th Street and Racing in the Street.

I was a little disappointed with the Rotterdam show. The sound was inferior to the 3 other shows I’ve seen, and few little annoyances made in the experience a little less interesting than the other 3 shows. Still liked hearing My Father’s House though.

A few statistics: In the 4 shows I’ve seen, Springsteen played a total of 101 songs (48 different songs). That is almost 10 hours of music! He played all 12 songs from his latest album Devils & Dust during those 4 shows.

Model Shoot

Belgium Digital organized a foto shoot at the former site of the coal mine of Winterslag. My first ever model foto shoot: see the results here.

Movie Clips

I posted 2 movies clips in our gallery from our visit to De Vossemeren. Watch Kelly making funny faces, and watch Lies and Kelly coming down the slide.

Springsteen in Brussels

Bruce Springsteen was in Brussels last night for a solo acoustic concert in his Devils and Dust tour. And despite all the problems with the ticket sales, I managed to get a pair of tickets for the 13th row. It was a very enjoyable show.

As important to me as the show itself, is meeting new and old friends before the show. So we made our way to Vorst Nationaal way before the start of the show. Parked the car near the venue–no stress for us–and had a few drinks with friends. It was so good to see al those people that I hadn’t seen for a long time.

But on the main event: Springsteen’s concert. I was afraid that, after seeing the show in Los Angeles, the European shows weren’t going to as good. But I was wrong! The Belgian public respected Springsteen’s request for silence during the performance, but greeted each song with enthusiasm and heart warming applause. And though Vorst Nationaal is big venue for solo acoustic performances, Bruce was able to make it feel small and cozy. It felt more like my living room than a venue that holds 7000. Springsteen reached everyone; the show had power yet created an intimate atmosphere.

Although Devils and Dust isn’t Springsteen’s best album–at least not in my opinion– must admit like this tour just as much as concerts with the E-Street Band. And I like this tour better than his 1st solo acoustic tour. This tour has a good mix of old and new songs. And in Brussels, Springsteen impressed me most with Reason to Believe, State Trooper, Thougher Than the Rest and Racing in the Streets. Matamoros Banks and Reno are still the best songs from his new album.

I was really impressed with Springsteen’s performance. I hope he will impress me again in Düsseldorf and Rotterdam.

Back from Holidays

Just a quick note to let everyone know that we’ve returned from our trip to New York. We are still a bit tired from the flight. But at least we had a good time. We’re working on a photo gallery and a little report of the trip. Will be online soon…

We have already uploaded some random photos to our gallery.

1st Devils and Dust Show

We arrived in New York City for a 10 day holiday. I flew from New York City to Los Angeles, CA for his 1st show in Springsteen’s new Devils and Dust tour.

An excellent show! Bruce played almost 3 hours at the Pantages Theatre on Hollywood Blvd. The Pantages Theatre is a very beautiful theatre and creates the perfect setting for an intimate solo acoustic concert. Springsteen plays guitar and piano on this tour. He was very focused on telling us his stories about love, children and everyday family life. But despite that he staid very in touch with the audience and treaded us with a few laughs. And he played quite some of my favorite songs. I particularly liked the new versions of Reason to Believe and Johnny 99.

Apparently there were quite some celebrities in the audience (Sean Penn, Jackson Browne, Meg Ryan, Danny DeVito and Pierce Brosnan), but I didn’t see any of them. I was too caught up in the moment to even think about looking for someone I might know, I guess.

You can read my full review of the show (in Dutch) on the website of Be True.

Added Old Site News to Blog

VICTORIE.com is now fully migrated to a blog powered by Simple PHP Blog. We finished migrating all site news entries on the VICTORIE.com homepage and also moved all static pages to the blog format. This marks the birth of VICTORIE.com v5.0. In the next days, we will adapt the look-and-feel of our photo gallery to make it the same as the rest of our site and that will complete the migration of our site to a fully scripted and automated site.

Springsteen’s New Album and Tour

The release date for Bruce Springsteen’s new album called Devils & Dust is drawing near. Only 2 more weeks before the album is released worldwide. The marketing campaign is going full speed ahead. There have been listening parties all over the United States and now we get a chance to listen to the new album before it hits the stores. Kris has been invited to the Dutch listening party in Amsterdam on Monday.

And Springsteen’s new solo acoustic tour is about to start too. Rehersals are already under way and the tour will start on 25 april in the US. By the middle of May, Springsteen will play in Europe also. Ticket sales has already started. And although it was chaos as expected, we managed to score tickets for a few shows. You’ll be able to read our reviews on these pages.

Moved our Gallery

I have completed the move of our gallery to our own server. All photos are now hosted at gallery.victorie.com. Feel free to browse our galleries.

Hosting Luc’s Gallery

We have started hosting a gallery for Luc Bogaerts, our best friend. Check out Bogey’s Gallery.