THE ANTWERPEN REPORT By Philip Marey
Pic by Peter Hellström
Sportpaleis – Antwerpen,
Belgium. December 13th. 1997
The first Peter Stuyvesant
Star Night at the Sportpaleis in Antwerpen on the 13th. of December was not without
organizational problems. Although the event was originally announced to feature Coolio, En
Vogue and Earth, Wind & Fire, only the last act showed up at the Sportpaleis.
The evening started with Coco Junior, a singer from Belgium. Alexander O’Neal then
showed he was no Fake. But judging from the reaction of the crowd, most people had
come
to see EWF. The Mighty Elements wasted no time and immediately rocked the house with a
string of uptempo songs. As a result, even people with seats spent most of the concert on
their feet. If I remember well (despite a neural overload), EWF performed the following
songs (I’m only guessing at the sequence): Rock That!, Boogie Wonderland, Let Your
Feelings Show, September, Gratitude, Saturday Nite, Revolution, Let’s Groove,
Can’t Hide Love, Reasons, Sun Goddess, Fantasy, Singasong, That’s The Way Of The
World, After The Love Has Gone, Shining Star, Devotion.
The band ran like clockwork, while
Philip and Sheldon did such a great job that they almost made me forget that Maurice was
not on stage. Although we would like things to be different, I think we should respect his
decision to retire from the road and we should be grateful that the rest of the guys
enable us to experience an EWF concert, 15 years after the good old days. The show lasted
about 80 minutes and shortly after midnight we went home after an evening
well-spent.
Share the spice of life.
Philip Marey, The Netherlands
