For the end of the year the promoters of Royal Arena Festival brought with Nemo, Stress as well as Lo & Leduc three chart-toppers to one stage. For the tour final the three of them did party all over at Festhalle Bern.

By the way, the last time I’ve been to a concert at Festhalle was in May 2015, at that time with Olly Murs. Whoops, it’s been a long time. On this early evening, a few minutes before doors opened, they were just arranging the queue. All the kids and teens were super squirrelly and you could feel their excitement. Although there seemed some dubiety at the beginning, the security seemed super relaxed.

Shortly after doors opened the hall filled rather slowly. By the time all the jackets were handed in at the cloakroom and dinner was taken, a moment passed. The location was then actually much fuller than I expected. After all, the hall is REALLY big with a possible capacity of around 6500 people. It wasn’t completely full, but very well visited. Through the many bars there seemed to be constant movement in the audience and sometimes quite a throng.

This evening, especially the youngsters had taken the front rows for themselves. At least at the beginning loads of Nemo fans were at the forefront.

Nemo’s last show

With a delay of about 20 mins, Nemo kicked off the evening with loud cheers and shrieks. It was to be Nemo’s last concert for a long and indefinite time. He wants to focus now on other things like his education, travelling etc. Well, after such an extremely active year full of concerts and performances, he will definitely need a break anyway.

Nemo started his show with “Usserirdisch”, one of the titles of the current EP “Fundbüro” and of course presented the other titles from it in the course of his concert. Whirling around the stage, performing his hits like “Blockbuster”, “Himalaya” and of course “Ke Bock”, his fans celebrated him loudly.

With “Jazz i me”, there was no Schlager, as he would have played on request, but as the song title revealed, he brought with it some jazz elements into the programme. And for the encore Nemo was standing at the keyboard alone with the Mani Matter cover “Zündhölzli”. The whole place seemed to be able to sing along the lyrics without any mistakes.

Before Nemo released the stage for stress, of course, his current catchy tune “You” was not missing either, to what even without asking a big choir would have reverberating.

The front rows seemed to change more or less completely when Nemo disappeared from the stage. Where everyone went, I am not sure. I guess to the merchandise stand…?!

Dancing with Stress

Stress continued. After Nemo had already presented well, the vibes level rose with him even quite a bit. He also played the last concert, one of his rare shows this year.

Next to his newest project “Trust”, it was rather quite around Stress in 2017. He also mentioned the week before, this was definitely the last concert with the actual songs.

If there will be a new album in 2018?

Differently to Friday before at “Jeder Rappen zählt” concert Karolyn was back on stage again. You could immediately see the difference. The extra dose of energy and all the ‘girl power’ was there again. For example with “What If”, “Love You When I’m High”, “Mais Ou” and “Said Profit” Stress rocked the Festhalle together with MAM, Karolyn as well as the band.

They went wild and Stress made sure that the audience kept moving. They animated the audience to jump, sing and dance along. During “C’est réel” Stress let the crowd build a ditch through to the very back of the hall and with “RAF” he appointed a young man to be the ‘circle responsible”. Stress, however, wasn’t sure, if this guy and his collegues weren’t too drunk for. 😉 But it worked really well and in the middle of the audience a huge circle was created on Stress’ command. I like to avoide getting into these moshpits 😉

The „Highlight“ for many girls was then, when Stress started the call that he needed woman on stage for his “Tous les mêmes” choreography. More than probably wanted followed this call. It then went synchronously from one foot to the other. Nothing difficult, but heaps of faces kept beaming with it.

With the hit “Elle” as well as “Saturé”, when they got it started once again, even this concert came to an end.

Home concert with the biggest club show

After another short changing break Lo & Leduc completed the evening. With a bit of a lead, the band started and it continued rhythmically and eloquently.

It was a special evening for Lo & Leduc. They not only ended their successful concert year with a home concert at Festhalle, they also celebrated their tour final with their biggest clubshow to date.

Meanwhile, the group was no less wild and boisterous than it was at the previous concerts of Nemo and Stress. For the last time this year, their audience danced to the songs of the current album “Ingwer und ewig” as well as to their hits like “All die Büecher”, “Henker” and “Walter”. They had also dug up some very old songs.

Alle bewegten sich zu “Jung verdammt” bis runter in die Hocke und spielten eine letzte Runde “Räuber u Poli”. Alt und Jung schwenkten im Takt der Musik hin und her als Sängerin Julia, das Scheinwerferlicht auf sie gerichtet, den Refrain zur wunderschönen Ballade “Pluto” sang. Und natürlich jubelten alle aufgeregt, wenn Lo in seinem Freestyle die Reime jeweils zu den vom Publikum vorgegebenen Worten lenkte. Von ohrenbetäubendem Gekreische gefolgt, stürmte dann als kleine Überraschung sogar Nemo bei “Rezession” nochmals auf die Bühne.

Everyone crouched down to “Jung verdammt” and played one last round “Räuber u Poli”. Old and young swung back and forth to the beat of the music as singer Julia, the spotlight on her, was singing the chorus to the beautiful ballad “Pluto”. And of course everyone cheered excitedly when Lo directed the rhymes in his freestyle to the words given by the audience. Followed by deafening shrieks, as a small surprise Nemo stormed back on stage for “Rezession”.

However, my Lo & Leduc highlight followed with “Vampir” in the encore. They played it in a new kind of ska/rocksteady version. Fantastic! The following “Risotto” was stirred by them extra long and it actually could have continued forever in this endless loop.

Aftershow party and Christmas shopping

But the night was far from over. While Lo & Leduc were still at the merchandise stand shortly after the concert, the after show party was already on. Not really something for me and most of the audience did not stay. But to bridge time to the first night bus, it was handy enough.

If you did not have all your Christmas presents yet, you could get them at the Merch stand. You even got special Lo & Leduc or Nemo wrapping paper to pack it in;)

It was definitely a nice ending 🙂 How the three bands will continue next year is not very clear right now. That means, Nemo is taking a break. You will find all news but most likely on the official band websites or on Facebook.

www.nemomusic.ch
www.stressmusic.com
www.lo-leduc.ch
www.royalarena.ch