THE SCORPIONS
Patinoire Mériadeck - Bordeaux, France
November 19 2011

Scorpions were touring France again and the gig in Bordeaux was on saturday. I thought it was a great idea to be a weekend away in Southwestern France and meet some friends there.

The concert was at the Patinoire Mériadeck. Originally built as a skate rink, the place is used for several kind of events.
Tonight, almost 8000 people were attending the show, so the concert was sold-out.
Many people came from Spain, as Bordeaux is not far from the border and The Scorpions were not playing there this fall.

The Scorpions are bringing a huge visual show on this tour.


The rear of the stage was made of spotlights, that also turned into giant screens. We were shown mostly images of the band at Bordeaux... but also some vintage footage. The audience was also filmed quite often. By the way, a couple was filmed during the whole song Still Loving You, and the girl was filmed several times afterwards. Maybe the cameraman just fell in love...

Despite a huge production, the audience was quite calm today. Only a handful of people were excited and singing the words of the songs.
The people on the balconies remained seated for the whole show.

Maybe that's because the sound not very good, even if it was better after a few songs.

Klaus Meine is not the kind of guy to o backstage during an instrumental song. During Coast To Coast, he played a beautiful guitar. It was customized with the S from Scorpions on the body and the name of the album Sting In The Tail on the neck.

Mathias Jabs guitar tech, Ingo Powitzer, was invited on stage during The Best is Yet To Come. He played some additional guitar parts on this ballad.
During this time, drummer James Kottak went to the front of the stage and made everyone move their arms, while singing the chorus parts ("eh aioh...").

The next song was another ballad, Send Me An Angel, and Kottak traded his drumkit for a pair of Maracas.

During Big City Nights, the was an image of an Asian city by night, probably Tokyo.
The name of tonight's "big city" appeared on the screen... except that they wrote Bordaux instead of Bordeaux. Yeah, French language is complicated: same sound, but different writting.
Anyway, after the solo, the spelling was corrected.

There were not many changes on the setlist compared to the concerts I saw lasst year in Mons and Paris, but the additions of Dynamite and When The Smoke is Going Down were very welcome.

To sum up, it was a high quality show, and it's a shame that a band like this is stopping. But 2012 will be a year of extensive touring for Scorpions, so don't miss them.

Next concert for me was Motörhead the following week.
But Scorpions will be in France again in 2012!
Click here for Scorpions 2012 tickets , or here for Motörhead live in Paris.

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Setlist Scorpions – Patinoire Mériadeck - Bordeaux, France – November 19 2011

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