ROCKING EELS | The Austrian Fansite

The 4th of July in 2006 went down in history with one of the most outstanding concerts on the No Strings Attached Tour and one of the finest evenings of all time for me. I will definitely never forget it.

Before the Eels rocked the hell out of us, Smoosh did a short set for about 30 minutes. Let me say this: Those girls surely know how to rock. Absolutely great performance and musical abilities of these youngsters. You could see that they also loved it to be on stage. The Arena was filled already, and the crowd supported the band, although they didn't even know them. And they were just warming up...

09:05 pm. Eels hit the stage. Dear god, that was a rocking beginning of the show, indeed. They kicked it away with "The Other Show", "Old Shit/New Shit" and "Rock Show". Loud. Fast. Eels. Then Krazy Al showed us his karate moves. From the beginning of Willie Dixon's "Crazy Love" till the end of the evening Al was the highlight of the show. Those weird, yet funny one-liners, those moves, the high-fives, the whipped cream. "Who's crazy? Krazy Al's crazy. Krazy Al!"

During the gig not one song seemed to disappoint the audience. The atmosphere was unbelievable. The Chet impressed us all with Tom Waits' "Jesus Gonna Be Here Soon". Knuckles impressed us all with his fantastic drumming. He is the man. And E? Well he, once again, managed it to surprise us with a kick-ass show. Rock moments with the awesome "Mother Mary", "My Beloved Monster" and "Rags To Rags", not-rock moments with the lovely "A Magic World", "Railroad Man" and my personal favourite "Last Stop: This Town". I just couldn't believe it. This truly was the best gig I've been to. This was also due to the audience. The band really enjoyed themselves and was apparently really pleased with the crowd response.

Could one end a main set in a cooler way than the Eels? "That's Life" was just perfect. Then it was time for one of the best moments for me. I tought it was just such a sweet moment when during the first encore song "Cancer For The Cure" Asy and Chloe from Smoosh came on stage to dance around with his Krazyness. After the unbelievable "I Like Birds" the lights came on, but ... nobody of the audience left. Seems like the secret encore is no secret anymore. Everbody just knew that they'd come back. And hell, how they came back! "Saturday Morning" in its purest rock form. The show ended, but the crowd didn't think of stopping to applaud, to scream and jump for another 10 minutes. But the show was over. Our "Schatzi" left. An unbelievable evening had come to an end. Or did it?

I had, with some other friends of the Eels fan community, the pleasure to meet Krazy Al, Knuckles and The Chet after the gig. They really are the nicest persons you could think of. We talked for about 30 minutes, made some cool photos and got our Eels items autographed. They told us that this had been one of their best gigs on the "No Strings Attached Tour". Knuckles even said it was the best in his Eels experience. They just were amazed by the audience response. I. Was. Stunned.

To conlude, I just wanna say "Cheers!" to all the lovely fans, who I had the pleasure to meet on this concert. I was having a fantastic time. I'm looking forward to meet you all at the next Eels concert (hopefully in 2007 already).

Setlist:
(don't really remember if it's 100% accurate, for corrections please contact me):

The Other Shoe
Old Shit/New Shit
Rock Show
Crazy Love
Eyes Down
Dirty Girl
Nowadays
Jesus Gonna Be Here Soon
Mother Mary
The Sound Of Fear
My Beloved Monster
Rags To Rags
A Magic World
Last Stop: This Town
Not Ready Yet
Agony
Railroad Man
Dog Faced Boy
Souljacker Part I
I Put A Spell On You
That's Life
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Cancer For The Cure (w/ Smoosh)
I Like Birds (w/ Smoosh)
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Saturday Morning