K's Choice - Cinerama TLV - 15/11/00
On November 15, 2000, the Belgian alternative rock band "K's Choice" took the stage at the legendary "Cinerama" hall in Tel Aviv, and in front of a packed house, gave the Israeli audience one of the most exciting, intimate and unforgettable performances of the beginning of the millennium.
The show at the Cinerama was held at a rare and particularly charged time, both in the career of the Antwerp band and in the Israeli reality of the fall of 2000. Only a month and a half after the outbreak of the Second Intifada, when international artists began to cancel their arrival in the region one after another, producer Shuki Weiss insisted on holding the "Premier" festival at the Cinerama, and the members of "K's Choice" refused to give in to the pressure and landed in Israel for a second meeting with the local audience, after having performed in the country for the first time in the summer of 1999 alongside the band "Garbage". The band arrived in Tel Aviv at the height of its artistic and commercial heyday, just weeks after the release of its fourth studio album, "Almost Happy," which was recorded at Peter Gabriel's Real World Studios in England and established it as one of the most beloved bands in Israel, a country where its previous albums, "Paradise in Me" from 1995 and "Cocoon Crash" from 1998, achieved gold and platinum album status and were played nonstop on Galgalatz.
On the Cinerama stage that evening, the band's most cohesive and mature lineup of that decade appeared, led by the sibling singer-songwriter duo, vocalist and guitarist Sarah Bettens, now known as Sam Bettens, and her brother, guitarist and singer Gert Bettens, alongside lead guitarist Jan Van Sichem Jr., veteran American bassist Eric Grossman and drummer Koen Lieckens, who joined the band for the recordings of the new album, and together with them keyboardist Steven Cornillie who thickened the melodic envelope. Even before the Bettens brothers took the stage, the Tel Aviv audience was treated to a historic opening of its own, when the evening opened with a special guest performance by the British progressive rock band "Porcupine Tree" led by Steven Wilson, who had performed the night before at the Theater Club in Jaffa and took to the Cinerama stage to warm up the Belgians on their first ever visit to Israel. Aviv Geffen was also invited to the stage and, together with Wilson and "Porcupine", performed Geffen's songs in English, thus effectively giving birth to the musical collaboration that later led to the band "Blackfield".
Already in the preliminary articles in the Israeli press and on the "Walla" website the morning of the show, under the headline that recalled the blessing the band received from the one who introduced them to the world as their opening act, Alanis Morissette, "K's Choice" was defined as a band intended for those for whom melancholic post-grunge does not make them sad but rather expands their hearts. On stage at the Cinerama, the band proved exactly why its spiritual connection with the Israeli audience was so deep. The band chose to open the show with explosive power with the title song of its third album, "Cocoon Crash", and from there immediately jumped into the pair of sweeping anthems "Everything for Free" and "Believe", with the acoustics of the Cinerama filling with a tremendous crowd chant that amazed the band members from the very first minutes.
The great magic of "K's Choice" that night lay in its uncanny ability to move sharply between bare, fragile folk-rock whispers and rough, distorted outbursts. Bettens' smoky, warm, and unique voice soared over the hall in mesmerizing performances of new songs from the fresh album, led by the intimate title track "Almost Happy", the energetic piece "My Head", and the quiet, chilling ballad "Always Everywhere", in which thousands of spectators seemed to hold their breath so as not to miss a single vocal nuance.
Between songs, the Bettens brothers demonstrated a direct, warm rapport free of rock-star pretensions with the Tel Aviv audience, thanking the fans for their extraordinary energy during such a complex time. When the guitars of Gert Bettens and Jan Van Sichem Jr. kicked into gear and Grossman's dominant bass came into action, the Cinerama turned into a boiling rock arena. This happened with the electrifying rendition of the early classic "Paradise in Me", continued with the somber and evolving groove of "Busy" and "Mr. Freeze", and reached a peak of power with a sweeping rendition of "If You're Not Scared" and the epic six-minute piece "Shadowman", where the sawing guitars and Lieckens' powerful drumming proved that the band knows how to give no less than any heavy rock band of the 1990s.
The undisputed highlight of the evening came, of course, with the first bass and guitar sounds of the timeless 90s anthem "Not an Addict". The roar of the audience in the Cinerama almost lifted the ceiling of the hall, and for nearly five minutes, thousands of Israelis sang the mesmerizing text word for word along with Bettens, in a moment of pure catharsis that distilled all the beauty of the alternative rock of that decade. Towards the end of the show and the encores, the band provided moments of pure acoustic magic in their performances of "Favorite Adventure", "Butterflies Instead" and "Laughing as I Pray", before closing the evening with a wild and liberated rock and roll attack with "God in My Bed".
The Israeli press reviews in the days following the show crowned the evening at the Cinerama as a crushing triumph of musical honesty and pure emotion over cynicism, and as a live show that gave the local audience two hours of sanity and quality escapism. The romance that was forged that November 2000 night at the Cinerama was not forgotten, and became the opening shot of a close and extraordinary relationship that led to "K's Choice" returning to perform in Israel many more times in the decades to come, but for everyone who held that illustrated invitation card on November 15, 2000, the initial magic of the "Almost Happy" period at the Cinerama remained a one-time moment in time.
The setlist played at the concert:
1. Cocoon Crash
2. Everything for Free
3. Believe
4. Hide
5. Not an Addict
6. If You're Not Scared
7. Almost Happy
8. I Smoke a Lot
9. Another Year
10. My Head
11. Busy
12. Butterflies Instead
13. My Heart
14. Winter
15. Live for Real
16. Always Everywhere
17. Favorite Adventure
18. Paradise in Me
Encore:
19. All
20. Mr. Freeze
21. Elegia
22. Shadowman
23. Breakfast
24. Laughing as I Pray
25. God in My Bed
"Face/Off" - Israel's Rock Blog
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