Stress at KKL Luzern

It was “Jeder Rappen zählt” charity week again and Stress played a special concert with many guests. Of course this was immediately sold out. The whole sales went then for the benefit of the charity event. The glasbox was standing on Europaplatz in Luzern again, directly next to the trainstation, and the three SRF3 presenters Nik Hartmann, Philipp Gerber and Anic Lautenschlager spent again 24/7 in it, hosted talk and music guests, introdueced charity projects and lead through the programme. Next to many free concerts there also was this Stress concert at KKL.

We arrived there pretty early, spent time on this afternoon at Europaplatz with hot punch as well as mulled wine. While queuing for the concert we watched Stress’ soundcheck through the glass doors of KKL. In the afternoon we also met on the way to SRF3 camp Sway Clarke II. He’s singing with Stress the first single of the new album – “Love You When I’m High”. I was surprised how well he spoke German. And so he told us that he originally is from Toronto/Canada, but is living in Berlin. We were even more looking forward to the concert then.

And finally we were standing front row, the band entered stage, the guitare player touched the strings and the intro started. Energy loaded the concert started with “Noir” [Video here], first title of the new album “Stress”.  Karolyn and M.A.M were part of it as well of course. “Luzern, KKL, how are you?” – huge cheering for this fulminant start. “We try everything we can to make you forget, that you have to work tomorrow” Stressed promised with his French accent with outlook on the next day. And this was for sure no problem for the next two hours. With “Au Poste” the atmosphere did rise already. The audience sang immediately along with Karolyn. A huge party from the first beat on. One would have loved to jump on stage during “On vit qu’ne fois” to dance along. “Are you ready to use your legs?” Stress urged the audience, of course a request to jump and go crazy during “St. Profit”. Two days later was after all going to be Christmas and one will have to be enough good at the parents’ table.

The first guests appeared: For “Love You When I’m High” Sway Clarke II came to Luzern. The audience of course knew the actual single and sang along loudley. After Noah Veraguth, front guy of Pegasus, entered stage all in black for “Jungle” [Video here]. The kicked balloon just went into the face of a spectactor – he just wasn’t good in soccer. Yes, he’s luckily better in singing 😉 To play soccer wouldn’t have been something for Nicole Bernegger either on this evening. With a broken foot she hobbled on stage to Stress after – “Lausangeles” was the first title she performed with the “The Voice” judge. I like this woman so much, she’s got an absolutely incredible voice! Even the foot can be broken. Doesn’t make any difference. Just brilliant! They continued with “95” and they even went wilder. For “C’est Réel” the audience should have parted into a pit inbetween and everyone to run towarrds each other, though it didn’t work too well and he postponed it to a later try. For “Paradis Perdu” Evelinn Trouble  was part of. A Zurich singer living in London. With a single song it was difficult to judge, but she got a great voice, I liked her stage presence and she seemed very energetic. One of my favourite performances of this evening.

The screaming of course started as soon as Bastian Baker  put a food on stage with his cheecky grin. Well, Stress of course was even teasing everyone before he appeared. After loads of messing around, they first played a new version of Stephan Eicher’s “Déjeneur en paix” [Video here], during what Bastian tested lyrics knowledge in front rows. The second song was the “Noel’s Room” title “Robot Girl”. And during “I Follow Rivers” it was all happening there: Stress, Bastian and Mam jumped, as they did often before, into the middle of  the audience and let them celebrate properly.

After a bit more hip hop with “Mais Ou”, there were even more guests for “Futur”: Mimiks, Arma Jackson and the Bernese high-flyer  Lo & Leduc [Video here]. First I was irritated, because Lo didn’t join immediately, but he wasn’t missing. Really great French – Bernese German mix! And the concert wasn’t finished yet at all. The VIPs, people on the balcony, got asked again to join in. A special “Tous les mêmes” latin version [Video here] followed before the new “RAF”. And then the pit finally worked a lot better than during the first try. Nicole came back on stage for “Horizon” [Video here] and everyone of course waited for “Elle”. Naturally Noah was part of it again. For the last song “Saturé” all the guest joined the stage again. “Are you drunk in the back there?” Stress asked and interrupted the song, it hadn’t even really started yet. For the final each single one of course had to go along properly, if on stage or in front of it. Stress knows how to do this.

This was a real great, unique concert. So much variety, so much energy and also fun. We were pretty exhausted after. How did you like it? You can eve relisten it on SRF3 by the way – [SRF3: Stress im KKL].

Yes, and the chance to see the guests during another concert are probably small. But we’ll see on the upcoming Stress tour (from 07.03.2015 on). I think, at one or the other there could be a special guest: In Bern (10.04.2015) Lo & Leduc maybe? In Zurich (11.04.2015) possibly Bastian (tourtechnically inbetween Chile and Belgium) or maybe Noah? Though both of them have been in Solothurn (14.03.2015) at a Stress concert before (Mr Baker is not in the country though on that day, and it’s unfortunately already sold out). Mimiks is from Luzern (24.04.2015) and Nicole Bernegger from Basel (28.03.2015). But I don’t know! 😉 I’m only guessing and I sadly can’t be part of all these concerts to check, if it happend.

But even without guests the concert of stress are absolutely genious! They haven’t won the Swiss Music Award as “Best Live Act” for nothing after all. And if I understood right, Stress’ background singer Karolyn will even present her first own EP on this tour.

All the dates are found on www.stressmusic.com

[more photos in gallery]