The concert was ok. I missed some songs, maybe "God gave rock and roll to You" should have made it in there.
At least we in the crowd managed to force John to come in and say that they WONT do the song but he sang the chorus a little together with us and after a couple of rounds the base and guitar joined in a little from back stage
I saw them also last summer in sweden and as that time i missed that they have opted out from bringing a keyboard player. Especially on the old songs it feels that the keyboard is missing.
I have also felt that their shows has lacked some "heart" in the last years. If it is because of petra or the audience or me i do not know. (see below) But i give the concert my approval after all.
Later in the week i catched a flight down to budapest in hungary and went to my second petra concert in the same week.
The concert was held in an old sports centre with maybe 1500 in the audience.
This was the second time ever that Budapest had a visit from a "big" christian band. Last summer Delirious was the first. I think the history for the christians in Budapest with the communism and all they have a hunger for Jesus and for these kind of events that are larger than us "old time" christians in scandinavia.
It concert started out late. Petra came in late from the flight. They came from Oslo in Norway but because of heavy snowfall they missed the connecting flight from copenhagen to Budapest. A local girl named Schmith Vera started her session maybe at 8 (one hour late). She was a cute girl singing with just an acoustic guitar. She got a lot of publicity in Hungary when she came fifth an the local version of Idol on TV. (http://www.schmidtvera.hu) She used the opportunity in Idol to witness about her personal faith and relation to Jesus. While she was singing the band arrived and Paul Simmons started to fix his drums in the background. He came forward after one of her songs (she had two songs in english) to say thanks because she sang one of his favorite songs. (Sorry, i do not remember the title...)
When she was ready the rest of the band came on stage and did a twenty minutes soundcheck in front of the whole crowd.
It was all fun really and just made the event more exiting.
It was a couple of songs into the concert until the sound got ok.
This concert had much more devotion in it than the swedish concert. It was mostly the same program but the audience was more hungry and devoted. And the band felt it and really enjoyed the moment. (That does not mean that the swedish concert was bad...)
In the end after the softer songs and Bobs and Johns invitation to pray and when everybody was singing We all need Jesus it was really a holy atmosphere.
After the concert i finally managed to persuade one in the staff to sell me her Sweatshirt with a nice Petra logo and "budapest" printed on the back together with local sponsor logos. I wont tell you how expensive that one got...
Some pictures (Sweden and Hungary) and 4 short videos (Hungary) can be found here:
http://www.nyback.com/xaraya/html/index ... emId=22628
Its only taken with my mobile phone so the quality is very bad. But you can watch and listen (if you can stand the bad sound) to some from the acoustic section where they use the acoustic guitar and the cello which they did not do in Sweden.
I am very glad i went down there. My last petra concert was a good memory to keep. It felt a little sad after that it may not be any more petra concerts again.
One wish/hope would be that some day Bob and Greg X Volz could join for a nostalgic tour to europe, maybe with John Lawry on keyboard. "The Doxology tour" maybe