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And the fans gave the musicians a Cheburashka, a Matryoshka, a USSR t-shirt, a doll copy of Brian Molko and a ship as a symbol of the region.
Yesterday, June 18, the iconic British band Placebo gave a concert in Voronezh as part of their Russian tour. It is already the fifth time the band visits the motherland of “bears and balalaikas”, but it is the first time they went further than Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Altogether the tour includes 9 cities: Krasnoyarsk, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Yekaterinburg, Ufa, Nizhny Novgorod, Krasnodar. Voronezh became the second to last in the schedule, and the final concert will be played by the star trio on July 7 in Saint Petersburg.
The artists arrived in our city late at night but they still didn’t manage to get to the hotel unnoticed. The fans have been waiting for them at the entrance for several hours and let them go rest only after receiving the desired autographs. As a matter of fact, the most desperate ones spend the night “next” to the musicians – they slept in their cars near the hotel to see the band again in the morning.
In the morning, a “reinforcement” of twenty more people arrived. When the Placebo members came out, they were not all surprised to see such a procession: they amiably greeted everyone, signed the tickets, posters, CDs. The ones that didn’t bring anything with them got autographs on their bodies. The only thing they asked was not to take pictures of the frontman Brian Molko, as he really doesn’t appreciate it. It was long after the band got into the car that the fans kept screaming with enthusiasm and sharing impressions with one another: “Turns out Brian is so-o-o short, Stefan is really kind and Steve just rocks!”
Meanwhile, the musicians went to see the city. Curiously enough, Placebo were not interested in the traditional Voronezh sightseeing route like antique architectural monuments. The British artists came to us with their own list of places they wanted to visit.
Currently, the band is making a long film about Russia. It will include shots of “non-typical” sights of Russian heartland which the musicians read about in the Internet beforehand. For example, in Ufa their camera caught the sight of a wasteland behind the local cemetery.
Somehow Placebo assumed that the “Scarlett Sails” park on the Left Coast was the main Voronezh showplace, so it’s exactly where they went for shooting. By the way, the park visitors didn’t recognize the celebrities. Numerous moms with baby carriages just casually walked past and had no idea that by a chance they became heroines of an English film.
And later in the evening Placebo themselves were posing for three and a half thousand people in the Event-Hall of city-park “Grad”. By the way, no one was allowed to bring a professional photo camera to the concert, so you could only shoot the show with "point and shoot" cameras, phones and tablets. In fact, the band guitarist Stefan Olsdal himself took pictures of the audience during the concert using a tiny camera.
The legendary British trio presented their new album “Loud Like Love” in Voronezh. Basically, Placebo played this same program in the previous cities before coming to Voronezh. Which is why the fans new exactly what to expect from the show and knew the song list by heart, so there were no surprises.
Just as there were no big flash mobs. Although some were planned. During the title song of the before mentioned album, the crowd was going to send balloons flying, spread the “Love on – atom, Lone in the crowd” banner and lift up the letters L., O., V., E. Some lonesome balloons actually were flying around the audience, some papers were sticking out. And the so called “banner” made from A4 format paper shapelessly laid out on a far away stand was so small that the artists couldn’t see it from the stage even if they wanted to. It was only during the last song PostBlue that the fans made a collaborative effort – they lightened up the audience with lighters and phone screens.
As for the flowers, there was only one bouquet – white chamomiles someone threw on a speaker stayed there until the end of the show. Other presents were given by the fans to the musicians during a personal meeting that took place before the concert. Nine lucky ones, the winners of the contest for the most creative work inspired by Placebo were able to talk to their idols in the dressing room. They presented their favorite band a lot of different stuff: a musical Cheburashka, a Matryoshka, a USSR t-shirt, a ragdoll copy of Brian Molko. And since Voronezh is considered the home of Russian Fleet, they also gave the musicians a symbolical present - a ship. They say that the ship which had a Placebo engraving on the side and flags in the form of the cover of the band’s new album was particularly appreciated by the artists.
During the hour and a half show, the British stars played 18 songs from different albums after which they sang 4 more for the encore. Brian was switching his guitars like socks – we counted eight altogether. Notably, changing a guitar must be a very such an intimate process for Mr. Molko that he did it only in the darkness, which is why the lights were purposely faded after each song.
Finally all the Placebo members lined up in a row for the greeting, Brian thanked the audience with a Russian “Spasibo!” (the only Russian word he learned and said during the show without an accent) and English “It was incredibly great, ladies and gentlemen!”, they threw guitar picks and drumsticks into the crowd and left. And the fans kept standing before the stage hoping for a miracle. But the miracle had already happened: the very fact of such international stars as Placebo playing a show in Voronezh is already a miracle.