This unofficial site features his current and recent events and tours
Review of Tony Hadley at Maten Van Maas, Zevenbergen, Holland, 16th April 2011
When planning how I was going to celebrate my 50th birthday, one of the top items on my list was to go to a Tony gig as near to my birthday as possible. I was prepared to go (almost) anywhere in the world to see him, but unfortunately no shows seemed to be coming up, I even toyed with the idea of hiring Tony myself and bringing him to me, but I knew this would be rather a lot of money. Just when I was losing hope that I would see Tony near my birthday then the Maten Van Mass festival was announced. The weekend before my birthday - I was very happy. Time to put my travel agent hat on and sort out our travel arrangements.
I was sure we weren't going to get snow in April but with the experience of Jersey in my mind, I decided it would be best for us to travel together to Holland, it would also save waiting for each other at the airport. I had never heard of Zevenbergen before or had any idea where it was, but a quick search on the internet and our travel plans were complete - fly to Amsterdam, catch the train, changing once and walk to the hotel. Sorted. We also flew out on the Friday, which gave us a chance to explore Zevenbergen on Saturday morning and make a weekend of it.
The show started at 8pm, so plenty of time relax and get ready. There were lots of people I had never heard of on the bill, They included along with a choir
- MvM Band olv Walter Lavent
- Manuëla Kemp
- Berget Lewis
- Marco Kanters
- Jos Ansems
- Bombita's
- Pop Koor De Voices
- 'Your Votes'
- Nol Havens (VOF de Kunst)
- Mieke (Giga) Stemerdink
- Marcel Kapteijn (Ten Sharp)
- Niko Cristiansen ( livin' Blues)
- Gruppo Sportivo Hans vandenburg
- Loïs Lane
- Dean Saunders ( winner of Dutch popstars 2011)
- Tim Akkerman
Some of the songs were sung in English, but I was completely lost when they started talking .... The downside to having all these people on stage was that Tony wasn't scheduled to come on stage until nearly 12 midnight and it was over another 30 mintues after the scheduled time that he actually came on stage. He had loads of waiting about. There were far too many artists on the bill and Tony being last, I'm sure had a song or two cut from his set.
Tony didn't have his band with him and used the house band that everyone else had. They were good and played to suit his arrangements of the songs and the choir were used for a couple of the songs.
There wasn't a set list for this show and as I was celebrating my birthday, I'd had a few glasses of wine, so my memory of the songs sung isn't too great, but there were about six or seven songs sung including True, Gold and Through the Barricades. He also joined up with the other artists and sang another song at the end.
I got to meet Tony and he wished me a very happy birthday, I'd enjoyed going to Holland for the weekend before my birthday.
Denise 8/5/11