Last week we went to see Shirley Clamp perform at two very different gigs in Stockholm; an acoustic set at Moseback Lounge, and a schlager PA at big gay disco boat, Patricia! Both amazing in very different ways.
Moseback Lounge is a great little venue for gigs like that, a rare chance for an artist to perform so intimately for a small audience. It takes a certain amount of bravery to sing at a show like that, because the slightest mistake or wrong note, is amplified so much and noticed a lot more. But Shirley rose to the challenge easily and didn’t mess up once! It was a delightful performance that was almost half music and half comedic banter with the audience. She looked like she was having a great time on stage, and and as a result, the crowd did too.
She didn’t sing many of her own hits, preferring to do cover versions instead, such as Vanessa Carlton’s ‘A Thousand Miles’, Alanis Morrisette’s ‘Your House’, and Aretha Franklin’s ‘You Make Me Feel Like A Natural Woman’. The highlight of the night though, was when she was joined onstage by VELVET, for a rousing rendition of ‘Shackles’ by Mary Mary – nine years after we first saw them on stage together at the Eurovision Song Contest, when they did backing vocals for Antique on ‘Die For You’!
It was quite odd (in a good way!) seeing non-schlager Shirley, but that was remedied a few nights later when we saw her at Patricia! To a much louder, much more enthusiastic, and much gayer crowd, she opened with ‘Min Karlek’, closed with ‘Att Alska Dig’, and in between all that performed a medley of her most loved schlager songs; ‘Antligen’, ‘Eviga Langtan’, ‘Arliga Bla’, and ‘Lever Mina Drommar’. No ‘Med Hjartat Fyllt Av Ljus’ unfortunately, and she openly mocked our request for ‘Champions’, but it was still great and all you’d want from a Shirley schlager PA. What a woman!
