After many, many years the legendary band De Raggende Manne have released a new album. And a tour through the Netherlands was planned. Shortly before the start of the tour, singer Bob Fosko was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. Nevertheless they opted to do the tour and plan Bob’s treatments to effect the tour as little as possible. And just in case they hired a couple of guest singers for each gig. I originally wanted to go to the Leiden gig a week earlier but it was already sold out before I had tickets. Luckily I could still get tickets for the The Hague gig. Most of the gigs if not all sold out.

The opening act was Nancy Kleurenblind en de zingende Roady. They are 2 women singing and one plays a kiddie casio keyboard and the other a bass guitar. The Dutch lyrics were quite a bit tongue-in-cheek, but other than that a everything about it spells bad.

Then it was time for De Raggende Manne. Zand was the opener of the evening. A large part of the music is improvisation yet the songs sound all quite recognizable which is quite am achievement. Bob made some dry comments on his cancer treatments at the start of the gig, but other than that he looked actually quite well. And his screaming sounded quite on par too. The set consisted of a selection of all their albums. After three songs the first guest singer took over the mic. Jeroen sang Ik geloof dat jij het niet helemaal snapt and actually did it quite good. The other two guest singers were not as good. Lullen bij de Bus one of the oldest songs today was sung again by Bob. About half the set was song by Bob and the rest by the three guest singers. Ik vind je leuk was played twice, and it was different the second time. The regular set ended with the witty track Bonnetje including the 1-second bonus Trut. And their greatest “hit” Poep In je Hoofd. Of course they came back for an encore. All three guest singers joined in the vocals for Bruine Armen, Kneet, de cover from Jan Boezeroen named De Fles and Nee Da’s Niks was added as the final song when the musicians already had laid down their instruments. Awesome gig.