Ramping Up For Vegas NTO Style

The twins—Bill and Tom Kaulitz—of Tokio Hotel will celebrate their 21st birthday on September 1. We’ve got a wonderful surprise for the NTO Blog on that day—mark your calendars.

In the meantime, we are celebrating in NTO style with a trip to Vegas: shopping, ATV rides, rock wall climbing, a little gambling and lots of conversation, eating, dancing, with much laughter involved.

While we get ready to descend on Las Vegas, enjoy a blast from our recent past with Annette’s review of the Humanoid City tour in Padova, Italy in March.

Pre-Show Line
The NTO Italian posse got to PalaSport about 5:30pm. We found parking and followed the other fans walking towards the venue. There was a radio booth playing karoke Tokio Hotel at the end of a long driveway filled with fans. We took a spot on the sidewalk rather than stand in the line jammed together, figuring if we held our ground we could just interface with the line once it started moving. What difference did it make if we were standing in the line or right next to the line? Tired fan logic. Tricia and I walked up to the front of the venue to see how long the line was. It wasn’t really that bad. We saw a Bill Kaulitz lookalike and took his picture. He was super tall and became a landmark of sorts later on. Once we returned to the group we just kinda hung out and sang to the karoke music until the line started moving. The line never appeared to get any longer because all the newly arriving fans would walk around it up to the front or stand on the side. This was a slight concern. We saw a ton of teenage and even younger fans, lots of fanboys, and a serious amount of parents, especially fandads.

Barriers placed on both the right and the left created a bottleneck of sorts. Once the line started moving, fans were mushed in the center from both sides. In Padova, I got to know some fans intimately. I felt like I was a blanket in one of those space bags with the air taken out, before the air is taken out. We must have stood for at least 1 hour like this being pushed and shoved from every direction, holding onto each other for dear life. Since we were in such tight quarters, I could not take off the rain poncho I had put on earlier when it started sprinkling raindrops. This ended up being a good thing. The plastic material on this poncho made me like butter on a hot grill. I was able to slide thru groups of fans quickly due to the slippery nature of my raingear. NICE!!!!! Unfortunately, this resulted in Maria losing grip on me at once point. I panicked, but Tricia had enough foresight to pull me forward so we didn’t lose 2 people. Luckily, Maria has super curly hair so we could spot her out and were able to regroup quickly once inside the venue.

Two unique observations from the line: #1 Fandads are relentless. An Olympic sport which pits teenie fans against fandads would be a close race. These men were BIG and had absolutely no problem pushing a woman aside, if it would get their little girl into the venue a bit earlier. I appreciate the lovie dadness of all of this, but chivalry men, please. We witnessed a 6’+ fandad go full force into a 5’ 9” security guy. This man slammed into security so hard it looked as if he were trying to knock him down. The security guards, about 6 of them, lock arms to form a barrier. They say "go" or something equivalent in Italian, lift their arms, and let fans underneath to the next set of interlocked guards. Once they have the proper number of people in the middle between the 2 sets of guards, we would be walked up to the zigzag entry to the venue. A unique method of crowd control. This interlocking of arms prevented this fandad from being able to bust thru security. Once I was in the zig zag line, other fandads were trying to edge me out on the sides. Tricia informed me to watch out for this, so I put my arm out to grab the barrier so nobody could get passed me.

#2 Maria and I met some lovely Italian fans. One girl spoke English very well and we started talking to them. They asked us if we came from USA to see Tokio Hotel, how long we were in Italy for, and a bunch of other questions. After we answered, the one girl would tell the non-English speaking girl what we had said. This was priceless because we got to see her facial expressions as she was hearing our story. These fans told us the USA was lucky in our Tokio Hotel fandom. Lucky?, we asked. Yes, she said because since we speak English and so do the guys, we can understand the interviews. Italians have to wait for a translation if they don’t speak English or German. This statement put a whole new perspective on the idea that the USA is unlucky because Tokio Hotel caters to Europe.

Pre-Show Inside Venue

Once we enter the venue we see that it is crowded. There is a floor area and then a balcony section with seats. The balcony is already two people deep standing and seats are filling up quickly. The barrier and catwalk are surrounded with people. Michelle, Tricia and I plant ourselves right in front of the tech center, a little to the right. We are about 10’ from the far right corner end of the catwalk. I do my best Bill spread legs photoshoot stance and use my foot to mark our spot with an X to claim it. While a member of the posse holds our ground, the others go get water, bathroom, etc. We start waiting and observing. The energy of the crowd is ELECTRIC. You can feel the anticipation in the air. The venue is smaller in scale, but it is jammed packed. A sold out show we hear. YEAH!!!! The boys are gonna be so happy. It is roasting inside. I am wearing a tissue tee and I am boiling hot. Italians are wearing sweaters and leather jackets. Whaaaa?

Fans start screaming for some Italian music duo seated in the balcony. Security hands out free water to fans at the front. We determine this is to make their job easier because no water meant somebody is surely fainting. We see a fangirl get pulled out from Tom’s side. Her eyes are rolled back in her head. It is quite distressing. Everybody takes a sip of water. At one point four 20-something Italian girls behind us come up to either Tricia or Michelle, and ask us to move over. Move over?? One of the fans is short and can’t see over us. There are empty spots in front of us, we tell them, just move there. No they say, they want us to move. WTF?? We tell them no and they start talking about us in Italian. If they wanted our spot they should have gotten to it earlier. You don’t just tell somebody I want your spot, move, and get mad if they won’t move. Hell, if that’s the way it works I should have gone up to the PRIME barrier spot between Tom and Bill and told some other fan to move. Right?

Fans chant Tokio Hotel, pre-show music starts playing. We notice there is no light rigging for the four light technicians and get nervous. We figure out that there is no way the whole egg is going to fit in the venue. There just isn’t enough room from the stage floor to the ceiling. No biggie. We bop along to WMBW Remix which Michelle and I love. Nobody is around us so we have plenty of room for girlie dancing. Fans sing along loudly and others start chanting Tokio Hotel again. Not in the middle of the remix, we groan. 99 Problems (Jayzee’s rap) comes on. People are screaming, the air is thick with intensity, and the temperature is rising now since the front doors have been closed a while. The show is about to begin.

We’ll take a breather now, so come back tomorrow for Humanoid City, Padova Review, Part 2.