At 8 p.m., when the concert is scheduled for, we are six sitting at the first floor café of Merlin. An old theatre critic (who leaves at 20:36), a photographer, three waiters, and me. Gonzo detonates on stage after an hour’s delay, before the audience of 25. Árpi Stumpf, the singer looking a left-wing representative in the Upper House in Britain with an old school Epiphone hanging in his neck notes that it is a kind of family atmosphere but that he still likes it. I don’t believe him, but then they grind 10 more songs, and now I believe that he knows they are on the right track. All of the 25 are amazed. The drummer playing like a metronome and the bass player as precise as an atomic clock squeeze the TNT shots through my ears. The smart keyboard player smartly produces the fashionable sounds of the new millennium, while the others follow the pre-2000 scheme, very well, in English. The two vocalists/guitarists at the front are excellent, and the best is when they sing together. All of the five members are beautiful, as is their twenty-something energy, right into the bull’s eye. Paul McCartney would be proud to have written the last, quite sentimental song.

At 10 p.m. we are 47 – 20 Dutch and 27 Hungarians. Voicst hits me on 15.000 megawatts. You can’t help moving your arms and feet. All mouths open, all jaws fallen. Tjeerd Bornhof… I almost used a swearword to express what he does to us. To be precise, he sends decibels at such a pace into our bottoms that, ooops, as if out of a rocket, there we are aboard Apollo 11, riding the rollercoaster, and we will soon make a mess. The Dutch boys produce cigs that smell like clove, they dance and sing, and they are happy to be at Merlin. Köszi, köszi [“thanks” in Hungarian], the singer says, köszi and kiss. A Dutch fan shouts that kiss in Hungarian is puszi. The singer laughs at the word, and asks whether it is truly so. OK, then köszi and pussy. We continue. The track is called High As An Amsterdam Tourist and I swear that they play as greatly as they did in the U.S., before 50.000. We are 47, I’ve counted everyone around. Some campfire atmosphere sets in. The singer asks us to sit down, and asks the sound engineer to turn down the volume a bit. He sings a wonderful song. A Hungarian boy sits on the stage, asks the guitar player for a cig. He gets it. A woman behind my back says she has never seen anything like this before. The stage opens below bass player Sven Woodside’s right – for us it’s the left – leg, and half of it disappears beneath. Is Voicst too big for the Merlin stage? I am a bit ashamed. Do we Hungarians welcome the Dutch like this? On decayed planks? I try to reassure myself that this can happen everywhere, even in Berlin, but I’m afraid it cannot. I am calm again only when a goddess shows up, and takes to the stage with such big a saxophone that an extra truck was needed to bring it here, and begins to play. Everyday I Work On The Road. The track sometimes gets to the same point where Baby You Can Drive My Car by The Beatles did. The sax girl stands by the stage, and dances like a dervish. She eyes me. I have never seen anything like this before. Liberty, love! These two I need. That is the message she sends over but not her room number. Liberty and love – that is what Voicst is about.