Although Kent is in the middle of Utopia-belt land, a couple of people told me that this gig had not been very widely advertised so it wasn’t as large a crowd as last night but those who did come certainly got a good show as Kasim still played at 110%! It also made for a more informal relaxed atmosphere!

The opening band was Mike’s Band (I think!) who played a mixture of cowboy, folk and soft music. They described themselves as a bunch of overweight balding oldies but the six of them seemed to really enjoy themselves!

After Kasim’s great opening Don’t Hold Me Back / Afraid Himself To Be, he joked about Sometime Love Is A Dangerous Thing before he went on to sing it to great applause. Unfortunately the sound in this venue wasn’t clear (slightly muffled) which personally I thought was emphasised as the sound last night was so good. The lighting in the room was very bad too so, as I was one of the view who respected Kasim’s wishes not to use flash, my photos are very dark (but trying clicking on each of them to view an artificially lightened version).

We then had a nice cluster of Utopia songs - Set Me Free, Alone (Kasim couldn’t remember who wrote it!) and There Goes My Inspiration before Kasim spoke about The Night Of The Proms Tour and about how bored he was in his hotel in Antwerp which is why he offered to learn Rob Di Nise’s song Malle Babbe so that the orchestra could rehearse it! I know that Kasim wrote to his list a while back that he learnt it but it wasn’t until he played some of it tonight that I realised how well he learnt it! Obviously as the song is in Flemish, I couldn’t understand the words but he certainly got all of Rob Di Nise’s inflections and spacing perfectly! It was just amazing for me to hear!

Next Kasim mentioned that he hasn’t got his CD at these gigs as he’s signed a record contract(!) to mass applause and then he played both Before She Was Gone and The One Sure Thing from the CD - both were very well received by the crowd tonight! He altered the ending of both of them tonight too.

There was next some nice banter with the audience which included someone asking Kasim if Todd was older than him (Kasim said that Todd was “a lot older”!) which turned to talking about how nobody is getting any younger. As he ironically joked, next Kasim had to put on his glasses to check the words of Cliché! Kasim said that he knew the words but he wanted to make sure before someone posts to the Angry Todd board that he got the words wrong! Kasim then proceeded to play a totally faultless version of the song!

As Kasim sang Libertine he joked that he wished he had a band with him so some of (most of!) the audience joined in with the “stay away from Libertine” part! Kasim next said that he wanted us to help him sing his next song too and then jokingly started on Malle Babbe again! I think that nearly everybody in the room did join in with the singing and handclaps on One World and when Kasim finished singing they all gave him a standing ovation too!!