A big cheer breaks out from the audience, again, as Will Alexander pulls the black sheets covering Keith's equipment and we can all see the Moog with its red, blinking lights. Will must be enjoying this little bit of theatre, he seems to be getting more and more adept at teasing and working up the audience before and after the show!

The set remains the same as before, but we are surprised by many changes in Keith's improvisations. Of course, he never plays exactly the same thing twice, but everything is completely different from what we last heard a week or so ago, and they are such delights! He has, for example, inserted a new piano section in his solo in "Rondo", between the quotes from "Out of Doors" and "Carmina Burana", and the improvisation section of "Take a Pebble" goes on for noticeably longer than before.

On the other hand, Keith spoils our fun a little bit by always announcing the title of the piece they are about to play, rather than letting the audience guess from the first few notes*. He did that with some of the pieces on earlier nights, too, but tonight he does it all the way through the show. Perhaps he's trying to make the evening run as smoothly as possible for Greg's sake, who is still obviously very ill. His voice doesn't sound great, and he hardly smiles during the main set. When they come back on for the encore, though, Greg is visibly more relaxed and even pulls a funny face at the noise Keith forces out of the L-100.

*(Now that we come to think of it, it's quite interesting that the Japanese audiences more or less immediately recognise the first few notes of "Tarkus" and cheer accordingly, whereas it seems to take their European counterparts a lot longer.)

Keith doesn't play his Moog during "Fanfare" tonight, but after his upside-down "Toccata & 'Fugue" he closes the lid of the grand piano, jumps on top of it and plays the same tune again on the QS-8 - back to front - before jumping off and finishing the rest of "Rondo" - as he did in Dortmund and, we hear, Montreux. The overall sound quality doesn't come across as being as good as some of the other shows, perhaps it has to do with the acoustics of the venue.

June 12, Hamburg:
In Prague we had talked to Greg about the Hamburg date, which the Impressions staff as well as many fans from Britain (and New Zealand!) would be flying in to see, and he told us he was looking forward to the occasion. As we arrive at the venue, we find our British friends standing outside on the street corner. Yes, Liv is here, and Martyn, Chris Newman, and.. Geoff Goostry, whom we had seen waving Union Jack and Pirate flags at one of the Tokyo gigs last year, is here with the flags again. It's like a reunion of the ELP Convention in Birmingham back in '95!

Keith is very animated again. The interaction between him and Carl in the "silly" section of "Rondo" is somewhat short, but what they do play tonight more than makes up for that. As the stage is small, Keith is rather restricted in his choice of location for lying down with the L-100 on top of him and playing "Toccata & Fugue" upside down. Once he is through with this, he climbs atop his grand piano and plays it once more on the QS-8, crouched down over it at first and gradually stretching his legs backwards, until he is lying flat on his stomach - all the while continuing to play! Apart from a couple of feedbacks during "Take a Pebble", there are no major hitches tonight.

A small crew from the local TV station, Hamburg 1, is here. As well as filming part of the concert, they conduct a brief interview with the British fans after the show, for a magazine programme to be broadcast the following week (which, unfortunately, we could not get anyone to tape for us, so we don't know how they reported the event in the programme.)

Dresden station still looks as if the Berlin Wall hasn't come down. OK, there's a Pizza Hut in there, but everything else is still ancient: the platform, the signs for departing trains, the shops, the public lavatories. And the town itself is the same: there are McDonalds and West German department stores but, on a whole, the town centre still looks like a typical communist town. They have now finally started restoring the Frauenkirche, which was destroyed by the Allied bombing and left in that state throughout the Socialist regime. It stands on the edge of the area full of historic buildings and tourists wandering around - it's another hot, sunny day - and right across the bridge from there is tonight's venue, an open air cinema at the Elbufer (Elbe Bank). It has a huge stage, much larger than the ones ELP have been playing on so far on this tour, and the venue itself spreads across a much larger area than the other venues. Nice contrast to last night's cosy, club atmosphere. The band have had to catch 2 flights to get here from Hamburg, and they arrive at the venue pretty late. After they are finished with the soundcheck, there's hardly time for Sieges Even to go through theirs. For some reason they start letting people in before the poor boys have finished, and they have to complete their soundcheck in full view of the audience, who are steadily filling the place up.

By the time ELP come on, the place is full (the official figure is 2,200) - and there are at least 100 lookers-on on the bridge, at the side of the venue and about half a mile away from the stage. The stage being at a 90-degree angle to the bridge, there is no way these people can see anything, except perhaps a tiny edge of the drum kit, but they are curious enough to stay there and "watch" until the end of the show.

Greg is looking much better tonight - he later tells us that the agonising pain in his right ear, which has kept him awake on many nights, is finally receding. The whole group are at ease and in their element, and a truly sensational show unfolds, the colourful lighting against the gradual dusk adding a dramatic touch to the spectacle.

14 July:
The German leg of the tour is over and ELP are flying to Italy. We say goodbye to Keith, Greg and Carl, and to each other, and leave for home: Yoko via Frankfurt and Tokyo to Hiroshima; Mami is flying from Munich via Kuala Lumpur back to her home town Osaka; and Akiko on a slow train with no air-conditioning back to Berlin.