All week I had been trying in vain to contact either Nina or Pat to get some information on the rumour I was hearing - X-Ray Vision to do a live show somewhere in Germany. It can't be true I thought. Not after the well planned success of Cologne. After all, what's the point of doing a live show if your fans know nothing about it! Or do fans matter?

However, true it was and I was bloody annoyed that I had not been given an opportunity to fly out and report on the show first hand. Sitting in my living room with a beer or two I watched the opening of the show and felt a lump in my throat. It brought flooding back all my great memories from Cologne!

Before long the show seemed to be lacking something and it reminded me of the first couple of X-Ray shows (which were none too great - to put it mildly).

Large areas of the crowd seemed very different from the highly excited Cologne crowd and appeared to be totally unable to identify with what they were seeing. Before too long it became obvious to TV viewers that the crowd were growing very restless and were looking to disrupt as much of the show as possible. Beer bottles and cans were raining down on the stage and Ray was noticeably and understandably aggravated by their behaviour.

Attempting to calm the crowd down, Ray climbed aboard the roaming craned camera platform with Lincoln cam and entered into the lion's den so to speak. Seizing their opportunity, the many morons in the crowd (many of whom had come to see Die Toten Hosen play live as advertised in the German press that day) took great delight in showering Ray with yet more beer cans and beer. Ray had already been soaked by flying beer minutes earlier!

I have to admit that I really felt for Ray, as nobody deserves to be subjected to this type of treatment.

One and a quarter hours into what should have been a fabulous two hours 'special', Ray called the whole thing to a halt and rightly so in my humble opinion.

As X-Ray Vision abruptly ground to its halt, there was a distinctly bad taste in my mouth. I could not believe what I had just witnessed. My immediately thought was: It serves MTV right for bad planning and overlooking Ray fans! But that's not entirely fair is it? The Toten Hosen fans have a lot to answer for!

I spent the next hour or so fast forwarding and rewinding my video recorder to see if there was something I had grossly overlooked. Confident that I hadn't overlooked anything, I went to bed very sad and tried to imagine the atmosphere in the X-Ray hotel. Would they be sipping champagne as they did in the Cologne's hotel - I couldn't imagine it… 

Ray was I'm still sure still seething at the way his show had been received, whilst obviously pleased that no-one got hurt…

All this in a country that almost certainly contains his highest percentage of fans. A sad sad day to be sure…

Written by Andy Smith - Most Wanted Friends (Issue 10 - June/July '96)