Ramblings of a Brit abroad

There is nothing subtle about AC/DC. There never has been and there never will be. When you go and see their show as my son Tom and I did last night, you are pretty sure what you are going to get. A full on, auditory, ass kicking and we were not disappointed. After a regular show, you get the high pitched whine for a few hours afterwards and then it goes away. Mine was still there this morning and Tom says he still has his.

The “Black Ice” World Tour is a mix of new stuff from the current album along with the classics you would expect. Tracks such as “Rock and Roll Train” and “Big Jack” from the current offering mixed in seamlessly with “You Shook Me All Night Long” and ” Hells Bells”. The new stuff didn’t sound out of place at all, basically because is is pretty much the tried and tested in your face stuff that made the boys famous in the first place.

Brian Johnson sounded like he had been gargling Razor Blades before he came on stage but was spot on in his delivery. Angus Young, who is now 53, was as demented as ever, still in the Schoolboy outfit, which he still strips off during every show. Scrawny he may be but I wish I had that much energy. The rest of the band were almost secondary to the performances of Young and Johnson although it was amusing that Drummer Phil Rudd had a ciggy on the go for what seemed like the entire night.

Highlights of the night were ” Whole Lot of Rosie” and “Let There Be Rock” in which Angus assaulted our eardrums with close to 15 minutes of the loudest fastest guitar work I think I have ever heard. And just when you thought that you were in for some releif, the encore let us have it all over again with “Highway to Hell” and ” For Those About To Rock” complete with the 6 cannons at the back of the stage. When the show turns up in Europe, go see it. There can’t be many bands that put this much into a show for the fans.

I would also like to offer my congratulations to the support act. A bunch of Irish lads called The Answer. It must be daunting to open for such luminaries as AC/DC, but they did an excellent 6 song set and were warmly applauded by the crowd. Good on yer lads.

At the back end of last year, The Police very kindly paid a visit to Florida and played a great gig at the St.Petes Times Forum in Tampa.

I, for one, thought that this would be the once in a lifetime opportunity to see them before Andy Summers goes into a retirement home.

But no, they have decided that Florida needs another dose of their rock/reggae fusion and are playing in Orlando on the 16th of May. As if this were not enough, they have sweetened the deal by adding Elvis Costello as support.

And thanks to the wonderful people at Citi who are sponsoring the tour, we got first dibs on tickets a full 5 days before they go on sale to Joe Public.

I promise to post a full review as soon as possible after the event.

There are some things in this world that are just meant to be. Tomato ketchup on a bacon sandwich with a nice cup of tea, the Queens speech on BBC at 3 o’clock on Christmas Day and at least one of the promoted Championship teams going straight back down again the following season. There is a natural order to things that shouldn’t be messed with.

I say these things to point to another. Van Halen are not Van Halen without David Lee Roth. Following Diamond Daves departure in the 80’s they produced some OK music with Sammy Hagar ( but it wasn’t quite right ) and then flirted with Gary Cherone of Extreme fame ( what were you thinking ). So you can imagine both my surprise and joy when the announcement was made that Dave and Eddie had got older and wiser and decided that there was much money to be made by being friends again. The tour finally hit Florida on Valentines Day and there was much love in the house.

The night was set off in the only way it could be. A darkened stage, a few shadowy figures appeared and then the opening riff from “You really got me”. Stage lights up and Diamond Dave twirling a giant flag at the back of the stage. Crowd erupts. Van Halen proceeded to turn out classic after classic. “Running with the Devil”, “Panama”, “Jamie’s Crying”, “Ain’t talking bout love”, they were all there. Dave’s voice sounded a little ropey for the first couple of songs but he hit his stride pretty quickly. Eddie was on form from note 1. The newest addition to the band, Eddie’s slightly pudgy son Wolfgang (16) held his own on bass and Alex behind a massive drum kit held it all together.

There were several highlights to the night. A superbly indulgent drum solo from Alex Van Halen who looked surprisingly like Leonard Nimoy with his ears bound up in “Star Trek, The Search For Spock”, a great guitar solo from Eddie who employed a suitably decorated power drill on his instrument at one point and the best was when Dave took centre stage with guitar in hand and started recalling his younger days in LA before getting the rest of the band involved with a particular favourite of mine, “Ice Cream Man”.

They played only one encore, “Jump”, but they had pretty much done everything else. They only played stuff from the David Lee Roth era, nothing later, so it was an evening for the purist’s amongst us. Besides, even taking account of Wolgang being 16, the average age of the band is still over 44 so these are not young men. I expect they were tired.

How good was it………….. Going to Tampa on Monday to see them again….. Nuff Said !!!