Before U start reading this I must warn u this is not the album review but a review on the Auggust 9th Concert of SCORPIONS in B’lore as requested by REVIEWER.
The winds of change are certainly sweeping Bangalore. Things which we never dreamt also (gods of rock playing live in our town) are happening with amazing regularity. Close on the heels of Deep Purple and Bryan Adams, veteran German hardrock band Scorpions played live at the Palace Grounds on Thursday 9th of August evening as part of the Asian leg of their world tour to promote their new album Acoustica. If someone had told me 1 year back that Deep Purple & Scorpions will play in b’lore one day I would have not only laughed at him but also would have asked him from where does he buy his pot that he hallicunates about gods performing here.:)
Anyway about the concert now. Since it was supposed to be an unplugged show me & my friends were really not than sure if we should go for it. So we took a gamble-instead of buying the tickets in advance we thought we’ll try to buy the tickets at the venue-if we get fine & if we dont then also fine we’ll go to pecos & drink in the company of Led Zep, Floyd & some blues tunes. We reached the venue on time & here the credit must go to the b’lore Traffic cops for once doing something good. This time there was no traffic jams. As we were hanging out outside meeting almost all the people we have known in b’lore (most of them after a long time) & chatting up about old times we heard DJ IVAN take stage. Now at this point I was eager to enter the venue as I thought he will play some great rock anthems since he has all the songs at his fingertips & with that kinda speakers it will beat Purple Haze any day. But that was not to be. Ivan played some atrocious songs. He even played a fatboy slim song in front of 25, 000 rockers & a few other bad songs too. As we were standing outside we heard the MC announing the arrival of SCORPIONS on stage. And guess what we heard....ELECTRIC GUITARS!!!! sometimes god really smiles at us. Whatta pleasant f’in surprise. We ran inside & made our way thro’ to almost the 1st few rows.
The started off with Loving U Sunday Morning & Bad Boys Running Wild. And boy do they rock!!! At 60 years of age Klaus Miene can give any vocalist in the world a complex. Its amazing to think that these guys have been rockin since late 60’s. The energy is very much there.
Soon the distortion made way for the acoustics. Rudolf Schenker has a Flying V acoustic guitar. They played Always somewhere & then Holiday . Both the songs b’lore was singing along almost word by word. And there was the intoxicating smell of pot all over the place. Urs trully was totally stoned by this time & dying for the Scorpions to go back to their electric guitars(weed when smoked after a long time really hits hard).
Then guitarist Mathias Jabs enthralled the crowd with some excellent guitar work esp the making sounds of roaring of a bike really pleased the crowd. Then the drummer James Kottak took over with some extended double-bass drum solo with some help from their guest percussionist. Crowd was having a ball.
Then the band came back & rocked us for some more hard rock ecstasy with numbers like Tease Me Please Me & Big City Life. But the best song of the evening was a 70’s song the name of which I dont remember right now. Then everyone took a bow and left which was really funny ’coz every single person out there knew that they will come back to perform the mandatory anthems ROCK U LIKE A HURRICANE & WINDS OF CHANGE. And they did just that . Winds Of Change had every single guy singing along(i wished it wasnt unplugged). Then they ended the show by belting one of their most popular song Rock U Like A Hurricaine. By this time I had no energy left & was dying for a drop of water. But I did jump throughout this song & sang along.... how couldnt I? After all this used to be a fav no. long time back.
After the show lots of Scorpions plectrums were given away. And I got my glass of pepsi atlast. Believe me pepsi never tasted so good like it did after the show.
In the end we all went home to put one more memorable night behind us . We got more then what we expected. Scorpions really rocked b’lore like a hurricaine.