Review: Scorpions - 100 Unbreakable Friendship Concert in BKK Thailand (August 10, 2004)
I have to admit a few things, I want to confess how much I know about Scorpions. First of all, I know they are an old rock group from Germany. The second confession I had to make is that I only can distinctively remember one of their songs - Wind of Change which is their most famous song. The last point I have to admit, is that I hardly know anyone in the band - even how the band members looked like! I hardly know anything else about them, nor do I own their album, but due to some strange reason, my brothers and I decided to go to the concert - Scorpions - 100 Unbreakable Friendship Concert. In the beginning, we thought it was like their greatest hints album, but only when we did get to the concert venue, we did found out that the concert was a promotion concert for their latest album - Unbreakable and the 100 Friendships part was actually the name that was given by their biggest sponsor of the Thai tour - which is 100 Pipers which is a type of whiskey.
Anyway, no matter what it was, it didn't dampen our spirit, as we went there alittle early, to get our reserved tickets at Muang Thong Thanni.
The concert started alittle late about 5 minutes - which was not that bad considering the habitual lateness of Thais, and the stadium was pretty filled by the time the show started.
The show started out in high octave, as the Scorpions, though rather old at the present, went on the Rock the house with high tempo rock songs that seemed to fit more of young and rebellious rock stars than performances that are their advanced age. Though I hardly know any of their songs especially the first few songs - that were numbers from their new album, their stage experience showed as the band members were going completely nuts on stage. Nuts doesn't mean crazy, but means like they really packed much energy in the performance, it makes me want to go jumping around the stands - but to my chargin, my seats is cramped, and if I make a small slip, I could fall 20 meters to the floor, which is quite a dangerous thing to do :P
Since I don't know the early songs that well, I'll just skip the first part and forward to the drum solo which served as a mini intermission for the band. The solo drummist was interesting. Though personally I don't really like drum solos that much - as I find them to be rather primitive, the part that stands out in this concert is the lighting, in which the stage designers did very well. They made it seem like the drummer emits an aura out by flashing light from him at regular intervals based on the drum solo, which is a pleasant eye candy, and off-course ended up in a really entertaining solo coupled with alot of interactive from the audience who really enjoyed the crazy act ;)
The guitarist came to solo after the drummist, though his act was less well received as it was rather hard to follow along. Anyway, shortly afterwards, the guitarist then reverted to rhythm mode, as the band reassembled to play alot of older rock hits - and some numbers I just remember the refrains so well like - Rock Like a Hurricane! Later the show somewhat abruptly paused for an encore, before they started to play their most known song in the last part of the show - in this time, the whole crowd followed along their melodies - especially with Wind of Change. The show ended alittle after that, and most of the peeps were completely exhausted at the end of the 2 hour rock show.
After reaching home, it makes me wonder a few things. What I saw on stage today was a rock legend, and they deserve the title. Though the concert was an intense 2 hour concert, the whole band managed to handle it seemlessly with ease, whereas the audience had trouble keeping up with the energy of the 50s gang of rockstars. I'm particularly impressed with the lead singer, whose vocal cords seem to never waver in the concert. Its somewhat strange to know that a old rockband managed to keep the level of intensity unlike many newer pop stars that usually lip-sync in concerts. Those days, musicians were musicians and stage performers, but these days, my own observation, it just seems the newer artist seem to be more focused on image and dancing instead of the actual music and performance O_o
p.s. Sorry for no pictures. In the last few concerts, the security guards check the wallets for cameras and other dangerous stuff. Since I'm not in the mood for a brush with the guards, I just didn't think it would be worth the trouble to get my camera in. Too bad I don't have those nifty mobile phone with built-in cameras :P
No comments:
Post a Comment