Saturday, April 18, 2009

O2 Arena, London April 16, 2009

ANGUS "ON FIRE"!

O2 Arena, London April 16, 2009
SETLIST

1. Rock'n'roll Train
2. Hell ain't a bad place to be
3. Back in Black
4. Big Jack
5. Dirty Deeds
6. Shot Down in Flames
7. Thunderstruck
8. Black Ice
9. The Jack
10. Hell's Bells
11. Shoot to Thrill
12. War Machine
13. Anything Goes
14. You Shook Me All Night Long
15. TNT
16. Whole Lotta Rosie
17. Let there be Rock
18. Highway to Hell
19. For Those About to Rock

AC/DC ABRUZZO OFFICIAL REPORT

Another show under the belt for AC/DC Abruzzo. 17 shows so far. Not bad at all. But we still want more!

SCHOOL DAYS
However, London left us with mixed feelings. Someone once said AC/DC represented "the ultimate middle finger aimed at the establishment..."! AC/DC Abruzzo fully understood the strong aversion to all sort of imposed codes of conduct and stupid etiquette in the London O2 arena when facing all sorts of ridiculous warnings, public announcements, semantically empty sentences and weird pseudo-nazi behaviours by the staff and security guys all of which are totally inappropriate for a rock'n'roll show. Especially after seeing AC/DC play in 10 different countries. Maybe they are good for Michael Jackson, but definetely ot for AC/DC.
We will skip the details. The O2 arena in London was just the polished and refined version of what we saw in Prague (O2 arena too) where they actually used airport scanners for each single bag and person. No kidding. And dozens of security managers everywhere wearing a suit and headphones, a beautidul mixture of Star Trek and James Bond movies...

Ok, times have changed and we know that even rock'n'roll is now a victim of this corporate bullshit and anti-terrorism crap mixed with UK anti-hooligan policies but hey, we're talking about an AC/DC show here, the same AC/DC show we saw in Paris, Milan or Barcelona where everybody seemed to have a fucking great time without being hurt.

When in Rome do as the Roman do
Actually no. We did as the Abruzzeses do. And it worked pretty well! We rocked the way we wanted and we showed our flag during The Jack and Let There Be Rock, as usual. Even if they had told us not to show our flag inside the venue ('Ngulammamet!).

We had a great time! We were just disappointed about seeing how calm and quiet was the London crowd. Even during TNT. People in the seats actually looked bored!! We must confess we had high expectations for this show, especially after being at the Hammersmith gig in 2003. Maybe too high. Something in the same league as Paris, Milan or Barcelona. Probably it was just the consequence of the ball breaking security policies we mentioned above.

Apart from that we got another excellent performance by the band. Ok, Brian fucked up during the Jack (we are sure it was because of the headphones problem he has as he told us in Stockholm) but he was just great for the whole show. We just loved how Angus immediately took control of the situation, stepped in and gave a cue to Brian to come out of the empasse. What a professional!!

We have to admit that the British crowd does love Whole Lotta Rosie (just the first part, at least) during which they screamed very loud. Brian made us sing "when it comes to lovin'" both nights. They also seem to like Let There Be Rock a lot too, when there was some serious jumping and some crowd surfing in our section (2 brave surfers).

R'n'R (Tube) Train
As we wrote in the previous post we seriously ran the risk not to go to the show this time! When we were supposed to take the metro to go to the O2 arena the Jubilee line stopped working and we got stuck at Canada Water, more than 2 hours walking from the venue. All the buses were full and no chance of finding an empty cab... So, after a few minutes of panic, we made the decision to improvise some old-school hitchhicking showing our inseparable Italian flag and guess what? IT DID WORK! A guy (Andy) made his cab driver stop and took us and another guy, Mark, onboard. During the ride to the O2 arena Andy told us about his first AC/DC concert in Donnington in 1984 while Mark told us about his passion for lasagne and PERONI beer!!! Peroni, Peroni, Peroni!!! Ah ah ah.

We salute you.

MIXED FEELINGS

BRAIANNO!



WITH PATRICK WHO WAS WITH US IN HAMMERSMITH IN 2003


HIGHWAY TO HELL by Vince (friend of ours AKA The French painter AKA Dirty shoes)

1 comment:

  1. i was there,great night,and i have a plectrum that angus dropped

    ReplyDelete