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Scorpions
Grand
Sierra Theater, Reno, NV
September 22, 2007
By Dan
Wall
Set List: Hour 1, Bad Boys Running Wild, Love Em or Leave Em, The
Zoo, Deep and Dark, Coast to Coast, Holiday, Humanity, Make it Real, I’m Leaving
You, Tease Me Please Me, 321, Blackout, Big City Nights, Dynamite. Encore: Still
Loving You, No One Like You, Rock You Like A Hurricane, When the Smoke is Going
Down. 1 hour, 50 minutes.
Have
the Scorpions ever played a bad show? I know I’ve never seen the band suck, or
even close to it. These guys just have the ability to entertain, and with a huge
back catalog (look at that set list) and a new album that is its best in 15
years, the Scorpions are still the shit live.
Such
was the case in Reno last week, when the band returned to the West Coast to
showcase the “Humanity-Hour 1” record. The crowd wasn’t huge (about 1800, which
is a sell-out), but the band rocked like there were 18,000, and the crowd
gathered certainly rocked along with them.
I think it’s pretty safe at this point to assume that most of these 70’s and
80’s bands that are enjoying a resurgence are not going to change too much, and
that’s just fine with me. Most that have tried (the Scorpions have, with
acoustic and symphonic albums that went nowhere) failed, so the script from now
on is hits, hits, just give us the hits (and some choice album cuts). And if you
must play new stuff, don’t change the sound that made you rich and famous.
The Scorpions are probably the best example of this. Those afore-mentioned
symphonic and acoustic albums (along with 1999’s
Eye to
Eye,
which is pretty much indescribable in comparison to past efforts) didn’t make
much of a dent in the charts, but the group always seemed to have the answer
when it played live. So on its last two records, the group has ditched all of
the experimentation in favor of just sounding like it did back in the 80’s and
90’s, and many are heralding the new record as its best since the heyday. (So no
more acoustic, unplugged, symphonic things please-just rock. Thank you)
.On this tour, the band is sticking to the hits and a selection of new cuts that
went down well. Opener “Hour 1” sounded better live than on record, and both
“Humanity” and “321” slid in nicely along side the classics. The boys went back
to the last record for “Love Em or Leave Em” a ballsy rocker, and “Deep and
Dark,” a song so melodic it would have been a big hit-back when this type of
music was played on the radio.
All of these songs were presented in typical Scorpions fashion-loudly, with big,
shit-eating grins splashed on the faces of the five
Ions.
Vocalist Klaus Meine still does that goofy one-legged dance and sings as if he
has an ice pick stuck in his left testicle, but who cares? He is one of the best
frontmen in rock, and with all that noise going on behind him, is still able to
cut through all that riffing to get those big choruses out to the back of the
house. And he still has his voice, which is very important these days.
The
most important Scorpion in my opinion is guitarist Mattias Jabs. Since Jabs
replaced Uli Roth nearly 25 years ago, the band saw its popularity soar and its
guitar sound move into a more commercial direction. Not that Roth was a bad
player (far from it), but his desre to be the next Hendrix often led the
Scorpions down a path that the rest of the band was seldom willing to travel.
Jabs
really shined on this night, his guitar solos stinging with the venom of his
band’s namesake. He tore into “Bad Boys Running Wild” and “Blackout” like it was
the first time he had played those songs. And the band closed the set proper
with a version of “Dynamite” that sounded like Metallica.
Jabs
and rhythm guitarist Rudolph Schenker are a tremendous tandem, with Schenker
running the length of the stage repeatedly while holding the riffs together, as
Jabs re-creates those infamous solos from the Scorpions songbook. Drummer James
Kottak (a wildman who did a great solo) and new bassist Pawel Maciwoda do their
job with aplomb.
The
highlights were plentiful, including the instrumental “Coast to Coast,” with
four guitars making the song a big riff-fest; the rarely heard “Make it Real”
and “I’m Leaving You;” and big hits “The Zoo,” “No One Like You,” ‘Big City
Nights” and “Rock You Like A Hurricane,” all strategically placed to kick things
up a notch.
Some
complained that the group didn’t play “Wind of Change” (the band is rotating
that song with “No One Like You,” which is a head scratcher in my book; they
should play both), but that’s minor quibble when you consider all of the great
music that was presented on this night. There was no huge stage, no
million-dollar light system-just the Scorps, the fans and nearly 30 years of
rock history. Hopefully, the band will package together a great tour for next
summer.
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