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Gig Review - MSG at Waterfront Norwich, 17/12/14

Michael Schenker Group, Norwich Waterfront, 17/12/14 Flashback. It is 1986 or 87, I am in Ipswich, Bon Jovi are rocking the Gaumont with set chock full of hair metal. Jon stops between two tunes and faces the lead guitar maestro Richie Sambora. “Hey Ritchie, I betcha $5 my side of the audience can sing louder than your side!” This moment stopped me in my tracks. I was seeing stagecraft, not people playing their music, but entertainers knowing their business. They still rocked, but it didn't feel real anymore. These guys were in their mid twenties. I was 16 or 17 and had my illusions shattered. Tonight, I am at the Waterfront, where the Michael Schenker Group are going to rock me to my very foundations. Rock me like a hurricane. Well, that’s the plan. My problem was that within 30 seconds of the first tune, the fourth wall had been revealed. That Jon Bon Jovi incident revisited, but this time with men who should know better, playing tired tunes, looking tired. The fact that the band were putting on a pastiche or karaoke version of their younger selves, was there for all who wished to see it. Most people chose not to. Nodding and cheering at the end of songs, randomly joining in with ridiculous lyrics and fist pumping as if it was 1983 all over again. Death to false metal indeed. If the band were charging the same money to basically hang about chatting to the crowd in the bar, whilst a DJ played all the most memorable songs the combined talent on stage had produced, with a photo op towards the end of the night, flying V in full effect, then everyone would get the momento they required, the band could keep their integrity (such as it ever was, what with being in the Scorpions etc). The music would be reminding everyone of the good times, rather than the 3250th time they have played Shoot Shoot. It felt sad. Sad like seeing Muhammad Ali appear at the 2012 Olympic opening ceremony, clearly no idea where he was, with all his glory days so far behind him that a generation will only know him for what he has become. I felt saddest for the bass player, Thomas Bueckholt, who was trying to enjoy the gig in a grown up way, rather than the singer who excelled as the pantomime dame, resplendent in his insane hair piece, living the lie with no self respect. They can do it, really do the Rock thing, all of them, really well. But, and it is an overwhelmingly urgent but, why do they bother? I can think of no reason. The audience is 99% male and 100% white. At least 90% are over 40. All these facts would deter me from attending a gig, and I am at the centre of this Venn diagram of doom. Songs about rocking and rolling, being an outlaw, vigilante or gunsmith, seem fine when you are in your teens and finding your way through the music available to you. There is no excuse when you reach my age, unless you are enjoying the memory of the music, the way you used to enjoy – irony free – the fantasy fuelled hard rock music of the 1980’s. The audience are literally like statues. They move only to hold aloft their iPhone 6s’ the better to capture footage of men in their 60’s playing the tunes they wrote in their 20’s, in order to never watch the footage or ever share it due to it not being as good as the already in existence footage of the men on stage actually playing it whilst in their 20’s. I appear to have written a note to myself at the time, it simply reads “We are no longer your enemy” I have literally no idea why this was noted. Maybe the band summed up the antithesis of the anti-social youth ethic, they are now no threat to anyone. No one was drinking to excess, no one shouted at any time about anything towards anyone. The days of this audience being edgy at concerts are well behind them. The rudest person in the building may well have been the man on the ticket desk, who had a jobsworth inferiority complex which he thought was worth throwing his weight behind in order to remind us all that None Shall Pass except by His Almighty Favour. He probably had the easiest night of his life on the door tonight, as everyone had a ticket and were unfailingly polite and cordial. The band, the audience, even the venue itself, was behaving itself. And that is not Metal. People shoving you around, beer on everything, laughter, smells, drunkenness, inconsideration, youth, loud dangerous music that parents hate. That sums up Metal. I would bet that a huge percentage of the white male over forty’s were also parents, maybe even grandparents. The list of reasons why it failed to Be Metal gets bigger all by itself. I reigning it back, but the stream of consciousness emanating from the Waterfront that night creates its own hall of shame. I had a real laugh, but only because Stu is a real laugh, the band should stop. The audience should stop. Just stop it, all of you. Take a good look at what you’re doing. There is no justification for what I saw tonight. Go and see someone playing songs from the heart, or some teenagers playing loud music. Don’t go and see granddads playing tunes as if they are deadly ninjas of metal when they look like Ted from Heidi Hi on vocals, respect yourselves more than that. £20 a pop, as they used to say in Sheffield “They’re having my pants down”