Do You See Them?!

OK, you’re going to have to indulge my nut-swinging on the Scorpions for a couple of days since I’m under the influence of Dr. Klaus. I’ve gotten the review of the show completed and it should be over on Glorious Noise before too much longer.

It’s probably way too many words for what most of you would care to read, but it’s a good story and I had a great time.

First of all, the mix. These German relics do not mess around when it comes down to a live mix. The show was loud, for sure, but the mix was incredibly detailed and rich. None of Matthias Jabs’ solos were raw or piercing, they sat just a tad up in the mix and blended nicely with the rhythm parts.

Matthias did not stop grinning. Seriously. It was creepy at some points, but then when he located a chick in the crowd, he’d give them a quick wink, spin and walk to another part of the stage, grinning the entire time. It was hilarious.

Rudolph Schenker was totally fucking cool. He’s sixty years old, and he just comes out with these awesome Flying V guitars and bangs out chords on them It was the closet I ever felt to being a 43 year old white, male groupie.

He totally waxes his body, tans and has become this band’s third sex symbol. The first is the dreamboat bass player (he gave the 9 year old girl in the section over from me a bass pick) who is about 30 years junior of the original members and the drummer John Kottak is in second with 20 years of difference between Klaus or Rudy. But old Rudolph has come from one of the band’s ugliest members (see back cover of Love At First Sting or the front cover of World Wide Live for proof) to one of their hottest.

I’ve totally got a man-crush right now on Rudolph Schenker, so lets move on.

Anyway, Rudy as I like to call him, had the mock scream/mouth open pose going the entire night. On a few ocassions, the band would do a chord change, or maybe change the temp unexpectedly, and he’d look at the crowd with this little “Gotcha!” like grin. It was cool.

But the coolest was actually hearing him hit the strings before I could hear the results from the stage. He was right there in front of me.


Here’s the only shot I got of Klaus the entire night. It’s like I was scared that he was going to hit me with the mic stand, so I freaked out and the picture got blurry.


For real, this would have been the best concert ever to get some shots of, even with a crappy Blackberry camera. Yet for some reason, all of my shots came out grainy and crappy-and I must have changed some function on it, because I couldn’t get the thing to zoom.

Seriously, I spent most of “The Zoo” dorking around until I finally went “I’m missing ‘The Zoo!’ Put the thing away!” But before I put it in my pocket, I snapped this. It's right around the part where Matthias Jabs starts playing the talk box.

The phone did not come out for the rest of the night.

Which is a good thing because the last shot from that night looked like this.



And with my shot of Mars there, I put the phone in my pocket and forgot about it.

Which reminds me that security was way hardcore on video taping the show, even when it was just a crappy cell phone. There was one young security guy that was just a real douche. I saw him throw a couple of dudes out for videotaping what was happening on stage.

The security guard saw him shooting footage and then went over and asked the guy for his ticket. The guard notice that he was from a completely different area, so he kept telling the man to go back to his seat. The drunk dude would just repeat back “What is that?” over and over. The security guy finally got pissed and squeezed through the barrier gate and physically handed the offender over to more security.

There was another dude that totally had an Ozzy Osbourne look to him. He was there with an ugly girl who was about a decade younger. The security guy hassled him too, for some reason.

Maybe they were mad that Scream sucks so bad.

It took me forever to get out of Moline when the show was over, and a lot of it was because I forgot where I parked the car. This is how my car recall function was loaded:

“Oh, there’s a little dive bar with a Pabst Blue Ribbon sign on the front. I’ll have to remember that!”

You would think that there’d be some directional component in there, or better still, a street or intersection name to stick to, rather than walking around aimlessly, darting in and out of post-concert traffic.

And then, I decided to visit the other half of the Quad Cities with no explanation but that I felt a comforting urge to “stick close to the river.”

Whatever.

I made it home, woke up my wife and sang her “Lady Starlight” until she melted under my passion.

“Good bye Quad Cities Moline Illinois United States!”