Aerosmith enthralled B’lore | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
By: Ringo Pebam * |
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Powerful vocals, blazing guitars, catchy music, colorful musicians, sparkling light on stage and energetic stage performance of Aerosmith left Bangalore, the rock capital of the country, enthralled. Aerosmith – the bad boys from Boston performed their first ever concert in India, as part of their “Greatest Hits 2007 World Tour”.
2nd of June - we reached Palace Ground at 2:30 pm, there were fans already lined up at the gate. There wasn’t camping from early morning like the Maiden mania in the Iron Maiden’s concert couple of months ago, but crowd turned up in huge numbers instantly. The gate first opened around 4:45 pm but it was just the first layer of ticket checking and heavy frisking. There was another gate on the makeshift wall of the concert area. When the second gate opened by 5:30 pm, everybody ran hastily through the metal detectors. We managed to get places right at the barricade in front of the long ramp that was made for Steven to run around.
With a rotating image of the planet earth on the huge backdrop, Aerosmith made their grand entry on the stage. “God I love the sweet taste of India, Lingers on the tip of my tongue…”, sang Steven Tyler. Opening the show with “Taste of India”, they turned the Indian crowd to frenzy.
They belted out “Love in an elevator”, “Falling in Love” and “Crying” one after the other. There were good animations with clips from their music videos shown on the big screen on the stage. Alicia Silverstone could be seen coming on the screen just before they played their power-ballad “Crying”.
Going wild and ecstatic with every song they sang, we don’t exactly remember the sequence of the songs they played. We got no chance to note down the song sequence on the mobile phones too, and yes the phone was kept online on many songs at places near and distant to friends who are dying to hear their idols play live. They went on to play “Eat the rich”, “Jaded”… Joe Perry and Steven came to the end of the stage ramp, sat on wooden chairs as they did an acoustic number.
Aerosmith have been around for more than three decades. For my generation, their songs became a constant companion from “Pump” and “Get a grip” albums. Early 90’s - when every rock music lovers made music cassettes of – GNR’s Use your Illisions, Metallica’s Black Album, Mr Big’s Lean into it, Damn Yankees’ Don’t Tread as some must haves; Aerosmith’s Get a grip was a mandatory one.
Old High School was the name of the game, when the band went on to play the hard rocking “Livin on the edge” and other older classics from early 70’s like “Dream On”, “Sweet Emotions” and “Walk this way”. Many girls in the front sang aloud along with Steven, reaching out their hands to the flamboyant singer. Seeing the very energetic stage performance of Steven - it was hard to believe that Steven is 59 years old. This charismatic and entertaining front man would sleep on top of the monitor speakers, he would shake and twist with his trademark scarves hung on the microphone stand; he would come to the very tip of the ramp, kneeling down,
Having got the grand Indian Welcome, the kind of a rock star’s welcome they last had in late 70’s in Japan, they must be so overwhelmed to be in Bangalore. Steven at one point wore a Mysore Peta (Cap). Joey Kramer kept a statue of Indian Elephant God Ganesha near his drum kit. Brad Whitford wore a low profile look, a simple old man with simple attire and a cap played the six strings guitar, producing a smooth and nasal guitar sound.
Joe Perry, the lead guitarist, made his guitar do the talking, and he charmed everyone. Born to the children of Portuguese and Italian immigrants, his looks reminds of Sylvester Stallone (a leaner version). Making entry with all black attire and a white scarf on his neck, he changed to a maroon shirt at the later part of the show. He also took up the lead vocals of a song, which must be from Honkin' On Bobo album. Not restricting to just playing and singing in front of the mic, he moved around, came towards the crowd so often, and at times played the lead solos putting the guitar behind his head. “Tell me what it takes to let you go….”, Steven Tyler made the 25,000 plus crowd sing along with the very beautiful “What it takes”. Steven’s very rocking word “Guitar”, just before the solo starts was all there. That was cool.
It was one great concert, one of the best – and after all it was Aerosmith Live. We did expect “Angel”, “Jane’s got a gun”, “Crazy” and “Amazing” to be on their set list. But it was okay for a band like Aerosmith, who has numerous hit songs; they have performed so many classics and hit numbers. For a band who has been around for the last 37 years or so, whose band members’ ages are almost 60; it was incredible to have played 20 plus songs. Yeah, we didn’t miss a thing; we are so content with the 2 hours of electrifying performance. * Ringo Pebam, a Software Engineer in Bangalore, and a Free and Open Source Software activist, contributes regularly to e-pao.net. The writer can be contacted at ringo_pebam(AT)yahoo(DOT)com. Picture Courtesy: Sonyboy Narengbam(sonyboygit(AT)gmail(DOT)com) and Ringo Pebam(ringo_pebam(AT)yahoo(DOT)com). This article was webcasted on June 08th, 2007 |
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