Archive for the ‘2011’ Category
Motörhead Concert Review March 8, 2011 – Motörhead Day!
We are Motörhead and we don’t have no class!
As many of my lovely readers may have heard from my previous post or via Blabbermouth, yesterday (March 8, 2011) was declared Motörhead Day in Austin, TX by our mayor. Read yesterday’s post to get the precursor for this one.
I got off work and rushed home to get things together for potentially meeting Motörhead before their show. I’m waiting on Dave and his son in front of Stubb’s and see awesome photog Jay West. I tell him what’s going on and said I’d try to get him back there with us to get a photo of those guys with the Motörhead Day Proclamation (click for photo). Dave and his son walk up and I send a message to my pal who works security for Motörhead. He finds us outside and escorts to the “backstage” area of Stubb’s where Lemmy, Mikkey and some of the crew were hanging out. This was right after their soundcheck.
Lemmy’s sitting at the door flipping through a food magazine and Mikkey stands up to greet us. Phil was nowhere to be found, unfortunately. Mikkey reads it then Dave tells me to give it to Lemmy for a read. I explained what it was and he sat and read the whole thing. He stood up and said something like, “This is neat. I love playing Austin. Thank you very much” We shake hands and Jay snaps a few quick photos. I mentioned to Lemmy about meeting him after the movie premier last year and mentioned my Another Perfect Day tattoo backpiece. He said, “Ah yes, I told you that you should have picked a better album, right?” haha. “Yes sir, you did.” Lemmy seemed tired and later that evening during the set, Phil mentioned on mic that he wasn’t feeling well, so Phil did much of the talking between songs. Also, if you’ve seen the movie, read interviews or ever met Lemmy, he’s pretty much indifferent about stuff like this, but it was great that he and Mikkey allowed us to come back for a few minutes and share our joy with them. Added bonus for me was getting Lemmy and Mikkey’s signatures in my book. FINALLY!
So that was that. Mikkey gave Dave’s son, Kameron, a can of Coca-Cola as we were leaving and he says, “I’m never opening this can…ever.” Awesome. I understand that sentiment as I still have an unopened bottle Heineken that Nicko McBrain signed for me in 1988.
Good times. All of us were elated after this. It was fun and glad that it all worked out for all of us. I ran the book home and went to dinner with some friends. I had no interest in seeing Valient Thorr again or in seeing Clutch. I got back to the venue with about 4 Clutch songs left. BORING. I hadn’t listened to them in years and remembered why last night. Oh well. It was Motörhead Day and all I cared about was seeing Lemmy and the boys tear it up like they always do.
They hit the stage right at 9PM. Lemmy opens by saying, “We’re Motörhead…and we play rock and roll.” Then they go
Photo by Jay West
right into a great version of We Are Motörhead. Great song to open with! The band was tight throughout the whole show. Phil was more animated than I had seen in the last few shows. Lemmy’s tone and playing were awesome. He’s very unique. If you’ve seen the Lemmy movie DVD there’s a bonus section in there about how he plays his bass. He’s usually playing power chords and it just gives his sound that much more grind. At 60+, the man can still kick ass. His voice sounded better than last year as well. Then there’s Mikkey. All you see is hair and hands and cymbals moving. He was awesome as always. Easily in my top 5 drummers of all time. Motörhead rules live, period.
The highlight of their set for me was I Got Mine. It’s from my favorite Motörhead album and it’s just a great song. Of course they closed the main part of their set with Ace of Spades and Overkill was the encore.
Metal Dave from 2Fast2Die said before they went on, “What a crusty looking crowd.” Definitely. Motörhead draws folks from a lot of different crowds. They are also one of the bands where it seems to be ok to wear their shirts when you go see them live. It’s always been stated (right or wrong, silly really) that you shouldn’t wear the shirt for the band you are going to see. Motörhead and Maiden seem to be exceptions to that rule. I saw some nice vintage shirts there as well.
It was a great show and I’m glad it sold out. Lem’s not getting any younger and no telling when his juice is going to run out…hopefully never! Go see this tour!
There was one major thing missing…Their front of house sound engineer Hobbs! Where was he? Talk about a crusty old bastard. He rules!
Setlist as I remember it and a bit out of order:
- We Are Motörhead
- Stay Clean
- Get Back In Line
- Metropolis
- I Got Mine
- Over The Top
- The Chase Is Better Than The Catch
- Rock Out
- I Know How to Die
- In The Name of Tragedy
- Just Cos You Got The Power
- Killed By Death
- Going To Brazil
- Ace of Spades
- Overkill
All photos below by Jay West Photography. Click to enlarge.
Kameron, Dave, Lemmy, me, Mikkey (holding Motorhead Day Proclamation)
Phil and Lemmy
Lemmy and his signature Rickenbacker 4004LK Bass.
Lemmy
Phil Campbell
Happy Motorhead Day Austin, Tx! March 8, 2011
A week or so ago Dave S. told me that he had asked an Austin City Council member to see if they’d be open to doing a proclamation of some sort 
for Motorhead, who is playing Stubb’s BBQ March 8, 2011 (tonight!). What a great idea! I didn’t know if the Mayor of “The Live Music Capital of the World” would go for it, but apparently he did. A gave a proclamation that March 8, 2011 is Motorhead Day in Austin. How cool is that?
This city is probably the only one I could think of in the States that would do something like this. It does show that they do care a little bit about keeping the music going here, even though they seem to try and find ways to keep it down.
Once Dave had let me know that everything was a go, he sent a copy of the proclamation and I sent it in to Blabbermouth who posted it pretty quickly after getting some confirmation that it was real. I worked for a while yesterday evening to figure out just how Dave (and I!) were going to be able to present this to the band and after last night’s encounter with Mikkey Dee downtown, it looks like we can make it happen.
It was great spending a few minutes with him again. I spoke to him for 5 seconds last year at the premier of the Lemmy movie but have hung out with him in years past (twice with Motorhead 92 & 2000) and once with Dokken in 1991. He’s always a super cool and we talked about some of his past adventures with Dokken where he said, “We were so awful.” I disagreed. I had always assumed that he was on the Geisha album “Phantasmagoria” but he said he’d left to join King Diamond prior to the recording. I had mentioned that his joining Motorhead was the reason I ever decided to give their music a chance. he smiled and said, “Me too!” It gave us a good chuckle. We snapped a quick photo and he was off to another place to see some music and I needed to get home and go to bed.
Lemmy loves Austin and anytime he goes on the road in the US, he always seems to make a stop here. That’s great for us! Tonight is the show with Clutch and Valient Thorr. It’ll be great to see Motorhead live again, they never disappoint. I’ll get a review of the show up ASAP and hopefully will also have a story about delivering the proclamation to the band.
Me and Mikkey Dee
Colin Hay Concert Review 03/01/2011
This was my second time seeing Colin Hay doing his solo acoustic show and it was great. You can read about past experiences with Colin and men At Work here.
The show was at the One World Theatre. This place is one of the best places to see a band that I have ever been to. It’s small (maybe 250 seats) and acoustically perfect. It’s in the Texas Hill Country and it’s got a gorgeous setting.
Opening the show was a guy named Chris Trapper (His Wikipedia page here). He wasn’t bad at all. Apparently he wrote a song on the Autumn Rush soundtrack. He had a few good jokes, played about 6 or 7 songs and was gone.
Colin comes on stage to a standing ovation, straps on his Maton acoustic, tunes it and goes right into Men At Work’s Down Under. After this song he starts his joking and storytelling. He hadn’t gotten to the second song yet and says, “Maybe we’ll get 4 or 5 songs in tonight.” If you’ve seen him before, you know he likes to talk, a lot. It’s part of his show and he’s really an interesting guy.
He ended up playing 9 songs, a few of which I don’t think I had heard before. Of the 9, three were men At work songs: Down Under, Who Can It Be Now?, and Overkill. I saw that he had added Blue For You to a few shows last year and I really hoped we would have heard that one last night, but no dice. Didn’t matter. He sounded great. His voice is still strong and he’s a really good guitar player as well.
During the closer, Overkill, he used a memory man pedal to record the main riff of the song during the song and actually got to play the guitar solo. He didn’t do that last time and it was pretty cool. I love that song.
After the show, he did a meet and greet. Lots of people there buying his new CD which was just released that day. Lots of folks had Men At Work stuff. One girl was wearing a vintage Cargo Tour shirt, which was pretty cool. I got through the line, just shook his hand, told him it was a great show and that I had seen him a few times before. I mentioned the solo show in 2009 and Men At Work in 1999. We snapped a quick photo and I was on my merry way. He looked pretty tired, but he was smiling.
If you get a chance to see this tour, do it.
Setlist (only songs 1,2,3 and 9 are in proper order):
- Down Under
- Wayfaring Sons
- Who Can It Be Now?
- Prison Time
- Beautiful World
- I just don’t think I’ll ever get over you
- Waiting for my real life to begin
- Maggie
- Overkill
2011.
This year is already shaping up to be a great one for seeing music. As I queefed about a few days ago, SxSW has some cool stuff to see this year, but there’s so much more.
On my plate between now and May:
- Colin Hay (Men At Work)
- Al Dimeola
- Destruction/Heathen
- Motorhead
- Heart (maybe)
Not to mention the local acts that I enjoy seeing on a regular basis as well. Mixed in all that will be my main band with Doug Morrison and hopefully we can get the Capricorn USA (the Motorhead tribute) going again. I’m sure there will be some stuff this summer in San Antonio that I’ll want to attend and am always game for going back to Virginia to see something cool at Jaxx that may not be playing around here.
SxSW 2011 Music and Film Festival
I’m pretty fortunate to live in a town that holds a festival like this one every year. Austin is dubbed The Live Music Capital of the World and while it’s a great place to see bands, it’s not the greatest place to be in a band. But that’s neither here nor there for this article.
This will be the 4th SxSW festival in a row that I am attending and I always see some good bands. For the music that I’m into, it’s only a small percentage of the 1,000 or so bands that come here from all over the world to play. I wasn’t here for the early days of this fest where bands were really playing for their shot at a record deal, but I do find it enjoyable.
It is unfortunate, however, that many who visit Austin for SxSW treat the town like their own toilet and/or trash dump. Sure, those who bought their passes/badges paid a lot of money for them, but that’s no excuse for poor manners and behavior. Just my 2 cents on that.
In SxSWs past, I’ve seen Motorhead, the Lemmy movie, VoiVod (3 times last year!), and dozens of other bands of all genres just by walking the streets of downtown. It’s pretty cool overall.
This year’s music lineup is pretty tasty for “official” shows. It includes The Rods, Pentagram, X Japan, Saint Vitus, Christian Mistress, Agollach, Alex Skolnick Trio, Zoroaster, Naam and a slew of others. I also always end up seeing some other good bands that I have never heard of before. Not to mention it’s a big fun party.
I’m not the biggest moviegoer in the world, but I will make time to see Last Days Here which is a documentary about the life of legendary Pentagram singer Bobby Liebling. I met and had dinner with Bobby and Pentagram last year and he is a really nice guy.
I’ll be posting reviews of the shows and the movie for sure. I’m pretty excited already.
The Metal Files 
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