The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : There was something for everyone

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Dec 17, 2007
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

There was something for everyone

Deepa Kurup

The crowd varied from young college goers to old timers

— Photo: K. Murali Kumar

CAN’T GET ENOUGH: The Scorpions, live in Bangalore on Sunday.

BANGALORE: Bangalore rocked, and rocked and then rocked some more on Sunday evening, as the Scorpions blew their minds away. For fans from all over South India, all roads led to Palace Grounds, where the legendary German rock band performed to packed crowds.

With two fingers raised towards the starry sky, forming the symbol that has come to represent rock music, and arms waving in perfect synchronism, the audience head-banged and sang along. The crowd varied from young college goers to old timers; the Scorpions had something for everybody.

The opening act was performed by the winners of the Campus Rock Idols Competition, a band called Nerve-Wreck which played as best as an opening act to a legendary band such as the Scorpions can. A restless audience after being subjected to commercials for what seemed like an endless patch of time, forgave and forgot, as the vocalist Klause Meine greeted them with a very enthusiastic “namaste Bangalore”. The music which followed seemed to have crossed that fine line which separates the excellent from the timeless, as they reached out to every age group. “We were worried that the new album would be too new-age. We came only for the classics, but we found that ‘Humanities’ is just like their old music,” said Amrita, who came with her family.

Meine and guitarist Matthais Jabs kept the crowd in a trance. Meine charmed his audience with his unmistakable charisma, and the crowds could not stop asking for more. While songs like Rock you like a Hurricane managed to pump adrenaline into the already pumped up musical arteries, classics such as the Winds of Change sobered the crowd down into a serene state of nostalgia.

Drummer James Kottak and bass guitarist Pawet Maciwada held the audience spellbound with their percussion-acoustic guitar jam session. When Kottak did a bottoms-up with a can of beer to energise his performance, he had the audience drinking… (oops!) eating out of his hand. The music jam went from pure melody to sounds that seemed to be the stuff that science-fiction is made up of.

“It took me this concert to realise how many classics this band has to its name,” said S.P. Jose. The music seemed as holistic as it could get … from the metal crunch to the old melodies. An excited Jabs said that Bangalore was the final act of their Humanities tour and that they had saved their best for last. Playing the oldest trick in the book; they pretended to close shop and made the audience scream and beg for more. They messed around a little with some punchy power chords and kept the audience guessing… until they returned in full swing with their energetic adrenaline-pumping number When the Smoke is Going Down. And as all good things do, this one too had to come to an end. It seems like Bangalore can never really have enough of these legends!

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