You're a wild card gambler and you like it both ways

I was confused when tickets went off sale for Living Colour about a month ago. Acording to the ticketing website, tickets were $200 each. WTF? I like them, I want to see them, but not that much. I spoke about to briefly to a couple of people, but for the most part forgot about it. And the suddenly this morning I had in my possession two ticket stubs to the previous night's show. "Hand these in tonight", I was told, "and get tickets half price, $30". Too good to be true. I re-checked the web. Sure enough, it now said between $60-$200.

Coincidentally, I had read an article in the morning newspaper about the three shows at the Metro in Melbourne. How the band had split in 1994 after one monster hit with "Love Rears It's Ugly Head" and then re-formed in 2001. I knew this because I had had a quick listen to 2003's Collide0scope at a record store to see what the cover version of "Back In Black" was like (sounded pretty good).

Anyways, the down side of tonight's gig was that there were no cover versions (That's a downside?). Well, yes, it is a little, because they have done a number of top drawer covers - in addition to AC/DC, they've also done a pearler version of Prince's "17 Days" (possibly better than the original IMHO) and an ok version of "Sunshine Of Your Love" (on the True Lies soundtrack). My only other complaint is the incessant jams done after every second song. After witnesssing the same on the Foo Fighters - Everywhere But Home DVD only a few days before, I think this is my pet hate, my biggest gripe about most modern bands.

The bad news out of the way, I now feel like I've re-discovered Living Colour, and I wanna rush out and buy Vivid and Time Up (and maybe even Glover's solo effort, Hymns), and listen to the Stain album again, and pick up a guitar (weeelll mebbee not). The whole band was tight and phat as: Corey Glover's range is quite extraordinary, from a whisper to a scream in a heartbeat and the band were album accurate (other than the one mixing stuff-up that almost killed a speaker). It felt like for most of the night that Vernon Reid's guitar, Doug Wimbish's bass and Will Calhoun's drums were competing with each (Battle Of The Bands style) yet in a cohesive manner. One jam had Reid and Wimbish literally performing some kind of guitar slapping fight, with the instrumental highlight when Reid went to his laptop for some phat beats while Calhoun beat the living crap out of his drumkit. At another point Wimbish joined the front row audience and Glover came close a couple of times.

I cannot recall the complete setlist, but the highlights included: the entire encore of Love Rears Its Ugly Head, Middle Man, Cult Of Personality and Solace Of You (all album perfect, Solace including a didgeridoo), Bi, Glamour Boys (which I didn't know, but my friend did), Go Away and Elvis Is Dead. In fact, they played every major song of theirs that I like (ie. there is nothing they didn't play that I wish they did). And they played for 2 hrs 15 mins. Most bands cost $100 and are lucky to play for 90mins. Maybe they're desperate for success. I don't think the last album did particularly well. And it seems odd they'd play three shows at the Metro - they had trouble selling tickets, and this may have been one of the reasons for the half price second night tickets. They definetly could have promoted the shows a little better. After all, there wouldn't be many people who don't know Love Rears Its Ugly Head.

One of the other complaints was that Glover didn't really try and communicate with the audience. He did not speak at all until nearly an hour in, and even then it was only really "Wazzup?" or similar, and more often than not had a laugh with one of the other band members. But the were in good humour, and Glover has a truly magnetic stage presence, despite the slight pudginess of getting older, the bizarro blonde hair cut and the camoflauge overalls he wore all night, threatening to take off but didn't. All in all, a pearler rip-snorter of a gig and has me jazzed for all the concerts coming up the second half of this year (Split Enz, Pearl Jam, Kings Of Leon, U2 et al).