So I went to see VR yesterday. They were scheduled to play 10:15 pm till midnight. After they were half an hour overdue, some bloke went on stage and said that "the band was late" (we could have told), and that they would be on in 10 Minutes. Well after another 20 min or so they finally took the stage.
Slash in leather/jeans, looked good (well from what you could see beneath his hair), duff tall and cool as ever, but much more healthier than in the old days. Both seemed to enjoy themselves a lot, Duff often running over to Slash n' stuff. Was really great seeing the two
. They rocked (well, not the sound necessarily, just the performance). Matt was cool and smiling as ever, did a solid job on the drums. Kushner was there, played his part, seemed to accept that the crowd wasn't there because of him (never seen so many Gn'R shirts in such a tight place, yay!). Scott was IMO completely in the wrong place. He wore that police-hat thing, and not much besides pants that were so tight you wondered whether he actually could sit in 'em, and two belts from whose location (and usage?) they probably should better be called c*ckrings. "Like a deer in the headlights" is probably not the worst description of what his face looked like, besides for the clockwork-orange-style wide open eyes, he stumbled and lolled round on stage that the only thing we wondered about him was whether he would shove that megaphone up his ass still during the concert or only afterwards. He neither fit in with the rest of the band nor with the music.
Speaking of music - it was horrible. The mix was crap, but also the band (and I'm really sorry having to say that). First of all it was just loud (is it me or the worse a band plays, the louder they play?). Most of the songs were just noise. Slash rocked a little too much to actually play accurately, so most of the guitar stuff just was - noise. Duff was ok, and I can't comment on Scott because he simply was inaudible. Or didn't sing at all, I don't know. The only times you could tell those mics were actually on were when Duff shouted in the backing vocals. All in all, the music was all one big mash. I mean, I've been listening to Contraband for the past two weeks like, all the time, but I couldn't tell the songs from each other. The only ones that actually stood out from the pap were "used to love her", which Slash dedicated to the people who... (dunno, the man spoke a lil slurry, but at least proved that Scott's mic was plugged in after all), and "It's so easy". The crowd really loved those two, they were complete rockers.
So all in all, it wasn't a very good concert, IMO it wasn't even good. But now I've seen Axl (in Leeds), Duff, and Slash (yeah, and Matt), now I can die in peace...
PS: Check
http://www.musikfestwochen.ch , maybe they'll put up some pics later on
PPS: Didn't get searched, so carried my cam with me. Will post pics later if they're not all wobbly (yeah, i have one of those old-fashioned cams
).