Venue: Stadtsaal / Feldkirchen / Austria
Concert date: 22.03.2007
Attendance: 1000
Ticket price: 35.00€
It’s unbelievable how Nazareth always, quite literally, sneak up on me from behind. This time too I decided to jump in the car at the very last minute to catch them. On this day our crew was supposed to be in Rotterdam, but things went in the totally opposite direction and the planned mission fell through. And as a band-aid on the wound, here again are our good old friends and saviors, the legendary Nazareth. For a few years running now they’ve been roaming around on tours right next door to Slovenia. They just can’t be bothered to record new albums anymore. If rock won’t come to Slovenia, we’ll go to it!
Feldkirchen is a classic Austrian “village” with the authentic smell of freshly spread manure drifting in from carefully tended intensive meadows, where you could lay out endless golf courses. What kind of water do the Austrians drink, anyway? Brrr,…Feldkirchen is a little town 25 km from Klagenfurt. It’s still in the zone where otherwise calm Austrian citizens, used to order and discipline, turn cocky toward drivers with Slovenian license plates. It happens almost every time: they glue themselves to your bumper with special delight and blind you with their high beams a meter from your behind and so on, so don’t be surprised if it happens to you. This March it’s already happened to me three times in a row. Haider’s “Bushist” upbringing obviously leaves deep scars up there with our northern neighbors. Yuck…This time too there was an imbecile in the middle of Klagenfurt with only his parking lights on, weaving all over the road and honking… And to top it all off, I missed the E95 again and zoomed off down the motorway toward Villach, though not too far… A move I’ve “botched” for the second time in my career, but this time I snapped out of it behind the wheel much sooner. An act that will also forever stay in the memory of our music elder statesman Dragan Bulič, from the time I drove us from Klagenfurt to Villach instead of to St. Veit a. d. Glan, which lies north of Klagenfurt.
Enough of the nonsense, let’s give ourselves over to good, honest rock’n’roll tradition. The Stadtsaal sits right in the old town core, in the center of Feldkirchen. Feldkirchen is a slightly bigger village with a gorgeous castle and, of course, a church, carefully showcased in a dominant position (on a hill). I arrived at the Stadtsaal at 20.20 and honestly wished I’d gotten there even later. No need to guess why: it was the local opening band again. From 20.00 to 20.40 a local power blues rock outfit entertained the home crowd, closing their set with Too Much Beer And Too Much Whiskey – a rather witless (read: soul-crushing) song whose title, at least, sticks easily in the memory of the average rocker. Sadly, the band’s name didn’t reach my ears. They were having a good time, and the lineup – a classic quartet (guitar, vocals, drums, bass) – gave the locals a decent warm-up before Nazareth, while for me it was sadly just time being eaten away.
Interestingly, the roadies needed a full 40 minutes to set up the stage for Nazareth. And, unbelievably, the always patient Austrian crowd, used to putting up with everything, started whistling in the hall to my great surprise, which is something you really rarely see at concerts in Austria. Anyway, at 21.20 the classic “highlander” intro finally blasted through the main PA and the red carpet for the legendary Scottish rockers was rolled out.
Fog covers the stage, bathed in blue-violet light. A standard opening. The melancholic wail of bagpipes from the Scottish highlands is cut through by cannon-shot hits on the drums. A guy in a sleeveless T-shirt, showing off his sculpted biceps – “muscles of steel” Lee Agnew – is already on stage. It’s the intro to the riff of Night Woman, a song from the encore of the previous Nazareth tour. A few moments later Lee’s “old man,” the band’s first original member, bassist Pete Agnew, is on stage too. The father-and-son pairing instantly builds a tight and dangerously intoxicating groove that grabs the whole hall. As the third member, guitarist Jimmy Murrison kicks off the riff. The man’s hair has grown some more, and the improvement is that he’s tucked it behind his ears and grown a beard. Usually shaggy, Jimmy used to hide his face behind a hairdo that strongly recalled Kurt Cobain at earlier shows. In Night Woman Murrison had a Fender Stratocaster strapped on and a slide on his ring finger. He used that guitar only once more during the show, for This Flight Tonight (slide included), otherwise sticking dutifully to his standard stage companion, the Gibson LP. And then of course there’s the indispensable Dan McCafferty, who naturally took thorough care of his “Valentino” gray curls before going on stage – here’s Nazareth’s first trademark with his siren vocals, and the party begins!
The first three songs are routinely lined up to drive the crowd wild. Night Woman, the usual straight-up raspy Razamanaz, and the first surprise on the set list, I Want To (Do Everything For You), which Nazareth brought back into their shows after a long time. The performance of that one showed its teeth for the first time, though. Pete and Dan got their wires crossed on one of the verses during the shared duets. At one point Pete started the verse alone. When he saw that Dan wasn’t with him, he jerked his head toward Dan with bulging eyes that didn’t hide the bassist’s confusion. Evidently McCafferty dozed off behind the mic for a moment. No big deal, but it was a fraction of a second that definitely jarred.
The guys did pleasantly surprise with a seriously reworked and refreshed set list. Especially on fire was the hard-hitting Alcatraz, with the hellish rhythm of a Native American war march and a riff quite uncharacteristic for Nazareth, then Danger Danger, which Dan introduced as a song about “naughty boys doing bad things.” Love Leads To Madness was back again, the especially emotionally intense Loved And Lost, then Tell Me That You Love Me, before which Dan urged the whole hall to join the band in singing, and the encore was completely revamped too, with an atmospheric ballad-like, “bluesy” smoky beginning. The concert surprise Morning Dew from the debut “Nazareth” suddenly exploded into rocking fury in its second half, plus the return of Broken Down Angel, which we got to hear two years ago in Villach.
Of course, the biggest response once again went to the classics that Nazareth play at every show. The crowd completely melted for the first time at the classic ballad Dream On, when the whole hall sang as one voice with Dan. Naturally the cheeky Holiday wasn’t skipped, with a stage performance from Dan that would belong right in burlesque. The high point of the night was the inclusion of Telegram, where Murrison strapped on a white Gibson Explorer that I’d have snatched off him right away and run out of the hall with. A song that sketches “a day on the road” for the band, a hard rocker and smasher that crawls under your skin with a direct riff. A magic moment. Nazareth, who are crafty at building up the dynamics of their shows, naturally finished with a package of classics that can’t be missing from their concerts: This Flight Tonight, then Hair Of The Dog, which always stands as one of the peaks of their gig, with Dan on bagpipes and a killer rhythm dictated by Lee Agnew with the help of a cowbell and some double bass drum pedal work. The closer was Love Hurts, with Dan’s indispensable vocal performance.
The show was pure routine for Nazareth. This time there was less chatter than usual, less of a mood for the clowning we’re used to from the duo of Dan McCafferty and Pete Agnew. It’s also a flaw of the band that they leave Murrison too much room for solo spots. Sure, that adds minutes and gives McCafferty time to rest so he doesn’t burn out mid-show. That trick can turn the vibe of a concert around quite well, but still, Murrison is no Alvin Lee, no Jimmy Page, no Jeff Beck and no Blackmore, Gallagher or Bolin, so he doesn’t come up with anything special. That’s why his solos are just time being eaten away. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve got nothing against the guy. He’s great for the band, plays well and nails the classic Nazareth riffs, without which the band is unimaginable, but Nazareth aren’t a band that’s into improvisation. This is a band that thrives on igniting straight away. A punchy riff and McCafferty’s devilish screaming in the midrange, and the job is done. McCafferty thumped his chest and cleared his throat quite a few times during the show. The air was dry, smoky, it was hot in the hall, and that surely affected him. In the chorus of I Want To (Do Everything For You), Pete Agnew accidentally drowned him out on backing vocals. Dan noticed and shot his colleague a jealous glare, but there was no more helping it! Dan simply ran short of breath, even though the range he was in was by no means demanding.
Otherwise, as far as vocals go, Nazareth in 2007 are still 85% the good old Nazareth. Pete and Dan still work together like a well-oiled machine, which remains one of the band’s special trademarks, the very thing that helped make this band so big in the seventies. The Pete Agnew/Lee Agnew rhythm section is outstanding too. In Razamanaz Lee actually took the song up a notch with a witty use of the double bass drum pedal, to the point that you felt like there was a steam locomotive on stage in front of you. Lee’s drumming truly brings to the image of today’s Nazareth that necessary electricity and extra adrenaline which an “old school hard rock and rock’n’roll” outfit like Nazareth desperately needs. On another level, though, the band doesn’t hide its financial poverty. In their prime they had two guitarists on stage and a keyboard player. You can survive without one guitarist, but what I painfully miss in Nazareth today is of course the keyboards, and that’s one of the main minuses that lets me conclude the legends have lived out their best days.
The concert was over at 22.55. Only an hour and 35 minutes. So a minute of Nazareth costs a good two and a half euros! Not cheap, huh? And yet anyone who wanted to hear classics you otherwise can’t hear didn’t think too hard when reaching into their pocket. Considering their seniority and stature, Nazareth hold up well enough to justify their name at concerts in the new millennium. If you ever spot them anywhere near you, don’t miss them, even if they’re missing a keyboard player. If you want a taste of that adrenaline injection of rock’n’roll shock and rocker eroticism that seasoned old tomcats can still conjure up with ease, then a Nazareth concert is something that simply won’t leave you cold. It’s a lovely classic event. All that mileage is of course slowly wearing the guys down, but like I said: these men are still in the physical state of a hard rock’n’roll erection, and they know how to artfully throw a damn good Nazareth party!
Setlist
1. Intro
2. Night Woman
3. Razamanaz
4. I Want To (Do Everything For You)
5. Alcatraz
6. Dream On
7. Danger Danger
8. Holiday
9. Love Leads To Madness
10. Loved And Lost
11. Telegram
12. Tell Me That You Love Me
13. This Flight Tonight
14. Hair Of The Dog
15. Love Hurts
—encore—
16. Morning Dew
17. Broken Down Angel
