Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Venue: Kongresszentrum (Josef Resch Saal) / Villach / Austria
Concert date: 05.05.2011
Attendance: 2,500
Ticket price: €33.00 / €39.00
Nazareth, the illustrious legends of rock, highlanders from the Scottish Highlands, are back with a new album and a new tour! The crust on the freshly baked “Big Dogz” hasn’t even cooled properly since it rolled off the presses, and the boys have already launched a new concert assault!
This spring they’re finding themselves in some interesting concert situations across Europe. Since the Nazareth tour interweaves with the Uriah Heep tour, you can even catch both bands together on certain nights. This one in Villach was one of those where Nazareth were the sole headliner, so they served up a rock n’ roll party with their full concert repertoire.
At a quarter to eight in the evening, the first band, a local Villach crew of hard rock matadors, started warming up the crowd in the Kongresszentrum, the Josef Reisch Saal hall to be precise, pampering everyone’s ears with their own material as well as covers. Interestingly, the band that followed them didn’t bring any particular stylistic change either. These guys were raised on rhythm n’ blues, classic blues, rock n’ roll! So you couldn’t miss a few covers of well-known evergreen hits by acts like CCR. Anyway, no revolutionary shake-ups, but fun and endearing.
Nazareth hit the stage at exactly half past nine. A great opener from the classic Naz album “Rampant”, Silver Dollar Forger, instantly got more than 2,000 heads in the hall on their feet, especially the real fans of the band, who crave as much variety in the setlist as possible. Luckily, Nazareth are among those acts who keep changing their setlist throughout the tour, so it can be very different from night to night. We’ve known a similar story with Saxon for years, but let’s leave heavy metal aside for tonight.
The guys made it clear right away that they’re still bursting with lust for life and energy. Legendary singer Dan McCafferty laid down the verses immediately with that unmistakable juicy seasoning! The vocal remains demandingly screamy yet soulful, and it especially gets under the listener’s skin when Dan sinks into the more intimate parts of the Naz repertoire! With exceptional vocal power, preserved into his later years. Add the punchy riffs of Jimmy Murrison, the solid, unyielding rhythm of Pete Agnew and Lee Agnew, as only father and son can deliver, and the Nazareth magic is born.
Nazareth are masters. They’ve experienced practically everything in their career. For them there are no surprises, no hide-and-seek. What’s left to the band today is a venerable place in rock history, great live joy that keeps the lineup on the road and among the living, and a creative drive that still gives them the will and inspiration to write new material. The album “Big Dogz” is another excellent manifesto of this Nazareth rock n’ roll attitude, one that fuses the old and encodes it in the language of a new era. So Nazareth kicked things off with the catchy Big Dogz Gonna Howl, and from the new songs they didn’t skip the excellent Radio, which, along with the ballad Butterfly, is one of the best tracks on the new Naz album. For their personal dessert they allowed themselves When Jesus Comes To Save The World Again. It’s a longer blues rock ballad that develops and grows slowly. It’s incredibly dark, a moment where Nazareth, in this new era, tried once more to face the roots of the Mississippi Delta as directly as possible. And yet it was the moment of the concert when the atmosphere sagged a bit, since people don’t know the song well enough yet, and it’s a little harder to get into your ear, too. The band visibly enjoys playing it, and that’s fine, although for building a more intense connection it would have been better to pick another track from the new album, like Claimed for example.
So much for the novelties. How did the rest of the concert unfold? Right at the start, the thing happened that every musician wants least. The target of the evening’s tragedy this time was Jimmy Murrison. Already as he walked onto the stage, a heavily drunk older Austrian concertgoer in the front row was harassing him, shouting and waving, and he didn’t stop, hanging over the edge of the stage and yelling and heckling. It even got to the point where, during This Month’s Messiah, a sound technician came rushing onto the stage at a sprint and literally slapped a piece of insulating tape, the kind bands normally use to fix cables and stick setlists to the stage, over the gentleman’s mouth, politely letting him know, in the style of Buster Keaton’s unforgettable burlesques, that he should please stop provoking.
The scene that followed was getting truly more alarming by the minute.. The hot-headed, inexhaustibly drunk Austrian fellow, somewhat puffy-looking, dressed in the grotesque outfit of a rumpled Bled fiaker driver, with longer, graying hair, the kind that in his balding mature years only the remains of a “rožen kranca” (a “wreath” around the head) can still generate, was nowhere near letting himself be bothered. Since the tape didn’t have the desired effect, the continued heckling annoyed Murrison so much that he stepped right up to the edge of the stage and started kicking wildly with his right foot at the troublemaker, and you didn’t need a doctoral dissertation to easily read the guitarist’s lips forming the phrase “Fuck You!!!”, which Murrison logically repeated several times in a row.
Oh well. Much like what happened to Toto guitarist Steve Lukather in Graz on 04.03.2011, when someone from the crowd yelled at him mid-show “Shut up and keep playing!”, this time it hit the unlucky Nazareth guitarist. From then on he wasn’t himself. He played tensely and stiffly. Hence a few mistakes in his playing, some unsmooth transitions, clumsiness in physically switching the foot switchers to get different sound effects, and so on. To top it off, the sound guys weren’t having their day either. The Gibson Les Paul was too loud throughout the concert, and the two Fender Stratocaster guitars Jimmy used for Bad Bad Boy and, right after it, the new Radio sounded especially cranked. At moments the unbearable volume covered the vocals, and that was the worst part. Without well-audible vocal harmonies and the unique voice of Dan McCafferty, there can be no real Nazareth concert. The band felt and noticed all this on stage, but the seasoned part of the crew, the Dan and Pete tandem, masked it so masterfully with gesturing to the crowd, plenty of smiles and a good measure of cunning rabble-rousing, that only a handful of people in the hall were still wrestling with the sound. Sadly, I stayed part of that handful myself, but that doesn’t matter anymore.
The obligatory hits Dream On and This Flight Tonight were followed by the closing Hair Of The Dog, where of course Dan didn’t forget to bring the Scottish bagpipes onto the stage. An exceptionally pleasant surprise and a filling-out of the setlist with songs from the album “Hair Of The Dog” were Changin’ Times, with a stretched-out solo spot from Jimmy Murrison, and the naughty, stumbling rock n’ roll flirt Whiskey Drinkin’ Woman. Once again the band also surprised with an excellent Love Leads To Madness from the album “2XS” (1982).
The obligatory encore followed, with the indispensable Razamanaz and of course Love Hurts, which once more sent big clouds of steam up in the hall. Nazareth closed their show magnificently with a rendition of Morning Dew from the studio debut “Nazareth” (1971), where the band’s instrumental section really came into its own in both the intro and outro of the song.
Legends don’t give up. A thoroughly confident show, with somewhat worse sound, an unlucky concert day for Jimmy Murrrison, but energetic and unyielding throughout in dishing out healthy, concise and raw blues rock n’ roll Scottish wit and spirit, the kind that set the planet ablaze in the seventies and keeps the flame burning in the hearts of many who haven’t forgotten the band today. And believe me. The Austrian crowd really values Nazareth. They were greeted by a jam-packed hall that normally holds a bit over 1,000 people if seats are installed (stalls plus balcony). But since the chairs were removed this time, surely 2,000 people were crammed into the space (stalls and balcony). The great energy and atmosphere, and another unforgettable get-together with legends, wrapped up after exactly an hour and a half of partying. At midnight! So the big dogs are howling again! Full-on doggy fur!
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Setlist
1. Silver Dollar Forger 2. Big Dogz Gonna Howl 3. This Month’s Messiah 4. Dream On 5. This Flight Tonight 6. See Me 7. Bad Bad Boy 8. Radio 9. When Jesus Comes To Save The World Again 10. Love Leads To Madness 11. Whiskey Drinkin’ Woman 12. Changing Times 13. Hair Of The Dog —encore— 14. Razamanazz 15. Love Hurts 16. Midnight Dew
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