Location: Vienna (Wien) / Gasometer / Austria
Date: Monday, 20.03.2006
Well, finally, this date! I’d been dying for gigs all year! The former gasworks known as the Gasometer, now artfully converted into a “shopping and entertainment” center (with a heap of cafés, restaurants, shops full of all kinds of knick-knacks, and movie theaters), has a cute little hall (Ba-Ca Hale) that holds around 5,000 people. On the day of The Darkness show, about 3,000 of them turned up. And for a change from the rest of this year, this one was finally sunny!
Around 8:00 PM the support act Doomfoxx staggered onto the stage. These guys are something like the Rolling Stones cranked up way too loud, to 11! Especially in the vocals and the melody lines. Like a cross between Jagger and Cocker. And he hollered like a man possessed, which means the vocals were seriously strong. The word “doom” in the band’s name isn’t plucked out of thin air, either, because alongside their general lean toward “rock’n’roll” debauchery, they carry a real “feel” of imminent cataclysmic collapse. You could tell from the “beat” right away that they’re Brits, because they attacked with a solid rhythm laid under deliberately dirty guitar “riffing”, the proper rock’n’roll kind! Even Keith Richards would’ve been stunned that someone on stage could have a guitar as “out of tune” as his. The guys obviously aren’t The Darkness, but the “glam rock” fever has clearly gripped them too, and they were dolled up on stage accordingly. The singer reminded me of Metallica’s bassist Trujillo (so, he had the Native American “look”), dressed like a jazz trumpeter who’d just run off from Harlem. In short, I had no expectations, absolutely none, going into the Doomfoxx set. And it’s incredible how the crowd heated up and reacted so wildly, showing a nice dose of enthusiasm for their performance. A great little party and the right pick for a warm-up. A red bra flew in from the wild rows, and the singer hung it on his microphone. Whether it was a well-rehearsed trick or some teenager really “came undone”, I don’t know, but the moment spiced up their set nicely. After 40 minutes they left us to loiter in the hall again.
The euphoria grew by the minute, and a little after nine a familiar melody sounded. Here come the Highlanders from the north. Arrival, which none other than Mike Oldfield arranged for ABBA way back when, drowned out the crowd’s scattered shouts. But the crowd came alive as one at this excellent intro and… the first member of The Darkness was already on stage. Drummer Ed Graham started dictating the rhythm of Knockers. Soon after him bassist Richie Edwards jumped on, and people greeted both of them with a roar. The audience, by my immodest estimate, was made up of youngsters between 16 and 25. Then guitarist Dan Hawkins hopped up, and after him finally the main figure and locomotive of the band, Dan’s brother Justin. From the very first hit the sound was phenomenal. That slightly warped “glam hard rock”, you know the stuff. Long-forgotten tricks, somehow brought back to life. A bit more “amateurish” and even naughtier (deliberately) out-of-tune Def Leppard, and they were red hot on stage tonight. The crowd shot up another notch, of course, when the opening “riff” of One Way Ticket To Hell… And Back rang out. The The Darkness guys clearly sensed the crowd’s devotion fast and really worked the stage with no brakes at all.
I hadn’t laughed this hard at a gig in ages. Justin was on fire, of course! He kept playing around with guitar picks, chewing them in his mouth, spitting them into the air, catching them with his mouth on the way down, then “booting” them back into the crowd with a volley like a soccer goalkeeper. Soon The Darkness had flooded the crowd with picks and nearly staged a proper downpour of picks, Malmsteen-style.
The Darkness are one of those contradictory bands that a lot of people don’t quite get. Many are quick to write them off as plain old bluffing pretty boys who offer nothing in their own material except a little Queen, a little Def Leppard, a little Status Quo, and on top of that make fun of the very music they play. On top of that, even their name is a contradiction. You’d expect some morbid goths or doom metallers on stage. Boy, were you wrong! The Darkness are a bunch of happy lads, total party animals, and on top of being born stage performers, excellent musicians. That last fact makes their deliberately goofy stance, with its whiff of hedonism and machismo, totally legit. They came to serve up rock’n’roll goodness, and it came to them effortlessly. People swayed to the tight rhythms, had a blast at Justin’s mugging on stage, and gave themselves over to pure fun, wired and relaxed. The “feeling” in the hall was fantastic, positive. Everyone was going wild, and hands were in the air the whole time, from the first row to the very last one (by the exit doors). And the Highway To Hell cover proved once again that wherever you stand in the hall, when a song of that breed is blasting live, it makes no difference. You’re definitely not getting away without a portion of spilled beer. And so my hair got sticky again, even though I was far, far from the front row. According to folks who watched from the fourth row, they nearly turned into pancakes when The Darkness started playing that AC/DC classic.
Justin sang convincingly and dragged the melody through insanely high lines, the kind you only reach when someone’s got you firmly by the balls. Sure, Freddie Mercury was probably spinning wildly in his grave in the meantime, but Justin showed convincingly on stage that he’s the real professional deal. The guy has charisma and is packed with energy. He filled the stage everywhere. He riffed, soloed most of the solos, played keyboards, and sang with a full run-up. To all of that he added a tasteful dose of “clowning” that the crowd really couldn’t resist, so they were hit with waves of laughter. The Darkness, whose first two albums are famous for running barely an hour combined, smartly stretched the songs out with sketches. They worked real extra stage bits into the instrumental sections. For example, Justin worked the main melody from “2001: A Space Odyssey” into the instrumental part in the middle of a song marked by a proper rock’n’roll rampage, with a keyboard sound that would belong right in a “Looney Tunes” cartoon, and he pulled the same stunt with a snippet of the main motif of Toccata & Fugue by J.S. Bach. The others didn’t lag far behind him when it came to similar goofing around, and Dan, for instance, started playing Wine And Flowers in the middle of Highway to Hell. The gig flew by way too fast. Dan and Justin swapped a heap of Gibson and Fender guitars on stage, and among all the guitars in Justin’s hands there was also an Ibanez Steve Vai model in a revoltingly hideous color combo that fit the “pretty-boy image” perfectly. Yuck, I still can’t get its nasty pickups in screaming, fluorescent orange out of my head.
Around 10:40 PM the band came back for the encore and really set the place on fire, especially with the closing song Bald. Justin showed up on stage specifically for this song and showed everyone that he’d diligently grown a few nice layers of excess blubber over the harsh winter. Shirtless, that is! And in the middle of the song the guy suddenly vanished from the stage. A few moments later a beam from the spotlights shone right into the middle of the crowd, and there was Justin among the people, on the shoulders of two security guards who carried him from the right side of the hall to the left (looking from the stage). Meanwhile, the dude soloed through the solo in the song. With a full measure of laughter from everyone in the hall, of course. You could especially tell when they set him back on his feet. At that moment all you could hear was the riffing of Dan’s guitar on stage. On his way back to the stage Justin of course kept soloing, and while stumbling up the steps he dropped a whole bunch of notes. I was dying of laughter. The gig met the standard criteria for length. I clocked it at a good 100 minutes. Encore included, of course.
The Darkness are an unbelievably fired-up, energetic young band who simply made it. What stands out is how incredibly approachable they are with the crowd, without a trace of the snobbery you might expect from a group whose videos get spun on MTV. Relaxed and balls to the wall, and with an otherwise professional approach, they served the audience a truly unforgettable rock’n’roll party.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Setlist:
1.Knockers
2.One Way Ticket
3.Is It Just Me?
4.Growing On Me
5.Dinner Lady Arms
6.Givin’ Up
7.Black Shuck
8.Love On The Rocks
9.Love Is Only A Feeling
10.Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time
11.Blind Man
12.Hazel Eyes
13.Get Your Hands
14.Friday Night
15.Girlfriend
16.Highway To Hell
—encore—
17.I Believe In A Thing Called Love
18.English Country Garden
19.Bald
