Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Vienna (Wien) / Arena / Austria
Concert date: March 14, 2013
Attendance: 1100
The Darkness, the lost-and-found champions of rock ‘n’ roll excess, blazed in like a meteorite in 2003 among the hottest bands in the galaxy, spinning out unforgettable singles like »I Believe In A Thing Called Love«, »Growing On Me«, »Get Your Hands Off My Woman« and »Love Is Only A Feeling« from the now-legendary debut »Permssion To Land«. The meteorite blew apart in 2006, with The Darkness at their peak after the second album »One Way Ticket To Hell… And Back« (2005), because the band succumbed to the debauched life that sneaks up on you one way or another once you become a star. The Darkness split in two. The band’s main engine, Justin Hawkins, after a successful stint in rehab, spent the time until the reunion on his band Hot Leg, while the remaining trio played in Stone Gods.
It’s obvious: no Hawkins brothers, no The Darkness. The wheel of fortune turned the right way, and about two years ago the reunited The Darkness announced their first live dates. Last August they put out their third studio album »Hot Cakes«, played festival stages, and even carried their name to the fans of Lady Ga Ga by opening her tour shows. And at long last we got a new headlining tour of their own, which, with a stop in Vienna on March 14, 2013, came close enough to the Slovenian border to make a trip to see The Darkness a sensible outing for the RockLine crew too.
The show had been sold out for quite a while. The same promoter had put on The Darkness at the Gasometer seven years ago, a venue that holds three times as many people as the neighboring Arena. He sensed The Darkness weren’t as hot anymore, so he didn’t take the risk and booked the smaller, cheaper location instead, sold it out, and never mind that a bunch of furious fans without tickets were left standing outside.
Right at eight o’clock the support act took the stage. An excellent choice. A more-than-fitting choice. Ginger Wildheart Band. The band is led by Ginger Wildheart, best known for his years of defiance with The Wildhearts, though he first caught people’s attention as a member of Quireboys. Three years ago the guy also briefly joined Hanoi Rocks singer Michael Monroe’s band for his solo tour and the album »Sensory Overdrive« (2011). Not long ago he also kicked off the project Hey! Hello!, a kind of experimental, even progressive noisy pop adventure in eclecticism, together with singer Vctorio Liedke, and Ginger plays all the instruments in it, drums included. His backing crew fired off no fewer than four songs from Hey! Hello! live, namely Swimwear, Lock for Rock (and Other Sporting Cliches), How I Survived the Punk Wars and Feral Days. An eclectic mix of hard rock, punk, even rockabilly, plus forays into symphonic waters, all drenched in the juiciness of glam culture, made for one hell of a warm-up. Guns blazing, the solid hard rock grip of three guitars, and outstanding harmonizing of Ginger’s vocals by every member of the backing band. Tremendous dynamics and explosiveness. Naughty Ginger proved with his performance that it would be hard to find a more fitting support act for The Darkness than his lineup. Ginger Wildheart Band closed by giving the crowd The Queen of Leaving from the Silver Ginger 5 project and wrapped up their forty-five-minute stage stint with the The Wildhearts classic Do the Channel Bop.
At a quarter past nine, the Thin Lizzy classic The Boys Are Back In Town is spinning. In the last third of the song, four silhouettes appear on the still-darkened stage! Hands raised in the air, holding on to each other. The Darkness. The hall is on its feet! An explosion into the new Every Inch Of You, and the quartet scatters across the vast stage at full swing. Dan far left, Frankie far right, which leaves plenty of room in the middle of the stage for the eccentric Justin. The man who has poured many hours of Freddie Mercury impersonation into his stage-excess theater is once again provocative in every way. From the skin-tight scrap of cloth covering his bare, tufted, pierced and tattoo-»crowned« body, to the moves, the gestures, the grimacing quips, the facial expressions….
It’s been seven years since we saw The Darkness at the Gasometer, and Justin may have calmed down by a millimeter. May have, I say. His face is now graced by an Ivan Cankar-style mustache, curled up at the tips. But he’s still nuts. Positively nuts. With all the gymnastics, which included a headstand, climbing the speakers, rubbing the poor Gibson Les Paul against the left cluster of speakers hung from the hall’s ceiling, theatrical contortions and striking every imaginable pose and position, the whole staged shtick of Justin’s act is justified and totally credible, because his vocals are in top form. Like in 2006. A few times he literally stunned the room with the extreme heights his vocal registers reach. And Justin doesn’t coast through the show. That’s the most important thing. There’s no sign of wear and tear. The inclusion of the vocally brutal Radiohead cover Street Spirit in the encore proved it too, as did the damn superior version of »N.W.O.B.H.M.« that The Darkness play.
The Vienna crowd showed that The Darkness haven’t been forgotten by a long shot. The show was attended mostly by young lovers of rock culture, which is a good sign for the band, since it points to longevity. As expected, the repertoire included the most notorious moments from the albums »Permission To Land« and »One Way Ticket To Hell… And Back«, with newer »Hot Cakes« songs mixed in. The crowd went especially wild for the older hits: the roof nearly came off the Vienna Arena when, after a wickedly lucid send-up of drummer Ed (She’s Just a Girl, Eddie), the band tore into One Way Ticket To Hell… And Back, and again in the closing bang of the regular set, which all of us in the hall were feverishly awaiting, I Believe In A Thing Called Love.
The teasing from the eccentric Justin just wouldn’t end. In the encore a »little white candy« flew onto the stage. »Damn!« »Is that ecstasy?« »Did it do anything for the tackle between my legs?« »It’s a drug!?« It’s a drug, isn’t it!?!« Justin wondered, theatrically swallowing the »pill«, then started to undress and, like a born actor, realized »in agony«: »Ahhh… It’s worms, bloody worrrrmssss….«.
True, next to Justin’s giant ego the remaining trio was once again condemned to the role of extras, but they showed what great musicians Ed, Frankie and Dan are. Dan in particular is a key link, whose work masks Justin’s slip-ups. Those pop up throughout the show, since the guy does a whole pile of things on stage on top of playing guitar. At the same time Dan impressed with some beautifully laid-down, classically minded hard rock solos and proved he’s in no way behind his notorious brother on guitar. The Darkness onstage are an erotogenic apparition! Naughty Justin, mischievous to the bone, theatrically climbed onto the broad, well-»reinforced« shoulders of the handiest sound tech during the closing Love On the Rox With No Ice. The tech then carried him on those shoulders through the pit. Justin soloed on his shoulders, and soloed, and soloed. Into all this soloing madness swirling through the sweat-soaked, beer-drenched Arena he lucidly (how else) wove the main motif of Steve Stevens’ Top Gun Anthem.
It was once again one of those gigs that keep you in the grip of post-show impressions, mouth hanging open, for days. Justin and the band don’t let you breathe for a second when you share the live magic with them. The Darkness remain sickeningly good. Like the naughtiest gingerbread men of the sharp rock razor, they fire with full loads in a glow of extraordinary voltage-eruption every time it’s time to hit the stage. Even though the band has aged seven years since its last visit to Vienna, you couldn’t feel it for a second. Multi-instrumentalist Justin left the piano at home for the new tour, and the show spun on, ruthless toward ballad lullabies.
Let’s hope The Darkness hold it together this time, that the experience of years past taught them a lot, and that the Hawkins brothers can stand each other. Without them there is no The Darkness, and anything else they took on would leave a bitter aftertaste, the essential spice missing from the dish. At the Vienna show, The Darkness proved their greatness as voluptuous rock ‘n’ roll acrobats of a new era, who carry a rare something in their pinky finger. And that something puts them among the best stage performers around. They deliver excellent stage execution and season it with deliberately placed over-the-top, slapstick-theater excess. Exactly what folks need today to switch off in these leaden times of the last days of Western civilization, to which we’ve been driven by the virus of liberal capitalism, which in Germany now even turns water into private property. Rock ‘n’ roll is a catapult to ecstasy in a parallel world that we illusorily paint before our eyes. And after what they showed in Vienna, The Darkness remain among the most convincing standard-bearers of rock ‘n’ roll magic. Sinful rascals. And what else? Sinfully good, of course. To the bone.
Setlist
GINGER WILDHEART BAND:
- Swimwear
- It Appears That the Party Is Over
- Feral Days
- Lock for Rock (and Other Sporting Cliches)
- How I Survived the Punk Wars
- Taste Aversion
- Brain Sugar
- Over Easy
- The Queen of Leaving
- Do the Channel Bop
THE DARKNESS:
The Boys Are Back in Town (taped intro)
1. Every Inch of You
2. Black Shuck
3. Growing on Me
4. She’s Just a Girl, Eddie
5. One Way Ticket To Hell… And Back
6. Nothin’s Gonna Stop Us
7. Get Your Hands Off My Woman
8. Love Is Only a Feeling
9. Friday Night
10. Concrete
11. How Dare You Call This Love?
12. Givin’ Up
13. Stuck in a Rut
14. I Believe in a Thing Called Love
—encore—
15. The Best Of Me
16. Everybody Have A Good Time
17. Street Spirit (Fade Out)
18. Love On The Rox With No Ice
Photo Gallery
