Location: Salzburg / Rockhouse / Austria
Date: 26.09.2013
Gigs come, tours come. Must-see ones. Pretty Maids and Pink Cream 69 together in Salzburg! Close? Far? It doesn’t get any closer to Slovenia. We’ve always gone abroad for our “hard rock” fix and we always will. Pretty Maids, who have been on the road all year promoting their new album “Motherland”, out since March 2013 on Frontiers Records, picked the German hard rockers Pink Cream 69 from Karlsruhe as the support act for the first leg of their autumn European tour. Just like Pretty Maids, the latter can boast a long track record of defying the odds on the scene, having released their first, self-titled album back in 1989.
This particular trip to Salzburg was especially tempting, because the crowd was warmed up before both bands by local hard rock heavyweights Speed Limit, who, believe it or not, have been around since 1979. Salzburgers through and through. Between 1986 and 1992 Speed Limit put out three studio albums and were a highly respected, in-demand act on home turf. But in November 1994 they played their last show, and in none other than the Rockhouse club, which had just opened its doors back then. The band got back together in 2008 and released two more studio albums, “Moneyshot” (2010) and “Unchained / Prophecy” (2011). It was great to catch them in Salzburg. This is the real deal. From the command of English lyrics to the solid, flirty guitar phrases sitting on the compact gears of an active, dynamic rhythm section, all sung with confidence and full power. The first 40 minutes were hot and seriously good fun, and the crowd let out a nice bunch of piercing screams to show support for a band that has by no means forgotten its countrymen.
Then comes a whole different story: Pink Cream 69, of course. They took the stage at nine o’clock with exactly an hour to prove themselves. And they used every last second of it. The songs rolled from one into the next, almost without a break. This band is in incredible live form. Eager and hungry for gigs, as if the guys had 20 fewer years on their shoulders. The key figure on stage is definitely vocalist David Readman. He’s one of the best hard rock singers in Europe right now. The man joined the Pink Cream 69 crew back in 1994, when he replaced Andy Deris, now the singer of Helloween. Readman was still singing on European stages this June and July, when he performed with Voodoo Circle. So the guy is in great vocal shape. Fantastic interaction with the crowd. Constantly egging them on, firing them up… Beside David stands the unbreakable guitar duo of founding member Alfred Koffler and the slightly younger Uwe Reitenauer. Attacking, loud, sharp and fully resonant. The rhythm section is indispensable. There’s Dennis Ward on bass. The famous American with a German passport, whose work keeps “half” of Europe’s hard rock bands at the top, as he has remained one of the most sought-after producers for years. Not just sought-after, but highly respected too. A perfect example of a workaholic for whom music means everything. The band also premiered their new drummer Chris Schmidt, who recently stepped in for founding member Kosta Zafiriou. Kosta had to leave Pink Cream 69 because of other commitments. Mostly family ones, while he’s found a new love of drumming in Unisonic. Pink Cream 69 impressed with an excellent setlist. Somewhere in the middle of the set, Uwe and David played the new The Spirit on their own, to give the rest of the band a little rest. It was the classics that really got the crowd going, like Talk to the Moon, Do You Like It Like That, then No Way Out, which flowed into the bombastic peak of the Pink Cream 69 set via Livin’ My Life for You, Wasted Years, Welcome the Night and one more ultra-melodic, singalong track called Shame, taken from the album “Electrified” (1998). Bomb! Pink Cream 69 are at the peak of their powers, seasoned, hardened, tight. Great sound, outstanding delivery. Pretty Maids would have to work pretty hard after that, not to mention that Pink Cream 69 might just have stolen the show that night.
We used the fairly long break, a good half hour, for a walk in the fresh air and a beer or two, while the stage in the meantime “grew” a bit in depth. Allan Tschicaj’s sprawling drum kit now towered across it. About fifteen minutes before eleven in the evening, he was the first to greet the crowd as he came out. As expected, Pretty Maids came crashing down on the audience with the new album “Motherland”, represented up front by the aggressive Mother Of All Lies, followed by the more melodic I See Ghosts. The first classic hit already at number three, Needles in the Dark – a fantastic one from the album “Future World” (1987). The setlist leaned heavily on the new album, with a few detours to its predecessor “Pandemonium”, which gave us Here Comes the Night, the phenomenal I.N.V.U, and, in the encore, the quietly expected Little Drops of Heaven, which has obviously picked up the label of a mandatory entry in the band’s iron repertoire. The rest of the setlist was mostly made up of the famous wreckers from the first two albums. Including classics like Queen of Dreams was certainly one of the main treats for all the die-hard fans of the band in the Rockhouse club that night.
And the band is outstanding. Everything clicks, everything is an exceptional mix of aggression and melodic payoff. Hard rock wound up like hell, wound up to the very edge of heavy metal! Ronnie Atkins, in his venerable maturity, at least where years on the road are concerned, has lost some of his top end and at times only barely managed the choruses, especially in songs like the newest, Why So Serious. But when Please Don’t Leave Me This Way (orig. Thin Lizzy) rang out, and especially the notorious and eagerly awaited Red Hot And Heavy, then Back To Back in the encore, and the famous wrecker at the tail end of the setlist, Future World, it was clear that a destructive tornado of total devastation had torn through Rockhouse, leaving flashes going off in our heads for quite a while after the show ended.
Pretty Maids were in great spirits. What worked especially well was the outstanding blend of keyboards and guitar, which together built a bombastic wall of sound behind everything, plus Allan’s cannon-like swings and the lively rattling of the ever-bouncing Rene Shades. The crowd was entertained most of all by charismatic guitarist Ken Hammer, who this time allowed himself a bit more looseness and, suspecting nothing bad, let a half-step “miss” slip into the solos at the climax. Well, he made up for it by constantly making sure nobody went thirsty. Ken generously handed out water to the crowd, and you won’t believe this: the luckiest ones even got a beer. Bottled!
Ronnie took it a bit easy during the show. He knows full well that his voice no longer allows the vocal gymnastics of 20-plus years ago, but the crowd, on the singer’s “orders”, thoroughly filled the gap by singing along. So they hadn’t forgotten the lyrics! The show turned around in an instant!
Great energy. The Austrian crowd really packed out Rockhouse. A good 500 people showed up and the club was just the right amount of full. It looked packed but not overcrowded, so the bands felt great and we in the crowd could breathe normally. Definitely one of those unique hard rock nights that fill you with energy, lift you off the ground, and leave you with nothing to do but take a deep bow to the bands for their body of work and, of course, for still tirelessly chasing on down the concert stages. Even if they put on a little more weight every year, and maybe a gray hair or two (if they don’t fall out along the way). But like I said. A true rocker’s heart is impossible to crush. And both Pretty Maids and Pink Cream 69 proved it with a vengeance, in the rawest, most honest light. Exactly the way the magic of the European hard rock Bible knows it.
words: Aleš Podbrežnik
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
PINK CREAM 69:
1. Keep Your Eye on the Twisted
2. Hell’s Gone Crazy
3. Special
4. Lost In Illusions
5. Talk to the Moon
6. Break the Silence
7. Do You Like It Like That
8. The Tide
9. The Spirit (acoustic version)
10. No Way Out
11. Livin’ My Life for You
12. Wasted Years
13. Welcome the Night
14. Shame
PRETTY MAIDS:
1. Mother of All Lies
2. I See Ghosts
3. Needles in the Dark
4. Love Games
5. Sad to See You Suffer
6. Why So Serious
7. Yellow Rain
8. Queen of Dreams
9. It Comes at Night
10. Rodeo
11. Please Don’t Leave Me
12. I.N.V.U.
13. Red, Hot and Heavy
—encore—
14. Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi (Carmina Burana – intro)
15. Back to Back
16. Little Drops of Heaven
17. Future World
Sit on My Face (taped outro Monty Python)
