Friday, May 10, 2013

SHOW REVIEW: ULI JON ROTH: 2/11/2012

This was a show review that I wrote by hand over a year ago, and finally dug up out of an old notebook!

I have written extensively on the subject of the poverty stricken Rock And Roll enthusiast and his need to get significantly inebriated outside of the concert venue with bargain basement liquors purchased in bulk. Bartenders are great, I do admit, because at least with them, you're never drinking alone, yes? But in these uncertain economic climes it is sometimes necessary to cut out the middleman. So it was after a long, full-day band practice that I was putting my abstract theories into distinct reality, and simultaneously educating my two younger brothers on my techniques: we were "pounding" twenty four ounce cans Tecate in a black 2009 Hyundai Elantra on a dark side street near the Oakland Metropolitan Opera House, anticipating the performance of Teutonic guitar relic, and living legend Uli Jon Roth.

In the midst of a heroic gulp of watery Mexican lager, my eyes shifted sideways and I noticed a rather distraught looking young man hurrying towards the vehicle from the other side of the street. Upon closer observation, he turned out to be a rather masculine woman. A police badge was flashed, and I groaned inwardly: "undercover cop?!" No... off duty cop. Boca de Fuma enthusiasts will recall my past encounters with off duty officers have not always been pleasant. So miss Polly Policeman, fascist pig bitch, was flexing her muscle off duty, like a hero! She took it upon herself to harass three citizens drinking in a private vehicle with the keys out of the ignition, because she doesn't like the kind of drinking and littering that goes on from the rock fans outside her apartment. She left. We didn't. Then she came back with a bullet proof vest on! It was really time to put the Nazi in her place:

"I know it's your job to be the iron heel of the ruling class which stamps my face into the cold ground, but do you have to make it your hobby too?" 

That's what I thought about saying. But alas, I was forced to leave the finely honed blades of my razor wit in the box that night, due to a lingering fear that robo-bitch would somehow discover and prosecute us for our real illegal problem, that the fresh faced beer drinker in the back seat was a mere seventeen years old. In the politest tones I could muster, I assured Lucy Law that her concerns would be addressed, and we vanished around the corner to continue drinking. We conspired in low tones to deposit large amounts of refuse upon her doorstep, and paint crude slogans upon her wall in pigs blood so that she would be reminded in the morning on her way to work just what kind of neighborhood she lives in and just what kind of "person" she is.

Uli Jon Roth was great, he played old and new solo material, as well some some classics from his days in the Scorpions. For the Scorps numbers, he brought out a German singer (looking a bit like Chuck Billy, actually) who nailed the Klaus Meine vocal parts with uncanny precision. Excelent!

I spent the rest of the night absorbed in the work of a living legend doing what he does best, and soon forgot the piggy troubles of the outside world.



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