The Scorpions still sting a Jakarta audience
The Scorpions still sting a Jakarta audience
John Badalu, Contributor, Jakarta
When you think of Germany, the first few things that come to mind are modern architecture, advanced technology and precision.
Who would have guessed a rock band from the 60's named The Scorpions is from Germany? Who would have guessed that The Scorpions are still alive and kicking? Who would have guessed that they would still be eager to perform in Jakarta after last week's bombing?
This was the second of its kind in Indonesia after an acoustic concert in Bandung in 2001. This time, The Scorpions came with a full band, with Klaus Meine on lead vocals, Rudolph Schenker (guitar and background vocal), Matthias Jabs (guitar), James Kottak (drums and percussion) and Ralph Rieckerman (bass guitar).
The Scorpions proved they are still worth watching. With their new album, Unbreakable, just released, they are touring the world again.
Rudolf Schenker, Michael Schenker and Klaus Meine formed the hard rock band of all time, The Scorpions, in 1970. With three decades of ups and downs, the band aimed high and at an international audience from the very beginning by writing all its lyrics in English.
By the end of the 70s The Scorpions shared top billing with KISS. Rolling Stone even said the Scorpions were "heroes of heavy metal".
The band opened Thursday's concert at the Senayan Indoor Tennis Stadium with three new songs taken from Unbreakable, but the crowd had a lukewarm reaction. With the event, surprisingly, almost sold out, Klaus Meine's unique voice finally struck home with the old hit, Bad Boys Running Wild.
With his trademark black cap, leather jacket and leather bracelets, Meine continued to rock the stadium with some hard classic rock tunes. While Schenker and Jabs ran around the stage with an energetic guitar performance, drummer James Kottak beat an attractive fast rhythm.
After a series of hard, heavy metal numbers, Meine changed the mood with softer, sweet ballads by singing Always Somewhere, Holiday and You and I back to back, with Schenker on acoustic guitar. The Scorpions became well-known for these ballads back in the 80s and early 90s.
The crowd sang along enthusiastically with the band. It was amazing to hear Meine's powerful, yet delicate voice in those slow tunes. He lost his voice in 1981 while recording Blackout and almost left the group. With support from the others, time spent on vocal retraining and two operations on his vocal chords, Meine proved to have an even wider vocal range before the lively Jakarta audience.
The highlight of the night was James Kottak, who stole the show by doing a 10-minute demonstration of shouting plus drumming, and did a spectacular improvisation while the others took a break and changed costume for the second half.
With simple lighting supporting Kottak's act, the audience gave him a rave response. Like Kottak, base guitarist Ralph Rieckerman also showed his talent by playing solo between songs.
Still full of energy, The Scorpions sang three more encores before closing the show. "This is a song for peace", shouted Meine before performing Wind of Change and dedicating the song to people killed in last week's bombing in front of the Australian Embassy.
Originally, the song was written for the unification of Germany after the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. The song became a paean to the era of glasnost and perestroika. They even recorded it in Russian.
The song also was performed a year later, at Potsdamer Platz, Berlin, where some ruins of the wall can still be seen.
With their 20th album, Unbreakable, released this year, no one can say how long The Scorpions will survive: They are still very much worth watching, though.
The new songs still have the same formula, as with all the group's previous albums. The group's golden era may be over, but its sell-by date is yet to come, judging by the Thursday's concert.