KILBURNFLYER

A journalist friend of mine pointed me to the following post by the rock Journalist Dave Ling (a much more authorative source that I - fuck me does he have the best job in the world or what) in his excellent diary:

"Believe me, I'd hoped that Michael Schenker would pull himself together for last night's gig at the Hammersmith Apollo. Alas, due to the venue's pre-entry queues his set had begun by the time I got in to see the show. The first sight that greeted me was Michael on his knees. "Oh shit", was my first thought. In fact, he played marginally better than at Pentrich (see July 29). Dispensing with keyboards, the band tried vainly to cover the fact that Michael was incapable of the fluid solos that have become his trademark. The intent was there, and at the show's end you could sense his frustration, but for the most part what Schenker regaled us with was open chords and random noise.From the ridiculous to the sublime, the Scorpions were utterly superb, extending the set they played at Pentrich to just under two and a half hours of near-perfection (can anyone really claim to have enjoyed those bass and drum solos?) As Metal Hammer features ed Alex Milas gushed in this morning's email: "I nearly wept with joy at 'The Zoo' and it just got better from there." 'Dark Lady' was added to the section featuring Uli Jon Roth, and although 'Make It Real' got dropped, 'Deep And Dark', 'Blackout' and 'Wind Of Change' were all added. Then Uli returned for 'In Trance', hanging around as the show ended with a seemingly-spontaneous 'When The Smoke Is Coming Down' - a track from the 'Blackout' album which of course he didn't even appear on.Incidentally, some objected to my suggestion that Matthias Jabs was "relegated to bit-part player" during the Rock & Blues show. I wasn't intending to denigrate Jabs, who is a fine musician and in my experience a pleasant and witty fellow away from the stage (for a German, at least), but to point out the disparity between the Roth-styled material and the band's MTV hits. In last month's Classic Rock, Matthias voiced his doubts regarding the "history lesson" of playing again with Uli, and even at Hammersmith the likes of 'We'll Burn The Sky' caused people to either punch the air with delight or scratch their heads and disappear to the bar. Make no mistake, as someone that wore out a vinyl copy of 'The Tokyo Tapes' during his teenaged years, I'm in the former category. To be honest, Jabs' disinterested body language did its own talking."

I am frankly astonished that Schenker minor could have been any worse than he was at Hammersmith but apparently he was better than when previously seen by Ling. The sooner he sorts himself out and gets back to playing like he did at the Underworld last year the better. No gigs for fucking ages which is a pain - next outing is the Jesus and Mary Chain next month. Have to find something live and loud to keep me going in the meantime.