DARTH

This was something that I’d been looking forward to since I’d bought the tickets last year. We’d been lucky to get to see them as we’d lucked out on getting tickets for any of the indoor arena gigs. This would have meant a trip down south as they never came to Scotland on this leg, but I had a funny feeling they’d be at Hampden in the summer and lo and behold they did. So it came to pass that Graham and I did head through to Glasgow early afternoon to grab a couple of pints in the city centre. We had hoped to find a pub with proper beer and food, but unfortunately neither of us knowing Glasgow that well we were thwarted in this part of our mission, so ended up just having a drink before heading out to Mount Florida. We grabbed a chippy and tried to get a beer before heading in but we were really too late in heading out this way for that as there was a queue outside the one we were heading to, so inside we went for some over-priced lager.

This did mean we could scope the standing area and get a decent spot to watch from, which we did. First up were The Answer from Northern Ireland. I’d ben quite keen to see these guys having heard them a fair bit on Planet Rock, but to be honest I was a little underwhelmed. I’ll probably go and seem them again, but at an indoor venue as the sound didn’t seem that good. This was especially disappointing as I’d heard how good they were live. Next up were The Subways who were a replacement for Thin Lizzy who had pulled out a the last minute because of an injury to their drummer. Now I’d seen them before at TiTP, and to be honest thought them an odd replacement. Don’t get me wrong I think they are pretty good, just not what I would expect as the main support act for AC/DC. Unfortunately on their performance that day I’m not too sure too many folk would have been rushing out and buying their albums. Despite the rushing about the stage, their performance seemed less manic than when I’d seen them last at TiTP. Anyway enough about the support, onto the main course.

The Answer

The Subways

It is pretty poor show that this was the first time I’d been to see the mighty AC/DC, still we were here and boy do they put on a good show, despite their advancing years. From the opening riff of Rock n’ Roll Train to the closing of the set with For Those About to Rock, it was just incredible. The layout of the stage and Hampden’s relatively small dimensions meant we weren’t too far away from Brian and Angus doing their thing on the walkway and latterly Angus on his own riser, I even grabbed some video of that.

Angus & Brian on Walkway

The biggest highlight for me was You Shook Me All Night Long, it is one of my all time favourite tracks by anyone not just AC/DC. There were tracks I’d wished they’d played, but then it’s a bit like going to a Rush gig they have just so much material to try and pick from they can’t play everything you want to hear. The new stuff went down really well (with me anyway), but I did read some comments online about people moaning that they’d played too many tracks from the new album (they played 5) – but this was the Black Ice tour after all I’m not sure what people expected. Anyway as someone once said “you can’t please all the people all the time”, well trust me I had a massive grin on my face so I think I could be considered to have been pleased.

And a big thank you to Adele for coming and picking us up at the end of the night. The original plan had been to get the train back to Edinburgh and for me to kip down at Graham’s, but when I checked the timings I realised it would have been tight to make that last train and getting the bus back would have meant arriving in Edinburgh at around 1.30 am. She’d offered to come through instead of me taking the car and then not being able to have a drink, so that was very handy. As it turned out we could have made that last train as we managed to grab a taxi back into town, but sods law if we’d been relying on that we wouldn’t have got one.

There are a few more photos here, and I may have check through the rest to see if any are good enough to be uploaded.