After an opening video that lacked any and all subtlety, featuring two women attempting to seduce a devilish Angus Young as he stoked the coals on a runaway train, Australia's finest fivesome, AC/DC, took the stage to fireworks. With a gigantic locomotive as its backdrop, the band ripped into "Rock 'n' Roll Train," from its most recent release, Black Ice -- coincidentally, the name of this tour.
Now, the tour was originally supposed to stop in Kansas City all the way back in October, but was postponed due to frontman Brian Johnson needing treatment for ulcers. The band didn't seem to be affected at all, least of all Johnson, who was running around with an intensity only outpaced by Young.
Young moved around the stage and the extended catwalk like a man a third his age. At one point toward the end of "The Jack," he did a striptease that culminated in the revelation of both AC/DC boxer shorts and washboard abs.
The show featured everything one would expect from an AC/DC show: the cannons at the end of "For Those About to Rock," the giant inflatable woman with breasts the size of small cars during "A Whole Lotta Rosie," Johnson swinging from a huge bell at the start of "Hell's Bells," and an extended Angus guitar solo that had him in a scissor-lifted stage at the end of the catwalk, above the crowd, as confetti blasted from cannons at its base.
Of course, most of the stuff from Black Ice wasn't as popular as the classics ("Here's a song of the new album -- the title track" resulted in a massive bathroom exodus), but people still knew the words and shouted along, which should stand for something.
The band was on-point, despite the crowd's lack of interest in the new material. While Johnson's stage banter consisted mainly of "yeah!" and "uh-huh!" and "all right, then!" but nobody was there to see a public speaker. The audience, many of whom looked old enough to have caught the band on whatever tour happened to be emblazoned across the back of their shirt, was there to party and rock out, and that's what they got a soundtrack for.
Never have I seen so many people wearing the shirt of the band they're going to see as I did last night. My theory is that so many people own AC/DC shirts, and they wear them to so many other concerts, that they just don't realize what they've got on until it's too late.
Set list
Rock 'n' Roll Train
Hell Ain't A Bad Place to Be
Back in Black
Big Jack
Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap
Shot Down in Flames
Thunderstruck
Black Ice
The Jack
Hell's Bells
Shoot to Thrill
War Machine
High Voltage
You Shook Me All Night Long
TNT
A Whole Lotta Rosie
Let There Be Rock
Encore
Highway to Hell
For Those About to Rock (We Salute You)
There was an opening band, Shaman's Harvest. I heard two songs as I was standing in line, and they sounded like fairly basic melodic rock. Something between Nickelback and Shinedown, basically. I walked into the arena proper just in time to see them leave stage and say, "Buy a CD."
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