Thunder
Venue: Carling Academy, Glasgow.
By ian Urie
On a cold , damp night on the 25th November, we made our way to the annual
pilgramage to see Thunder.
One of the hardest working rock bands doing the circuit, Thunder always put
on a great show.
Only one support band this time.
The support band is named Lauren Harris after the name of the lead singer.
A surprisingly nubile young slip of a girl.
She has a pedigree, however, in that her father is Steve Harris from Iron
Maiden.
She appeared on stage with her band making it a four piece.
I hadn't heard of her and all the information has been gleaned from the Internet
and her MySpace page.
As such, the only songs I could name were Natural Thing (originally done by
UFO) and later,
Steal my fire (originally done by GUN).
The sound system didn't actually manage to show off young Lauren's vocals,
which was a pity.
But the band!
I was particularly impressed with the guitarist Richie Faulkner, and what
must be one of the oldest drummers around Tom McWilliams.
Faulkner played a blistering set and was abetted by a sound system that delivered
for him and McWilliams.
All the concerts in this issue were taken by my camera phone, explaining the
lack of detail.
Camera phones (or mine at least) do all right, but only if they are close
enough to the action.
It's a pity that Lauren's vocals were mostly drowned because the rest of the
band sounded great and were nice and tight.
They warmed the crowd up nicely for the main attraction.
What can I say about Thunder that I haven't already said?
You like hard rock?
You like melodic rock?
You like a concert to be fun and participate?
This is your band, then!
From the moment the band hit the stage, Danny Bowes has the audience doing
anything he wants them to.
He gets them to sing, chant, clap, jump up and down, and all with the magic
finger.
Danny's vocals have matured through the years and can inject emotion into
the lyrics.
Since the band has been going for more than 10 years, they have an incredible
back catalogue of material to choose from.
The set list varies from tour to tour, but never fails to impress.
The band is extremely tight , the sound system was excellent and the atmosphere
is always superb.
As was pointed out, Thunder have a new single released "Six of One". This
has 3 live tracks on it, all recorded at the Carling in Glasgow.
The reason, it had the best audience noise. They also pointed out, they didn't
have any mics trained on the audience.
I'm sure you can figure that bit out yourselves.
Another point to mention about concerts nowadays.
Dry Ice!
Every band uses it now, it helps the light show.
And the reason, no smoking.
In days gone by, smoking in the hall provided enough to accentuate the beams.
The concert this time had more songs from the last CD (Robert Johnson's Tombstone)
and the new single, but plenty of older songs got played as well.
Above Harry struts his stuff on "Better Man".
To show what the band are like live, while Harry was playing acoustic,
the rest of the band gradually made their way to the drum riser and sat down.
This, with the exception of Ben Matthews (you can just make him out in the
above pic).
He notices and moves backwards , sitting down to join them.
As soon as he sat down, the rest stood up and walked away.
Suckered!
Major change of this tour was the omission of Dirty Love as one of the encore
songs.
I expect it will return in future years, though.
Fancy a great concert, go see Thunder!
© RIYAN Productions |