Airbourne Concert – The Plaza Club, Vancouver

I’ve been following Airbourne ever since I heard “Too Much, Too Young Too Fast” on CFOX. I loved it right away and needed to hear more. Their whole album Runnin’ Wild is excellent. Not in a technical musicianship excellent, but in a Let’s Party and Rock !! excellent. When I heard they were coming to town, I bought 2 tix right away, I wanted my Bro John to see them. They sold out the Plaza club right away, only room for 400. I got there early and into my MGD’s and watched 2 great opening bands, Endeverafter was one and I forget the other now. John jammed on me so I sold his ticket out front. He wanted to watch UFC instead. This show blew the doors off of any UFC fight.

I wanted to be front and center so I made my way through the small crowd to the front and held onto the front monitors. The boys came out with “Stand up for Rock and Roll” and blew the roof off the place. I was in awe with the amount of energy these boys were putting out. I was a kid in a candy store, jumping up and down smiling and laughing and singing along to all their songs. They have one album (that I know of) and I listened to it day and night for weeks. These young guys from Australia sure know how to have fun on stage. If one can imagine AC/DC 30 years ago, seeing Airbourne is probably close to how they would have been. Airbourne acts, looks and sounds a lot like AC/DC but they have their own new brand of Rock and I love it. It’s straight up good ol hair rock. These guys have the songs and the hair to pull it off too. They played every song off “Runnin Wild” like “Hellfire”, ‘Fat City”, Girls In Black”, “Diamond in the rough”, “Cheap Wine”, “Runnin Wild” and my fav “Too Much Too You Too Fast”.

I was right there high fiving the band and pumping my fist in the air. The lead singer Joel kept shaking and spraying good ol Pilsner beer cans into the crowd. At one point I was distracted and looked away and at that exact point, the guitarist I think was pouring Jack Daniels into everyones mouth. Well, he poured it in my eye and holy crap, that hurt like hell. It was stinging and I couldn’t clean it out, the crowd was pushing me and I couldn’t use my shirt to wipe myself as it was covered in Jack Daniels and Beer so I just stuck it out until the pain subsided. I wish I had had a shot of JD to ease the stinging. It all worked out though and was fun.

What a great venue to see them too. Near the end of the show however, I experienced nothing like this before, you know when you speakers go and you just get static, well, that’s what happened to my eardrums. After the show, I walked around the bar and couldn’t hear a thing. I guess hanging onto the monitor for and hour and a half wasn’t just a brilliant idea after all. The band came out after to meet their fans and of course, the groupie that I am, I got pics with them and chatted about the tour and their first trip to Canada. It was a great night. I had a lot of fun. My hearing came back a couple of days later.