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Events and Reports - Kaiser Music Festival 2003 - The Hellacopters, Sepultura and Deep Purple - Live September 20th, Pacaembu Stadium - Sao Paulo - Brazil
"Saturday night. perfect weather. Purple concert." - I think to myself - "it can't get any better". And with a smile from ear to ear I pick my tickets, dress my "Fireball" T-shirt and drink the last drop of wine before I make my way to the Kaiser Music "Festival".
Along with the living legend Deep Purple we had on the bill, the Nordic hard rock band Hellacopters, and the "home boys" of Sepultura.
The Pacaembu Stadium, maybe one of the most beautiful and traditional arenas in Brazil, once again lent its beauty and history to the rock fans. And about 30,000 people showed up to the event that was rated (overrated?!) by the Beer Company that sponsored it all, as "the biggest music festival of all times". In fact, it was a kind of a MINI Festival, with only three bands. That's not a Festival, not here, not in Afghanistan, or anywhere else, although they tried to sell it, with the thousands of advertisings on TV, Radio and Newspapers, as the 8th wonder of the world. But anyways. Thanx Kaiser, for gathering in the same night Sepultura and Deep Purple merely 15 minutes of walk from my front door. This is reason enough for not complaining about the ridiculous ticket prices. But wait. There were some other disappointing facts that I couldn't let out of this review *devilish grin*:
First of all, there are no outdoor rock concerts in Brazil with seats in front of the stage. Sorry, it never worked here, and believe me, it never will. This time there were seats not only in front of the stage, but over all the football field area. And they were ridiculously priced or reserved to V.I.P. "fans", leaving no other choice to most of the REAL fans, but to stay at least 40 meters away from the main stage, seated in the side and back bleachers. So where the hardcore fans usually follow the shows standing up and rocking away, there were those V.I.P guests brought by the sponsor of the event ("the worst beer of all times", no pun intention), top models that had no idea "who the hell was that fat old man singing" referring to Ian "God-Gillan", and those old farts business men drinking whiskey and smoking Cubans, and hilariously covering their ears while Sepultura was playing.
But that's ok! With some sense of humor, and money for a soda (cause in no fucking way I would drink the shitty beer from the sponsor) we can say it was a very pleasant evening of music! It was an interesting experiment to gather bands from three different generations, with different sound styles and distinct fans base.
The Hellacopters opened the gig with its simple and energetic set. Not so known in Brazil (yet), they gave us a 50 minutes class of how to play an honest, genuine, no fussy, rock 'n' roll. I was very impressed by their live performance. They sound like if any of those great rock bands from the 70´s had gotten trapped in the ice, and somehow, had awaken nowadays in the need of showing the kids how this was supposed to be played. I really need to check their studio albums. All I have from them is the "High Visibility" album which I really like, but although their sound is completely based in the 70´s, the production is very, very clean, not leaving any "dirty" or "punch" to the guitars. I think they would sound a lot better in the studio if they manage to bring to their albums the intensity and rawness of the live performance I witnessed this night.
As I already told you, I am not familiar with their discography, and among many songs they played I could catch some of the names, as: Grace of God, Carry me Home, Better than You and Hopeless Case of a Kid in Denial (nice name and nice song). In the end of their set, they played Search and Destroy, from Stooges, with Chuck Hipolito, from the brazilian band, Forgotten Boys. Thumbs up to the 'copters, that definitely left the country with many new fans and a very positive final balance!
So was time for the local team to enter the field! After some time, Sepultura was going to play an outdoor gig in Sao Paulo again, and the excitement was transcending the borders of reality when the lights where turned off and the intro began.
I was very curious to see what would happen in the front sector, where they put all those chairs, when Sepultura would kick off, and I couldn't hold my laughing when I saw their hardcore fans literally invading that area and throwing away the chairs to get closer to the stage and have space enough to head-bang. Classic... Flying chairs in a Sepultura concert. \m/
The "Sepul-tribe" couldn't be any happiest. The band simply imploded the Pacaembu Stadium when they started to play their set. Mixing new songs with old classics they got an excellent response from the audience. Unfortunately their new album, Roorback, wasn't released in Brazil ´till this concert. But even being not known by the most part of the fans, the new songs got a great impression, and talking with people around me, everybody seemed to agree that those songs were the best music Sepultura did since Max left. So from the new album they played Corrupted (opening the gig), Apes of God, More of the same, Mind War and the excellent born-classic Come back alive, a song that rescue some of the elements from their early material, really fast, aggressive and with a fantastic drumming background (to picture this, think in Troops of Doom).
From the many classics played, the majority of the songs were taken from Chaos A.D. album: Slave New World, Propaganda, We who are not as Others, Refuse / Resist, Territory).
Simply amazing.The final proof that a band became a gigantic act is when you follow the audience scream the whole lyrics of all songs. That happened with this band.. It's unbelievable how a band supposedly 100% anti-trend and hostile to average normal ears becomes this popular.
From Arise and Beneath the Remains were played some medleys: Desperate Cry/Biotech is Godzilla (this one from Chaos A.D.), Inner Self/Beneath the Remains, Arise/Dead Embryonic Cells. From Roots they played Attitude and the title track, this one was the last encore. Also they played most recent material from Derrick's era: Choke, Sepulnation and the covers Messiah and Bullet Blue Sky. And the old Troops of Doom of course couldn't be left out, calm down hehe..
Sepultura today is a band completely recovered from the loss of Max. A lot of things happened since then, Derrick "Predator" Green is a lot more confident and integrated with his band mates. And I think that he brought to the band a lot of new elements to their sound, with much more flexibility for singing, changing from aggressiveness to melody, giving a brand new life to the same old good structure of rhythmic fat guitars and tribal drumming. The band seem to be much more happy, having the time of their lives together on stage. This time, mainly for Andreas, who is a big Deep Purple fan, and during the concert said a lot of praising words about his idols and even started the guitar intro of Lazy, teasing the audience that although had a great time with the brazilian band, couldn´t wait any longer to see Purple on stage.
And with no suspense, or any kind of intro, just stepping into the stage and starting to play, Deep Purple began with Highway Star. And I believe that from many of options they have for the opening song, HS is probably the best, because the reaction of the crowd is fantastic. bombastic. On the stage only the band, the amps, and the big flag in the background with the old 70´s logo. Given no space for stage effects and pyros, the music speaks for itself. Almost 40 years later, Purple still amusing generations of rock fans and I could see middle age men and 14 years old children singing the words of the following hit, from one of their most successful singles, Woman from Tokyo.
This far, we could see that the loss of one of the key elements of their music, John Lord, was being very well fixed by his replacement, Don Ayrey (ex-Rainbow, Ozzy Osbourne). In fact, this was only one more line up change in their history of thousands of changes and come backs, but always, and this is my personal opinion, the band found replacements of extraordinary musical level, with the same caliber of the band's name.
And showing that if the past was great, the present is here and now, they introduce the audience to one song of their new album, the excellent Bananas, the malicious Silver Tonge full of funk and soul music elements. It's always a first class experience to see Ian Gillan performing, dueling with the guitar notes of Steve Morse, or playing with his voice reaching unexpected vocal notes, and how easily he still do these kind of things. He is the king!
Also from the new album they played: Contact Lost, the beautiful ballad Haunted, I got your number (with that classic "walking" guitar playing and solo duel between Steve and Don) and House of Pain, a song with that famous bluesy vibe and Gillan showing their attributes with the harmonica.
But what shook the audience, as expected, were the old classics: Lazy, Space Truckin´, Knocking at your Back Door, Perfect Strangers, Smoke on the Water. The negative fact is that due to time restrictions, for being a festival, a lot of these songs were played exactly like the studio version. Purple always play live songs like Space Truckin`, KAYBD with extended versions, as genuine jam sessions, full of improvisations and turn them to a big trip for fans and band. This time there were almost no big solos. The only exceptions were Morse´s solos after Contact Lost and before Smoke on the Water, where he played many historical guitar riffs from Stones, Beatles, Free, Zeppelin, even Guns'n'Roses. Don Ayrey also did an interesting job with his solos, playing Star Wars Theme mixed with some brazilian popular music and Mr. Crowley introduction. The audience went completely nuts when he did that! I am sure you can imagine this scene hehe!
For the first encore, after those 3 minutes of soccer chants screaming "ole ole ole , Purple. Purple." they play Hush. Off stage again, and the crowd starts the "Oh oh oh oh" thing, reproducing the first riffs of Black Night, and they give what the people want, ending the Festival with class, for a privileged audience of 30 000 fans!
Of course, every fan goes home mumbling about some song he missed, in my case, Hey Cisco and some songs of Purpendicular and one or two other songs from Bananas, but hey, then they would have to do a 5 hours set. We should thank them for keeping this old machine called Deep Purple going and kicking ´till these days, even when they could be retired enjoying their families and all the money they got through the years! THANK YOU, Paice, Glover, Morse, Gillan and Don.
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Pictures courtesy of www.sepultura.com.br and Gisele Santos | Written by Rafael
Tuesday, October 21, 2003 |
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