Alter Bridge / Bowling For Soup

I’m a little short on time so I’m just going to cram these two reviews into the same blog post.

Alter Bridge – Glasgow O2 Academy, 16th Oct 2010

I just caught the tail end of Slaves To Gravity when I arrived and they had the crowd going, and seemed OK. The venue was pretty much packed, no surprise with it being a sell-out, but there was still a lot of room to walk around and find a good position.

The headliners hit the stage around 9:30 for a 90 minute set. They’re not a glamorous, special effects-heavy band instead relying on belting out some good songs to keep the crowd happy. The set list was quite heavy on new material from the album ABIII which had only been out for about a week at the time of the gig. Lunacy on the part of the record company, but – as Myles Kennedy stated towards the end – the crowd reacted well and enjoyed it nonetheless.

Of course, the most pleasing reaction was for the better known material and there was plenty of it. If I had to pick three highlights, they’d be “Blackbird“, “Ties That Bind” and the acoustic version of “Watch Over You“. The latter raised the hairs on the back of my neck, just like the first time I heard Linkin Park‘s Chester Bennington singing “Pushing Me Away” accompanied only by keyboards.

However, it did raise one issue I’ve had with the O2 cademy before – the acoustic track was the only one where I could easily make out the vocals. Machine Head suffered the same issue a few months ago.

It’s not that the sound’s too loud – the bass, drums and guitar solos were all clear. For some reason, though, the vocals had been set at a level around the same as the music and so became buried. A hell of a shame as Kennedy’s got a great voice and part of the appeal of Alter Bridge are the excellent lyrics.

Not the band’s fault, I suppose, and it only took the gloss off an excellent performance. The new album is easily on a par with the first two, as well.

Bowling For Soup – Glasgow O2 Academy, 17th Oct 2010

Next night, same venue, different band! I was too late to see the Dollyrots, and only caught the end of Forever The Sickest Kids‘ set, which is a shame as they seemed to have got the crowd jumping. “A” followed and had about 25 fans. They’re not bad… but that’s about it.

On a night when Guns ‘n’ Roses were keeping fans waiting 85 minutes longer than they should before coming on stage in Birmingham, Bowling For Soup bounded on a little after 21:30 and launched into a great set.

Silly backdrops, music videos, jokes, banter with the crowd, improvisation… never a dull moment. Hell, they even took a photo-op break mid-song at one point. Standing and posing at each end and the centre of the stage before continuing where they left off.

Mexican waves were done. A death/thrash metal band called Haggis Farts were formed on stage, a song written, and the band broken up… all within five crazy minutes. The crowd were encourage to chant that the bassist, Eric, liked penis… and then chastised and told to chant that they were sorry. Which they did.

Bowling For Soup are all about having fun and not taking life too seriously. I don’t think I’ve seen a crowd grin throughout a show the way the mob did tonight. OK, except for the last time I saw Lawnmower Deth – and that’s a hell of a long time ago.

The other point of note is that the sound was a hell of a lot better than for Alter Bridge. I could make out Jaret’s vocals far more clearly than Myles’ the night before. Still, it could have been better. Maybe it’s the sound system there.

BFS were great fun and picked a nice selection of tracks for the set, including a novel cover of the utterly awful “That’s Not My Name”. I would definitely recommend them to anyone with a sense of humour and can’t wait for them to come round again.