LIVE: Airbourne & Stone Gods @ London Astoria - 28 November

December 1, 2008 · Filed Under Live · 1 Comment 

London’s Astoria is on it’s last legs. It’s almost time to switch off the lights and call in the wrecking ball. I was just passing the place and found myself thinking: “Airbourne are on tonight…might be the last chance to go there…” The venue is full of proper old skool characters, the smell of denim and leather and overpriced canned lager. I even saw ‘a’ girl!

First on is Sounds and Fury, looking like every axeman Guitar Hero ever shat out. They really throw their hearts into it, but sadly nobody in the audience can bring themselves to bang their head, or even sway a little bit. They just stand there, wondering when some good music might come over the PA.

Next up on support are Stone Gods, currently sitting astride the rung of their own personal ‘can we headline yet?’ ladder. Coming across one-part Def Leppard and one-part really-chugging-and-hard-dirty-riffage, guitarist Dan Hawkins is the only person all night that doesn’t seem to pretending. He stands, slender in the corner, delivering storming string twizzling while the singer, Richie Edwards, acts like he has ‘arrived’. Hawkins is the star of the evening by miles, and he never said a word, barely looking up from behind his hair.

It’s their second night on the trot here at the Astoria, and Airbourne have almost sold out both. Are we really that deprived of AC/DC here in the UK that these jokers can get away with this? Everybody seems quite excited by the whole thing, while I look on baffled. I swear their last london gig was the Borderline, and it was just an ‘okay‘ show, with their then-support act Skirtbox seeming a more exciting prospect. A more enthusiastic hack enthuses to me that “this everything that I’m about”, while I’m just confused. Has a little brain bug taken over these people’s minds?

Airbourne’s frontman, Joel O’Keefe, screams at us for bleeding hours. No smiles, no sense of Irony, no thanks that he has upscaled from the Borderline - nope, Joel O’Keefe and his headbanging buddies seem to act like they are actually are AC/DC.

The crowd is happy, outside in the smoking corner. People accept Airbourne are a ‘AC/DC but cheaper’ ticket. Fair point, but I just can’t get any sense of fun out of it. It’s just wholesale rip-off, fronted by a long-haired James Blunt lookalike. Some say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but to me this band feel like a leech, taking every stylistic nuance, and distilling it into a cynical money-making project, aimed squarely at AC/DC fans’ wallets. It’s no surprise that the best track of the night is a cover of ‘Whole Lot Of Rosie’, to which Hawkins returns to the stage to join in.

Go on - watch it if you don’t believe me:

Airbourne might have 8 Marshall stacks on stage, but you can see only 2 of them are mic’d up. The guy screeches a fake, ear-busting banshee noise all evening, even when he talks, not once dropping the horrid stolen veneer. Airbourne are the trade description of pretentious.

pre.ten.tious

/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [pri-ten-shuhs] Show IPA Pronunciation–adjective

1.     full of pretense or pretension.
2.     characterized by assumption of dignity or importance.
3.     making an exaggerated outward show; ostentatious
4.     This ruddy Airbourne band that do my head in, I still have a headache.


Runnin Wild

Roadrunner 2008, Audio CD, £11.99

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