Aerosmith Live in Bangalore, 2nd June, 2007 AD.

I had not planned to go to this concert; it was a spur of the moment thing. I called up some friends on Friday morning – S p a c e Reddy, Ozzy and Prathap. All of them had some or the other reason for not being able to make it. So I thought I should call my friend Antony_Mallu_Kutty_Boob_Marley_Francis (also known as ‘abuse or be abused’ Anto) as well, and see if he was up for it. It was a slim chance, but I thought I should try anyway. So I called him, and surprisingly he said yes. I bought the tickets on Friday evening on the way back home from work. We decided to go for the 1800 Rupees one, rather than the 1200 one.

On Saturday evening I reached the venue (Palace Grounds, of course) at about five fifteen, which was fifteen minutes before the gates were scheduled to open. Anto showed up ten minutes later. There was a pretty big crowd outside the entrance, we decided not to join the queue, and sat on the grass nearby, waiting for the crowd to clear. Anto was bringing me up to speed on the scene in Bangalore, telling me about what’s been happening. It seems the two hottest activities here these days are killing mosquitoes with those ultracool high tension electrocution racquets, and going to Reliance Fresh to shop for groceries and getting ripped off in the process. I took his word for it. We also discussed other things like work, life and everything, and we both agreed that our lives were headed nowhere, and that we both went to work each day for the pocket money. And of course there was the cribbing from me, and the abusing from Anto’s side. It was just like old times.

The crowd had, in the mean while, cleared to some extent. We decided to go in. This involved getting frisked by some dude who had no better thing to do that evening. The security was pretty lax, the aforementioned dude asked me what’s in my pockets, I told him I had my cellphone and my wallet. He asked me how come I did not bring ‘anything’, with a wink. After that we had to walk through a metal detector. It was very crowded; there were a lot of people walking through the detector. If it beeped when any one person passed through, the third guy after him was caught.

So we were in. The first thing I noticed after entering was that there was no carpeting on the ground. There usually is carpeting at all big (international) concerts – it was there at the Maiden as well as the Roger Waters concerts. That was quite surprising and disappointing. Because the crowd can kick up a lot of dirt while jumping up and down. It is quite irritating. Surprisingly though, nothing of that sort happened – there was very little dust kicked up during the concert. Anto and I moved towards the stage. It was high as usual, must have been 10 feet or so in height. This stage had a runway extending into the crowd, which was good. Anto got really excited upon seeing the stage, because we were very close to it. It was not that crowded inside at this point of time, which was why we were able to get so close to the stage. We decided to move back, however, for better visibility. We took a spot towards the right of the runway (viewed from our side), and a little farther away. We must have been twenty or so meters away from the end of the runway. There was a camera and a couple of microphones mounted on the edge of the runway, the mics were pointing in the direction of the crowd. I suspect they were recording this show with the intention of making a live album or something. There was a large screen at the back of the stage, and this was not a projected one as usual, it was made of LEDs, which were very bright, and had pretty good clarity. The images were not that sharp, it did not have good enough resolution. But even so, it was great. This was a first for me – I had not seen this before. As usual there were two projected screens on either side of the stage.

It was still very bright, and there was a long time to go… so we waited. It gradually got more and more crowded, more and more people started taking places ahead of us, and we got pushed back a little. One very good thing here was that there was no opening act, only Aerosmith were to perform

We waited for a really long time, from about six to past eight. Their last-minute checks seemed to go on for ever. But finally, the lights dimmed, the screens came alive with images of the band from the past years, and then when all of a sudden the lights came back on, the band was on stage. Steve Tyler was instantly recognizable, with his hair and the mic stand with scarves tied to it… as usual. Joe Perry was with a fender Stratocaster, the opening song was taste of India. At first, the bass was not that impressive, only the mid and the high frequencies were loud. The second song was Falling in Love (Is too hard on your knees). It was when this song was in progress that the bass speakers (subwoofers) were turned on, and the effect was awesome. The guys are great performers given their age, they still have a lot of energy on stage.

The fact that we were close to the end of the runway meant that we could see Steve Tyler from up close – even Joe Perry, when he came down the runway for the guitar solos. It’s only when you see these guys from so close that you realize why they still have long hair – even after thirty plus years of rocking – it is to cover their wrinkles. Seriously, these guys are probably grandfathers by now… it shows when you look closely enough. Steve Tyler is a good showman, and Aerosmith has great stage presence (big surprise).

Joe Perry and Steve performed one acoustic number, where Joe used a black twelve string guitar. For this song, they sat on chairs placed at the end of the runway and the two of them were almost in the middle of the crowd. It was a great performance. Over the course of the concert, Joe used many different guitars; among them were the fender Stratocaster, the fender Telecaster and the Gibson Les Paul. He also used an Epiphone guitar and one with a transparent body – dunno which one that was. The guitar sounds were very easily distinguished from one another, with the telecaster sounding especially crisp and clean. The Gibson Les Paul had a fatter (thicker) tone, with unbelievable sustain. As a band, Aerosmith uses a lot of base guitar on their songs, with the base guitar work not always simple, it takes some doing. The base guitarist was good, it was a treat to hear the base guitar work.

Steven Tyler’s voice was as distinguished and beautiful as ever, but age is starting to catch up with him, it becomes apparent when he tries to hit the really high notes (like when he screams). And in a concert setting, the sound is not optimized for best voice performance, and so it was hard sometimes to hear his voice with full clarity. Even so, his voice was as striking as ever.

The lighting was pretty good, and the sound was also good. Nothing, however, still comes close to the sound and especially the lighting in the Roger Waters concert in Bombay. That’s not surprising though, because Floyd is famous for their concerts being an experience, more than just the sum of the parts. All individual aspects of the (Waters) concert (like the sound, the lighting, and the visuals that were projected on the screen on stage) were excellent by themselves, but all of them together made up one unforgettable experience.

The crowd was very posh, all the chicks were hotly dressed. All of them. Not one exception. The chicks were very hot. Really. Hotness was all around. Anto remarked that this was a pretty good crowd if you were desperate. (You’ll have to ask him exactly what that means.) I was just wondering why we don’t see such a crowd normally in Bangalore. But then later I realized that majority of them were from Bombay, come here just to see the concert.

And yes… I almost forgot… there were so many posers there … it was hilarious to hear what they were saying. Here are a few samples:

“kyon be, tum headbanging karte ho kya?”

“yeh Steven Taylor aadmi kaun hai?”

“they are not going to play ‘jenny has got the gun’ kya?” – This was when they overheard some others wondering why the band had not yet played ‘jamie’s got a gun’.

“we paid eighteen hundred bucks to stand here for five hours”

“yeh concerts hamesha raat ko hi kyon hote hain?”

“in logo ne ek hi jagah pe itne saare chootiyon ko khada kiya hai…” (referring to the crowd)

“yeh log acche kapde pehen nahin sakte kya?” (yeh log = the band members)

About half of the people were there just because it was cool, or because there was someone they knew who was going to go and they didn’t want remain uncool. They all had that familiar look-at-me-I’m-so-cool-I’m-at-an-aerosmith-concert look on their faces, not knowing anything about the band. But here there was also that look-at-my-girlfriend/boyfriend-she/he-is-so-hot-aren’t-you-surprised-how-she/he-landed-up-with-me look.

Anto dropped one of his pearls of wisdom here, he said that most of the women were insecure, and that they would rather show up here and be seen with an ugly dude, than be seen alone. So I think that would answer the age-old mystery “how did this dumb guy end up that hot chick?”

After the concert we waited outside for a while, waiting for the traffic jam to clear. We were just sitting outside the concert area, watching the babes walking by, not quite believing our eyes. Then we said our goodbyes and left. There was a little bit of traffic at the junction just outside the entrance, but after that the roads were clear. It was a great ride home. I enjoyed that almost as much as I enjoyed the concert itself.