Status Quo + The Screaming Jets @ BCC 11-03-10

Status Quo

March was very much a month of nostalgia; mainly a trip back to the early Nineties with shows by Pavement, Pixies and Massive Attack but also with a Status Quo show, which I guess for me is more like a trip back to the early/mid Eighties.  I’d never seen the band so it was very much a case of now or never, even though being at the Convention Centre it was going to only be a three song experience before I got escorted out of the venue.  In some ways I regret not requesting Cliff Richard & The Shadows at the Entertainment Centre back in February; I’ve never seen him, am never going to pay to see him and, although I’ve probably missed the chance now, would be interested to experience one of his shows, even if just for a few songs, and take some photos.  One of the things I like about Glastonbury is that they usually put on someone on the Sunday afternoon who fits that criteria; I’ve seen the likes of Rod Stewart and Tony Bennett at Glastonbury, singers that I never would have seen otherwise, and now days having the opportunity to sometimes photograph bands allows me to go places I normally wouldn’t go, just to satisfy my intrigue.  I can’t really see any of the big Australian festivals ever doing anything like it.

Watching the band play tonight the most noticeable thing to me is just how old Rick Parfitt and Francis Rossi look now, with Wikipedia confirming that Rossi will be 61 this year, Parfitt 62.  I guess thanks to all those videos and TV appearances, I still think of them as they were 25 years ago.

The three songs I get to see tonight are Caroline, Something ‘Bout You Baby and Rain, songs from 1973, 1981 and 1976 respectively.  Watching the band play you’d never think that they have been playing them for at least 30 years; you can tell that they love playing them and that they love playing on stage for an audience that’s there to see them, and would still be doing all of it even if there were only 10 people there to see them, and in that respect reminds me a lot of when I saw Toto at The Tivoli in 2008.  It’s definitely a completely different experience to the Pixies show at the same venue the following week.

There’s one point during Rain when I really wish that I have a much wider-lens, when Rick Parfitt leans over the front of the stage, with his Telecaster swinging in front of him, back and forth over my head.  I don’t get the shot I really would have loved to have got, and overall the shots were disappointing, with a lot of potentially good shots ruined by lens glare.  But it was a complete blast getting to see them, albeit very briefly.

The Screaming Jets support.  They’re a band I only know by name and have never heard until tonight.  After seeing them for three songs I wish that that balance had been maintained.  Listening to them play it’s amazing that they were popular in the early 1990s; the music they play sounds at least a decade earlier.

More photos on Flickr.

Status Quo
Status Quo

Status Quo

Status Quo

Status Quo

Status Quo

Status Quo

Screaming Jets
Screaming Jets

Screaming Jets

Screaming Jets

2 Responses to “Status Quo + The Screaming Jets @ BCC 11-03-10”

  1. Lillian Li says:

    I do not like the Quo, Staps does and Paula has seen them live

  2. Staps has always been a bit of a denim man though.

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