Concert Report & Photos by Juan Michael Schenker Group at Sala A, Vigo, Spain November 1, 2008 Added on 11/21/2008

The last date of the European tour didn't show any special thing. As with most of the Spanish dates the opener band was Sherpa. For all of you out of Spain this name would mean nothing, but maybe you know Baron Rojo; well, Sherpa was the bass player/singer in the halcyon days of Baron Rojo. You should know that Michael Schenker followed the band in their 1982 UK tour and even jammed with them in the encores. And Sherpa is the "Jose Louis" that co-wrote Red Sky in the Built to Destroy album. Well, the Sherpa concert was very good, as it was based mostly in the Baron Rojo classics, and considering that he has the drummer from the golden era of B.R., you have a winner in your hands.

But almost everyone came to see the mighty Schenker. As the intro tape was sounding we could see Schenker in the left wing of the stage, as a roadie gave him his guitar. Michael crossed the stage playing the intro notes to Ride On My Way and got in the right side (watching from the audience); the band followed and here we went !

The set list was the same as in the European tour, hence:
Ride On My Way
Cry For The Nations
Let Sleeping Dogs Lie
Armed And Ready
Ready To Rock
I Want You
A Night To Remember
Into The Arena
Courvoisier Concerto/Lost Horizons
Rock My Nights Away
On And On
Attack Of The Mad Axeman
encores:
Doctor Doctor
Rock Bottom

All through MSG set the drum sound was very bad mixed, with the bass drum sounding horrible, the snare too high and the toms very low; really strange, as the openers had a very good drum sound. To make matters worse it seemed that Chris Slade had a bad night, with some slightly errors in his playing, with A Night To Remember a low moment. Gary was very nice, doing a fantastic job fronting MSG; a shame that his voice isn't what it was and he had to made the audience sing the chorus for all the songs. The rest of the band played very good. And Michael was GREAT, looking great, playing greater and smiling a lot. The songs from the new album sounded best live, with a rawer guitar sound. My personal highlights were Let Sleeping Dogs Lie, Into The Arena and On And On. But Michael still had some more bullets: the last song of the set, Attack Of The Mad Axeman, was exhilarating, real r'n'r heaven.

This venue has a stage very high, and until then the audience was two meters away from front stage to have a good sight. But came encore time and that space got filled with people (me included) dancing and jumping to Doctor Doctor. And when Rock Bottom began I put myself directly below Michael to not miss any of his playing on that tune; what can I say? Impressive is very short to explain that feeling. And with that the show ended with Michael smiling and greeting the audience. Michael Willy Schenker, the world needs you.

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