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Finally a music post! About time … All you rock n’ rolla’s out there should know what’s up. Yes, I went to see AC/DC last week and I witnessed without any doubt one of the best shows ever. But before I was able to enjoy this fabulous piece of blasphemy I had to go through the hassle of ordering tickets. The recipe is always the same: 1 million fans, only 20.000 tickets and a poor performing ticket system.

I’ve learned my lesson in the past and immediately ordered mine via SMS since my phone number and my credit card are linked to my GoForMusic profile. This means the time to order takes me merely 30 seconds, but therefor you have to know the message to text and off course to number to text it too. That was actually the big issue because the splash images of the order form where loading insanely slow. Thank God I know my way around HTML code and eventually I managed to get the SMS information from the HTML source code. This is an advantage a computer noob doesn’t have.

March 1st 2009: me and my main main Tijs (not to confuse with me … Thijs) took the car to Antwerpen where rock n’ roll heaven awaited us. One should know that you cannot enter rock n’ roll heaven without the necessary warm-up, so I decided to spice things up with a little Turbonegro. In my humble opinion, Turbonegro is more or less the contemporary AC/DC (and in fact the conteporary version of lots of ‘hall of famers’).

There we where: man, car, tarmac and music, blended together just perfectly. The road sign ‘Pizza Hut, next exit’ was an omen from The Allmighty and off course who were we to deny this divine offer. When arriving I noticed a lot of people interpreted that omen in the same way we did. This ment queueing, but after a short while we were appointed a table where we chanted the lyrics of the legendary pizza anthem by Turbonegro called The Age Of Pamparius. Yeah … we were reaching the threshold we needed and quickly set off.

Knowing that parking at Sportpaleis is a nightmare, I decided to do some P+R at the desperate and depressing left bank of the Schelde called Linkeroever. The park & ride offered us the unique possibility to take the subway to the venue in just over 10 minutes. Free of charge off course since it is included in the ticket price. Lovely idea by the organisers. The arrival went quite well too and a couple of minutes later we were already inside the venue watching support act The Answer who did a pretty decent job.

You might have guessed: no one actually went that nuts on the support act. People were waiting for AC/DC and their prayers were answered right around 21h. All went dark and a nice animated intro lit the videoscreen showing a runaway train followed by a huge explosion, fireworks and the actual train appearing on stage . The video below shows you the one from their gig in New York

Pretty awesome huh?! I was mesmerized for 2 full minutes, the sheer size of the train was so impressive. Off course the analogy with the hit single Rock N’ Roll train was obvious. All things considered, the props weren’ the most impressive bit. Angus Young was. Not only did he wear his signature outfit and did he perform his party tricks, he also managed to play those wonderful riffs perfectly. Do not forget you’re dealing with an actual guitar hero. I love the way he attracts attention to him without doing that much efforts and without making an fool of himself. This dude has got class.

The setlist was perfect too: some new songs and all the essential classics. My favorites are:

• Rock N’ Roll Train
• Back In Black
• Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap
• You Shook Me All Night Long
• T.N.T.
• Whole Lotta Rosie
• Highway To Hell
• For Those About To Rock

After a lovely set, the guys ended with: For Those About To Rock … We Salute You. The obligatory cannons joined in and fired away. Truly an immense experience.

Mind you, there was a second sold out show planned on Tuesday, but this show was cancelled on short notice. The most heartbreaking thing was that a friend of mine called Tim flew over from Barcelona to attend this show. He was already on his way when he heard on the radio the show was canceled. Can you spell CARDIAC ARREST ? My heart goes out to you bro and may this challenging experience make you stronger!

Meanwhile I’ve noticed there are still tickets available for the Amsterdam show in June … Need I say more?

For more information on this tour, please check out WikiPedia.

For those about to rock … we salute you