Anvil at Maverick's

[bouche]

Anvil is playing at Maverick's on Friday Apr.4th ?

Is anyone going to that?

[Cosmic ChrisC]

Ah man! That's tonight? Anvil! I'd love to see that. Going to the hockey game tonight though. And I've been sick all week so I should probably go home after the game. But Anvil. Hmm.

I was thinking these guys would be cool to see also; that's tonight too though:

For those about to rock

Australia's Airbourne a throwback to testosterone-driven rock era

Lynn Saxberg

The Ottawa Citizen

Thursday, April 03, 2008

The sound of the young Australian band Airbourne hearkens back to a time when rock really rawked, around the late '70s and early '80s, when old-school metal began to lose ground to the slick crunch of hair bands.

It was a testosterone-driven time, when Van Halen, AC/DC and other bands with screaming singers and blazing guitars delivered swaggering songs at top volume. If I remember correctly, the main purpose of the music was to have a good time.

The members of Airbourne, all born in the 1980s, have learned their lessons well. Growing up in the Australian town of Warrnambool, singer Joel O'Keeffe and his drum-bashing little brother Ryan discovered their uncle's music early. "There's never been any rock 'n' roll commercially on radio where we grew up," says Ryan. "It was more or less a fully surfing town with nightclubs. We've always just stuck to our uncle's records that we found when we were kids. We pretty much just listened to those and switched off whatever was going on in the world."

The bands they listened to included Motorhead, Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Metallica, Van Halen and naturally, their countrymates, AC/DC. They picked up instruments, and absorbed every decibel of influence.

"We were so young when we started listening to it, it was something we couldn't live without," Ryan says. "We've always felt it's the only kind of music we could listen to and relate to."

They formed the band when Ryan was 11, and Joel 13, and have been at it for a decade, growing from a pub band, to a Rolling Stones opening act, to an international priority for the U.S. label Roadrunner Records. Their total immersion in rock has made them serious and single-minded about pursuing it. This year, the four band members moved from Australia to New Jersey to settle in for a long stretch of touring to promote the worldwide release of their debut disc, Runnin' Wild. From Jersey, they reasoned, they could get to either Europe or Los Angeles on a day's notice.

On stage, the band members are renowned for their bare-chested headbanging and fiery playing, while the disc celebrates every rock cliché in the book, starting with the electric guitar eruption in Stand Up for Rock 'n' Roll (now a wrestling theme song). There are plenty more like it -- Airbourne's high-octane anthems toasting life in the fast lane have been used on several video games, while the CD is a hit with classic-rock fans of all ages, even the grizzled headbangers who refuse to let go of their AC/DC records. The band members see young and old at their concerts.

"It's great with the demographics at all the shows we've played," reports Ryan. "The back wall can go from 60-year-olds to 16-year-olds at the front."

But what about the effect of a song like Cheap Wine and Cheaper Women on the younger generation? Ryan has no worries.

"People want to let loose, and we sing about having a good time and letting loose and having fun with life. I think it's a lot better than singing about negative stuff," he says.

As the band makes its first visit to Canada, radio stations (including the Ottawa rock station The Bear) are playing their music, and shows are selling out. The Ottawa date, originally scheduled at the cosy Zaphod Beeblebrox, was moved to the more spacious Capital Music Hall to accommodate demand.

The buzz is great, Ryan says, but they aren't in it to get rich. "For rock 'n' roll, you do it for passion, never for the money, and if you do it for the money, I think you're kidding yourself," he says.

As for the name of the band, Ryan says it came from watching too many action movies. "Airbourne was a vision of a group of mates up there in the middle of a difficult situation, like a war, and they just jump out of a plane and put themselves out there," he says.

"That's kind of what we do, not that we're in a war, but we're a bunch of mates that live together in the same house and we put our lives down for rock 'n' roll and we don't know how to do anything else."

Airbourne plays the Capital Music Hall tomorrow. Tickets & times, 613-755-1111 or www.ticketmaster.ca.

© The Ottawa Citizen 2008

[Velvet]

Damn, I thought it was an Avril secret show.

[ollie]

Ah man! That's tonight? Anvil! I'd love to see that. Going to the hockey game tonight though. And I've been sick all week so I should probably go home after the game. But Anvil. Hmm.

Maybe someone will trade us their Anvil tickets for our Sens tickets.

[bouche]

[bouche]

make sure you check out the clips on "The Story of Anvil" page. It looks hilarious!

[Freak By Night]

I wonder if Lipps still does his schtik with the dildo.

I saw Anvil open up for Iron Maiden way back in 1982. Awesome show!

[bouche]

did anyone go to this? I really wanted to go with a camera and take pictures of the audience. I'm sure it would have been a very eclectic crowd with incredible hair.

[Hartamophone]