Well having just got back from the Wolfmother gig last night at the Corn Exchange In Edinburgh, I thought I’d mention how good it was!
We (a friend and I) got there about 20 mins before the doors opened, mainly just because I don’t like being at the back of the queue and I wanted a decent viewpoint in the concert… I was surprised though how few people were there that early. Hardly worth complaining about as when they let us in we were basically at the barrier, 1 person away, so we had fairly a immense view!! As usual they have huge gaps between everything, so it wasn’t until roughly 40 mins after that the support act came on. They were called something like Wolf Cubs (I’ll get the proper name later, EDIT: apparently its “Wolf & Cub”) but anyway, they really weren’t all that good. It was basically just noise, they did have two drummers, which I suppose made up for the lack of life in their bassist! But it was nothing as special as “Deerhoof,” one of Radiohead’s support bands!
Once Wolfmother came on it was absolutely insane! They played a huge hour and a half set where they went through their whole album in a great order, ‘Dimension’ first and ending with ‘Joker & The Thief’ which was such a good song to end with, especially with the the huuuuge intro they did, building up the immense guitar riff. All of the songs were generally so well performed, and the ‘Space Noises’ bit in White Unicorn were so great and so typically Zeppelinish! Speaking of Zeppelin, they even played a cover of Communication Breakdown!
Being at the front, you couldn’t help noticing Andrew Stockdale’s (the guitarist/vocalist) amazingly cool fashion and dress sense. He wears the tightest jeans, incredibly 70s ish aswell as some groovy silver slipper things. Coupled with his iconic ‘fro, and his craaazy lead vocals and guitar, it is not hard to see why he really should be a ‘Rock Icon’ along the lines of Hendrix. He should be remembered as a complete legend as he really is! The bassist/keys player, Chris Ross also has a uniquely great way of playing the keyboard. The keyboard that he uses is clearly well used and fairly battered and has effects pedals actually bolted to the top of it to stop them falling off. He plays in such a crazy manner; lifting the keyboard up during solos in such an obscene way (a good kind of obscene though!), and the Mind’s Eye solo that is soooooo good on the album is just so much better live.
Overall, it was an absoultely superb gig, without a question one of the best that I have attended in my short life… Wolfmother are one of Australia’s greatest contributions to Rock music at the moment, and hopefully they will continue to make great music in the future!