Music review: Foreigner and Cheap Trick rock Adelaide’s Botanic Park
LAST night Adelaide hosted two staples of FM rock — American power-pop legends Cheap Trick and the trans-Atlantic juggernaut that is Foreigner — and it was an all-singing, lighters-aloft blast.
Foreigner, with Cheap Trick and Sheppard
Botanic Park
LAST night Adelaide hosted two staples of FM rock — American power-pop legends Cheap Trick and the trans-Atlantic juggernaut that is Foreigner — and it was an all-singing, lighters-aloft blast.
Sure it rained for much of the night, but the crowd just donned ponchos and carried on regardless.
Cheap Trick, despite a muddy sound mix for the first half of the set, showed that after 45 years on stage they still have what it takes to deliver a quality rock set, ripping through traditional opener Hello There and following up with massive singalong tracks like If You Want My Love and 1988 hit ballad The Flame.
Frontman Robin Zander, resplendent in white top hat and sleeveless shirt, still has his trademark cheeky good looks (if now slightly wrinklier), and bassist Tom Petersson is still effortlessly cool. Rick Neilsen looks a bit like an uncle who’s had a couple too many drinks at a 21st birthday and decided to go get his guitar out of the boot for a jam session, but that’s exactly his charm. He’s a true entertainer, and funny to boot. At one stage he even threw Cheap Trick vinyl LPs into the crowd — thankfully everyone kept their eyes.
Saving the best ’til last, the Trick wrapped up with a bracket that included I Want You To Want Me, Dream Police and Surrender — three songs with hooks so strong that not even a Foreigner show can dislodge them from your head.
If Cheap Trick were no frills, then Foreigner were all the frills, backing themselves with nothing less than the Australian National University’s School of Music’s symphony orchestra.
The orchestra adds real clout, and it’s clear from the start that they’re no gimmick — this has been well thought out, like anything touched by Foreigner’s musical maestro Mick Jones.
Jones, a member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame, penned some of the most memorable FM radio staples of the seventies and eighties, and you know you have confidence in your set list when you can drop songs like Cold as Ice and Waiting for a Girl Like You at the start of a gig.
Original singer Lou Gramm hasn’t played with Foreigner for 15 years now, but they’ve found a heck of a replacement in Kelly Hansen. The lanky 57-year-old is a born showman, bursting with energy and possessing a voice that matches the majesty of Gramm’s.
“Get off your lazy butts and come down the front and dance,” Hansen urges the audience, much to the chagrin of the overwhelmed security guards who were busy trying to get people to exactly the opposite.
An acoustic set sees the band play Say You Will and The Flame Still Burns (from film Still Crazy), before they go back into full rock mode for Double Vision, Feels Like the First Time, Urgent and Juke Box Hero.
Saving perhaps the two biggest songs for last, the night wraps with mega-ballad I Wanna Know What Love Is (ably helped out by our own Marryatville High School choir) and rocker Hot Blooded.
In a nutshell, buckets of fun.