Y&T Concert Review
Y&T DELIVER THEIR CLASSICS TO GERMAN CROWD
Show Date: November 5, 2011
Location: Isernhagen, Germany
Venue: Blues Garage
Reviewer: Dirk Ballerstaedt
Band Website: www.meniketti.com
No support band — ok. No gimmicks and no tricks — great.
Dave Meniketti and his boys played the last show of their European leg in an awesome bar called Blues Garage, which is located near the city of Hannover, the hometown of German superstars the Scorpions.
Shortly after 9 PM, Y&T climbed onto the stage and around 500 fans moved forward to the see the legendary band that rocked in the ’70s, the ’80s, the ’90s and even today. Dave Meniketti formed Y&T in San Francisco back in 1972 and released their simply titled ‘Yesterday And Today’ debut album in 1976, and they played two songs of this album… but more on that later.
The prelude “On With The Show” introduced Y&T‘s opening song “On With The Show” and the crowd quickly raised their fists and beer glasses in the air. After the song concluded lead singer/guitarist Dave Meniketti told those in attendance that they would play for about two and half hour on this final tour date… and so they did for 150 minutes! I wish other bands would also play for this long. The Blue Garage venue seemed to be the perfect place to host a band like Y&T as they had a powerful sound — but the light show could have been a bit bigger.
What can I tell you, except that Y&T played mostly their classic tunes that the fans loved. The first highlight of the show was rocking out to “Mean Streak”, that song is still my favorite since its 1983 release. When that song first came out Y&T were getting a bit bigger after their ‘Black Tiger’ album and that year they toured Europe as support for Ozzy Osbourne and began to be a hot name in the hard rock scene. Since that time Y&T have released several fine albums, some hair metal records like ‘In Rock We Trust’, ‘Down For The Count’, ‘Contagious’ and ‘Ten’ and more classic outings like ‘Earthshaker’, ‘Black Tiger’, and ‘Mean Streak’. The band’s latest, 2010’s ‘Facemelter’, contained Y&T‘s trademark of hard blues rock — and even though they had a smash hit like “Summertime Girls”, Y&T has always been about hard blues rock ‘n’ roll.
“Midnight In Tokyo”, “Black Tiger”, “Hurricane”, “Earthshaker”, “Beautiful Dreamer” (the last two from the band’s 1976’s debut), “Hungry For Rock”, “Rescue Me”, “I Believe In You”, “Open Fire”, “Eyes Of A Stranger”, “Lucy”, “Forever”, “Don’t Stop Runnin'” and newer stuff like “How Long”, “Shine On”, “Blind Patriot”, “Wild Child”, “I Want Your Money”, “If You Want Me” and “Coming Home” were played alongside the instrumental “Until Next Time” from Meniketti‘s 2000 solo album ‘On The Blue Side’ and gave us the very best of what this Northern California band has to offer.
While Meniketti is the last remaining original member, his new band of fine musicians were playing tight while having fun on stage — that’s what you get if you go to a Y&T show… fun. They played their asses off and gave us excellent music from their storied career — okay, they didn’t play that much from the mid ’80s records (the hair metal years where Y&T‘s songs became a little more pop-metal), but the majority of fans demanded and preferred the more bluesy hard rock songs than the mainstream pop-metal tunes anyway.
With Y&T music has always been the most important thing, and you can’t really find a bad album in their entire back cataloge — okay, ‘Musically Incorrect’ and ‘Endangered Species’ are just alright efforts from the grunge rock era — and they have always been high quality, and seeing them live in 2011 still proved that. Lets hope that Y&T can come up with more music, maybe an album next year, and then rock again for another two and half hours.
As a final word about this Y&T show — when I closed my eyes Dave Meniketti took me back to 1983 when rock was power and melody, and that is the best compliment I can give to a fantastic musician like him (and to the entire band of course). I loved it!