yt_2011_09

» Y&T 2011 09 24

Reviewed by Tobbe
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Special guest: -
City: Sala, Sweden
Venue: Rockland
Date: 24 September 2011
Set length: 161 minutes

Y&T

Y&T was once again performing in Sala, a small town about 100 kilometres (60 miles) northwest of Stockholm. The venue itself is located in a building close the old closed silver mines and Y&T have played four gigs here before on three separate occasions. This weekend it was time for double gigs again and this review handles the first one, played on Saturday night. This rather small venue has a capacity of approximately 300 people and Saturday's gig was sold out weeks before. Rockland in Sala and Y&T have some weird connection, since the only locations the band have played at in Sweden is either here or at the Sweden Rock Festival, making people travel a long way to see this band.

A couple of minutes after 10 p.m. the band enters the stage during the intro, which turns into On With The Show, a song from their latest release, Facemelter. The crowd is at their feet from the very first chords and the band is in a good mood, even though suffering from serious jetlag, as lead singer and guitarist Dave Meniketti stated more than once. All four new songs were well received tonight and so were in fact every song in the set. When mainly focusing on their three early eighties releases Earthshaker, Black Tiger and Mean Streak, nothing can go wrong. In fact, since it is the thirty years anniversary of the first one mentioned, they had decided to play a couple of extra songs from that album tonight.

Dave is singing great and it is a joy to see him play that guitar with such passion. You can really see that the guys on stage are having a great time, as there are happy faces all the time and they interact with the audience in a great way, sometimes letting the guys up front handle the strings when finishing a song. Due to Phil Kennemore's tragic death in January, Y&T hooked up with a new bassplayer in Brad Lang, who is doing an excellent job and it's hard to believe that he only been touring with the band for a year now. Guitarist John Nymann and drummer Mike Vanderhule have been in the band for years now and they both are first class performers. Surprisingly John is singing Kennemore's old anthem Squeeze tonight and even if he don't do it as well as Kennemore used to do, it was cool to see that old song played live once again.

After a set filled with hits, they say goodnight with new song, I'm Coming Home, but return to stage one minute later. Two songs later, they once again say goodnight and the band leaves the stage. Dave somehow never left and said that the people probably didn't wanted to go home yet. He asked some guys up front which songs they wanted to hear and after a short band meeting they ended up playing three more songs. This was a real encore and it is always appreciated, as I'm so fed up with bands leaving the stage, although the encores are already written down on their setlists. Since the crowd was shouting song titles during the set, we also got thirty seconds each of Master And Slaves and Struck Down, played and sung solely by Dave, as he was saying that he couldn't remember more.

This performance was nothing but a great gig and it wouldn't surprise me if Y&T plays in Sala next year as well. I surely hope to see them soon again, as they always try to play a memorable show for their audiences, no matter if there are 300 or 10000 in front of the stage. A set length of 161 minutes speaks for itself. I also have to give some credit to the sound engineer, as the sound quality was almost perfect from where I stood.

Performance: 9 chalices of 10
Stage sound: 9 chalices of 10
Best: The encores
Worst: ---

Setlist:

Prelude, On With The Show (Recorded)
On With The Show
Black Tiger
Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark
Mean Streak
Straight Thru The Heart
Midnight In Tokyo
Shine On
Blind Patriot
Lonely Side Of Town
Winds Of Change
Eyes Of A Stranger
Hungry For Rock
Dirty Girl
Rescue Me
Hurricane
Drum Solo
Rock & Roll's Gonna Save The World
I Believe In You
Barroom Boogie
Summertime Girls
Squeeze
I'm Coming Home
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Hell Or High Water
Forever
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Open Fire
Lipstick And Leather
Don't Stop Runnin'