30 January, 2010

Acca Dacca Down Underer

Saturday

Ro and Barnaby played together all morning, in both apartments and at the pool. Meanwhile, Mark and Sherry took turns running last-minute errands. Around 1pm, we found ourselves serenaded in our apartment by bagpipes...lots of them. Mark walked outside to find the source of the noi...uh, music. Turns out the Gaelic Festival of Music & Dance was at Coronation Park this afternoon, packing in the crowds despite the drizzly weather.

Blowing bubbles on our deck

Swim buddies

Bay of Plenty Pipes & Drums

Dancers practising in front of the Police station. Note the Crocs

Before we knew it, it was time to head to the airport for our long-awaited "road trip." The hour-long flight south to Wellington was just the right length for Ro. Glad we didn't elect the 8-hour drive. Although the weather in Tauranga was grey, Wellington was atypically warm and sunny...ahhh.

Can we get on yet?

Southwest part of the North Island, Mt Taranaki in the distance

The taxi from the Wellington airport took us through the Mt Victoria Tunnel, which goes under, you guessed it: Mt Victoria. LOTR fans will recognize that as the location of several scenes near the beginning of The Fellowship Of The Ring. The forested hills and English-looking suburbia soon gave way to tall buildings, busy city streets, and a bustling waterfront. All the pubs had black-shirted rock fans spilling out of their doors. As if we needed any reminder of who was in town, our Holiday Inn had a drop-down jumbo video screen in the middle of the lobby, cranking live AC/DC videos. Oh yeah!

View from our room towards some government buildings

Think Ro likes his rollaway?

The day AC/DC tickets went on sale was Ticketek's biggest sales day in Wellington...ever. The Thursday concert sold out in a couple of hours, and a Saturday show was quickly added, for which Mark scored prime tickets. This was to be Ronan's first concert experience, and it promised to be a memorable one. We had picked up some fuzzy red horns from The $2 Store at The Mount this morning, figuring Ro could wear them until the concert started, then switch to his over-ear headphones for hearing protection (which Sherry had decorated with "AC/DC" in black magic marker).

Fashionable in black and ready to rock

We grabbed dinner on the way to the concert at a sidewalk cafe, where we discovered that Ronan deems himself incapable of drinking from a can, even one with Sprite in it. He managed to get it down eventually, with only a mildly soaked shirt. We fortified ourselves with the greasy fare, then set off through the railway station to the stadium. A couple of metal fans wearing Iron Maiden gear gave Mark props for his Dream Theater shirt. At the station, there were ramps at the far end of most of the boarding platforms leading up to a wide elevated walkway over the rail yard that went straight to Westpac Stadium (named after a bank). No roads or tracks to cross. Ingenious civil engineering.

Although we saw a few other kids Ro's age, most of the crowd was well over 35, wearing AC/DC garb they'd probably owned for over 20 years. We picked up a few souvenir t-shirts, which although always a bit of a rip-off, had only the NZ, Australian, and Japanese dates from the Black Ice tour listed on them, and so were virtually guaranteed to be rare back home in NC. Of course, despite already having some horns, Ro wanted the official AC/DC light-up horns as soon as he saw them, to the tune of $15. We held off for a while, but Sherry finally relented in the interest of peace. On the other hand, the Tui beer was reasonably priced at NZ$6, which would only be about US$4.20, a steal compared to US concerts, and you were encouraged to buy four at a time to keep the lines shorter! The "hot dogs," per the Kiwi way, were like corn-dogged sausages; you had to go to a special kiosk that sold "American hot dogs" to get one on a bun (at a premium, natch), complete with "special sauces" (i.e. ketchup and mustard).

The opening bands The Checks (okay) and Shihad (pretty good) kept Ro entertained only briefly. He started to lay his head down on our laps, a bad sign for lasting the night as it approached his usual bedtime. We resorted to something we normally deprive him of: caffeine. After a Coca-Cola, he was rarin' to go. When AC/DC took the stage with a flash of pyrotechnics, he was psyched. He stripped off his shirt and was dancing in the aisle with his headphones on! Amused onlookers commented, "good on ya, start 'em when they're young!"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC/DC

The Rock N' Roll Train gets rolling

For any hard rock fan who's never seen AC/DC, you owe it to yourself to go see them. Like the Stones or KISS, these guys have been doing it long enough that they know how to really entertain an audience, regardless of whether or not you like their music. They certainly don't trade on their looks!

Look daddy, fireworks!

Ro loved jumping up and down to the music, and we were all having a great time, until they played "The Jack." Brian Johnson, the singer, introduced it in his trademark gravelly voice as, "a song about a dirty woman." Well, apparently, it also emboldened all the dirty women in the audience, and the, umm, "scenery," on the jumbotrons soon got to be a bit much for a five-year-old. The band played it for laughs, as Angus (the balding, pug-ugly lead guitar player) soon returned the favor to the crowd with a strip-tease of his own. We were hoping the girlie shots were just an isolated incident, but it happened again a few songs later during "You Shook Me All Night Long." Ro didn't seem to mind in the least, but in the interest of parental responsibility, we cut out a little early. Mark did pause on the way out, however, to catch his favourite AC/DC song, "Whole Lotta Rosie," complete with a giant inflatable Rosie straddling a locomotive engine and a scorching guitar solo.

As luck would have it, a guy from Tauranga sitting right next to us shot some decent video of the concert on his digital camera:

Rock N' Roll Train (opening song): http://www.youtube.com/user/delmsly#p/u/22/rXLSP7QfAoc

Back In Black:
http://www.youtube.com/user/delmsly#p/u/35/Kj49YP_I-jE

The Jack [CAUTION]:
http://www.youtube.com/user/delmsly#p/u/113/eFWXs2LcV3s

You Shook Me All Night Long [CAUTION]: http://www.youtube.com/user/delmsly#p/u/114/s-Adhu4s_tE

Ro was sad he didn't get to see the cannons from the finale we had promised him, but hopefully the band will still be alive and touring when Ro is older. With any luck, we'll run into the drummer Phil Rudd back home. He lives in Tauranga, after all, and is well-known to the Emergency Department where Mark works.

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