Rockezine.com concert review for UFO on Mar 27, 2004 in the Plato/Helmond

Mar 27, 2004

The venue is filled well as Uli Jon Roth enters the stage of the Plato venue in Helmond, the Netherlands. Dressed in black satin and glitter, with a hat topped with blue feathers, the guitar virtuoso treats his audience with half an hour of classical scale racing. Age sure has not decreased the man’s speed, but making a guitar sound like a violin made me wonder when he would play the more ‘rocking’ songs

Maybe also due to the older average age of the audience, the classical stuff was much appreciated. Finally after a keyboard solo with a medley (among others “Jump”, and I feared even “Final Countdown”), the more rocking ‘song’ entered the stage. Still, only being supported by a keyboard I kinda missed something. This was most striking in the cover “All Along The Watchtower”; the vocals were poorly mixed with too much echo. The seemingly shy and sympathetic Roth, completely turned inside while playing, woke up in between songs, and thankfully received the reaction of the public. With a broad smile he took off after an hour, leaving the stage for UFO.

UFO must have been short in time; the line check took over half an hour to find the right sound. A proper sound check before the gig could have been more appropriate. With the classic “Mother Mary” as second on the set list, the atmosphere was very good and vocals were almost perfect in the mix. Pity it took several more songs for the rhythm guitar and keyboard. Very catchy was the powerful drive of drums and bass right from the start: Pete Way was in a very good mood and Jason Bonham is a real animal! With “Daylight Goes To Town” from the latest “You Are Here” album, UFO proves to be still as rocking and stumpin’ as in the good old days.

For the audience, warmed up by “Mother Mary”, the real party started with “Let It Roll” as they loudly sung along on “Hard Times”. With “This Kid” Vinnie Moore could not really reach the emotions like Schenker, and tried to mask that with lots of notes. The sound was not quite fitting and at essential moments a mistake was made. The enthusiasm of this young dog among old rockers as well as his visible joy in cooperation, especially with Pete Way, was very catching.

Holding steady to his microphone standard, Phil Mogg still rules. Still having fun and cunningly bending down some difficult to reach vocal lines (“Only You Can Rock Me”). What a voice! After a selection of newer songs (“Fighting Man”, and “Baby Blue”), the regular set is finished with “Love To Love” (still gives me shivers), “Lights Out”, and while in the venue and on stage everyone is jumping up and down to “To Hard To Handle”.

As the first encore “Rock Bottom” is performed with a solo spot for Vinnie Moore (again I cannot get used to the sound and the stuffing of fragile moments with hundreds of notes) and concluded with a party time “Shoot Shoot”. For the final encore it was time for “Doctor Doctor”, and I was quite surprised we didn’t get to see Roth on stage, as he did on Castle Donington. Although the roaring of the crowd wasn’t to loud in between encores, the audience (including myself) left with a satisfied feeling from an evening filled with youth sentiment by some good old rockers who still go strong.

(Review: Cor Schilstra)