On March 12th I was lucky enough to get to see Slash at Namba Hatch in Osaka. For those of you who don’t know (probably because you are too young!), Slash is the guitar player from Guns & Roses, arguably one of the greatest Rock & Roll groups in the history of R&R. Since Guns & Roses split up some years ago, Slash has gone off on his own and become huge as a solo act. This tour was to promote his newest album, titled R&FnR, which had guest vocalists for all the3 tracks (Slash doesn’t sing). For this world tour, vocalist Myles Kennedy, who features on 2 tracks, was lead vocalist. I had never heard of him before, but he did an amazing job, comparable with Axle Rose himself.
The show was awesome. We were seated front row left on the 2nd floor, which was great because the main floor was packed with rockers. I’ve never seen such an energetic floor crowd in my life ( and I’ve seen Slayer, Pantera, Moist, Silverchair, NoFX and many other big bands). The opening act was a band called Alter Bridge, again whom I had never heard of but who were excellent. They played about 30 minutes, then Slash and his band came out and played for 2 hours, then came back on for an encore of about 45 minutes! At the beginning of the encore, Slash came on stage alone and addressed the audience, thanking them for coming, expressing sadness about the earthquake & tsunami disaster in Tohoku, and then he dedicated the show to the victims. Everyone was in awe of his emotional message and his obvious care and kindness. Nice guy!
What impressed me most at this show was that everyone knew all the words to all the songs and everyone was singing along! Music is truly a powerful tool and an inspirational one for people to study English. Most impressive! I haven’t enjoyed a concert that much in a long time, plus I got to hear one of the truly great rock musicians of the last 30 years. Awesome!
Edward, SSE Otsu
BTW- Anyone know why it’s called Namba ‘Hatch’? I’ll post the answer soon….
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