Airbourne was the last stop on our agenda on our metal voyage through the Roskilde festival anno 2013.
They have ever been any big favourites of mine, but what they do, they do well, and I really couldn’t see a reason not to go to their show.

What met us in the Arena tent on this early July afternoon was a bombastic run of the Terminator theme melody, and more or less drunk people pouring in from all sides – we quickly grabbed us a pair of spots in the inner circle and were all the happier for it.
After the intro, the band figuratively exploded out on the stage together with Ready To Rock, the opener of their still hot from the presses third album, Black Dog Barking.
In a way, it could of course be said that it was business as usual with these Aussies, but if you know what they’re about you know that business, even the usual kind, is anything but usual! Joel O’Keeffe was as always the undisputable centre of attention, but the rest of them were kicking ass all in their own right as well. Joel O’Keeffe however, took things to a whole new level, even by his standards (as I know them) – there wasn’t a moment of reflective tranquillity to be seen, rather, he excelled at running from side to side of the stage, from the back to the front and was certainly no stranger to the little catwalk sticking out in the middle. He may have pissed off some photographers as the smash-a-beer-can-with-the-head trick was done on said catwalk while they were still standing in the pit to get some shots of him – I expect many a wet lens, but for the rest of us the trick was highly entertaining!
O’Keeffe never climbed the stage construction at this show, but he did enter the security pit for a closer look at the crowd, he shared wine by drinking a large mouthful which he then spat out (afterwards handing the bottle to his brother behind the drums who had no problem keeping his down), and he promised a beer to the first person to get on top of someone else!

Taking into consideration that Roskilde is the by far most security minded festival I know of, I was very curious to see how it would turn out after Joel O’Keeffe’s all but security minded comment – in fact, he wanted to see exactly how many could get on top of someone else in total in addition to having it done fast! To my initial surprise, the guards allowed for the audience to climb up on the shoulders of whomever was standing close by, but only until Joel O’Keeffe turned his back, then it didn’t take more than a split second for them to be up on the fence, ordering people to get down, possibly on pain of being thrown out. Again, highly amusing!
Even if there was only one winner to be found to the little stunt, beer drinking was more or less a mandatory activity in the crowd. And you know how it goes, the drunker someone gets, the more likely they are to embarrass themselves with public singing. Well, as we were all in a sweetly intoxicated state at this point in time, no one was embarrassed (well, maybe the security and beer vendors, but who cares about that?) and we were all gladly sharing our vocal (in)capabilities with everyone else. Joel O’Keeffe tried to make us sing along to a guitar sound in Live It Up, but mostly it was the easily recognisable choruses that got a life of their own as they were interpreted and amplified through a large quantity of drunken Danes.

In the past, I’ve always felt a bit torn about seeing Airbourne perform – my logic lets me know that they are extremely wild and free to watch, but my gut has never really got the point of it all, and I have ended up feeling it was a bit superficial, however entertaining they were straining to be.
Today however, my gut was in on the fun as well, making this the first Airbourne show where I could without hesitation completely surrender to the fun, and I liked it. A lot.

Setlist:

Ready To Rock
Chewin’ The Fat
Diamond In The Rough
Back in The Game
Raise The Flag
Cheap Wine & Cheaper Women
Black Dog Barking
No Way But The Hard Way
Live It Up
Too Much, Too Young, Too Fast
Runnin’ Wild