MOTORHEAD – ‘LIVE AT MONTREUX JAZZ FESTIVAL ’07’ (Montreux Sounds) ROCK ‘N’ ROLL
Review By: The God Of Thunder
When The Rock ‘n’ Roll Preacher asked me if I fancied writing a few reviews for the Voodoo Radio Online website, I said, ‘No!’ first of all. Knee-jerk reflex… Not really pertinent, either. Anyway, after I thought about it, and he begged a bit, well quite a lot, pitifully, actually, but I’m digressing. He said, “you can write reviews of the Hawkwind, and Motorhead releases”. I let him plead a little longer then, put him out of my misery and gave him ‘the nod’. I thought I was the one who had the easy pickings. How wrong was I?
It’s a live Motorhead album! How hard can this be? Funny you should ask that particular question. But, if we take ‘The God of Thunder’s Time MachineTM‘ it’s a bit easier to see why.
With the advent of great age comes one thing. Aches. And, Perspective. Two things. Aches, Persepctive. And, wind. Some days, I’m full of it. That’s three things. What I mean to say is that, I’ve seen stuff before. I’ve been around a long time. I’ve seen Motorhead Live, through the centuries. In 1976, they were the band everyone loved to hate. I first saw them in the late 1970s. They were loud! Very Loud! It was difficult to know if they were any good. PA systems, in ancient times, often sacrificed clarity for volume. They got better. Both Motorhead, and PA systems.
Over the years, Motorhead rumbled on, uncaring of what anyone thought. Motorhead was a force of nature, and Lemmy, the boy from Burslem, became a National Treasure, and a legend in his own lifetime. Moreover, they deserved all of that recognition. They worked very hard to take the step up to that level. Between the late 1970s and 2009, when I last saw Motorhead live, at Sweden Rock, I actually don’t know how many times I saw them. The thing was, they just did what they did, and as they endured, they just got better at doing it, until no one could even come close. From what I know of Lemmy, he was a decent bloke, who enjoyed a cuppa. In his later years, that is.
So, how did they end up playing Montreux Jazz Festival in 2007? Because they earned it. Quite how traumatised the gentle burghers of Montreux were, afterwards, is not recorded. The set itself, recorded here, is just as you would expect. It’s loud, heavy, fast, and contains a great version of ‘Rosalie’. It’s still Motorhead, though! They are a rock band and, they play rock music. If you were expecting anything other than that, why?
