AIRBOURNE’S JOEL O’KEEFE SCORES ONE FOR ROCK N’ ROLL

In my very limited experience with Airbourne’s Joel O’Keefe, he’s a super-nice dude — but Airbourne’s music doesn’t do a whole lot for me. I still have all my old AC/DC albums, so I’m covered, y’know? Vince digs them, though, and I don’t really have anything against them. And it’s hard to argue with O’Keefe’s reasoning for the band sounding so much like their Aussie forefathers, which ostensibly boils down to: “Why wouldn’t you wanna sound just like AC/DC and Rose Tattoo?”

But regardless of what you think of their music, you have to admit that this is pretty cool.

At the Download Festival this past weekend, O’Keefe climbed the (second, “Ronnie James Dio”) stage’s rigging (In the rain! That shit must have been slippery, man!) and played his solo from up on high… until the stage manager pulled the power until O’Keefe came back down. I guess he was all concerned about safety and shit, which wasn’t very rock n’ roll of him.

What is that we so love about musicians climbing on shit? The best Living Colour show I ever saw featured a moment when Corey Glover climbed almost all the way up to Irving Plaza’s balcony and looked, for a hot minute, like he was gonna jump; and when I go see The Dillinger Escape Plan, I’m honestly bummed if there isn’t at least one point during the show when I think Greg Puciato might fall and kill himself. Do we find this cool because of the danger? Is it just wish fulfillment – do we secretly wanna climb shit? I’ll have to bring it up in therapy next week.

-AR

[via Blabbermouth]