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

Thursday, June 17th, 2010 at 3:30pm by

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]

  • DOCEMP

    Did the exact same thing at Sonisphere last year. They let him keep going until he came down himself though.

  • SP420

    He’s fucking insane. I remember them at Mayhem in 2008, not thinking much of them when they first came on but was I blown the fuck away. Joel’s a fucking madman. Drinking Foster’s on stage…he even got down in the pit with us for a solo. Fucking great, one of the best live acts I’ve seen.

  • Patton

    When I saw them in the O2 Academy last year he climbed the stack of amps and jumped on the balcony from there.

  • T-Rocket

    Hahaha they haven’t changed a bit. He used to run through the crowd and play on the bar before they were big back in Australia. Top blokes too we used to get on the piss with them after the shows.

  • http://thenumberoftheblog.com Snagon

    fucking Rose Tattoo now that is the good hard rockin Australian band. mean hard rock + slide guitar sign me up

  • mongorian

    the security at download were cunts this year, they actually tried to stop as i lay dying from starting a circle pit, at a METAL FESTIVAL jeez

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Katie-Smith/610646106 Katie Smith

    He did the same thing at Wacken in 08 and again in 09. Went a little higher in 09 though. Good solid rock n roll!
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pwr3ydVU36s

  • http://www.segadriven.com Hairyman

    You should see Cregg from BoyHitsCar’s stage dive. Seriously. Look it up on YouTube. I can’t believe he didn’t hurt anyone.