Cold Chisel Absolutely Thrills Their Hometown Crowd At The Adelaide Clipsal 500 – After-Race Concert Review

Clipsal 500, Sun Mar 1 After forty years of explosive rock‘n’roll, Cold Chisel returned for this year’s Adelaide Clipsal 500 to rock with their hometown fans. After being inducted into the SA Music Hall Of Fame earlier in the day – on Pit Straight, no less – you could tell from the massive roar as they stepped out of their vehicles that these V8 Supercar fans were very excited to see Cold Chisel and couldn’t wait for their performance that night. The exhilaration in the crowd as the introduction played was mind-blowing, but then the audience erupted into a massive roar as Jimmy Barnes, Ian Moss, Phil Small, Don Walker and drummer Charley Drayton (who replaced Steve Prestwich), hit the stage. Cold Chisel is a tight musical unit who know how to rock, and opened the show with Standing On The Outside. This was just he beginning of what would be a two-hour set of crowd favourites, including Cheap Wine, Forever Now, Choir Girls, My Baby and Flame Trees, which was joined by a massive chorus of voices from the Clipsal crowd. Their classic Aussie anthem, Khe Sanh, was given the same sea of vocal accompaniment. In a beautiful tribute to Steve Prestwich, who died from a brain tumour in 2011, his fellow band members dedicated When The War Is Over to him and his family. Jimmy Barnes was the ultimate bad boy back in the day and although his demeanour is generally calmer, his voice didn’t waiver, hitting every note and giving 110% during the two-hour set. Ian Moss was also in fine vocal form, much to the audience’s delight. Cold Chisel is a band that cannot be faulted live; their drive, energy and passion for their music shines through, which is what makes them the Australian ‘legends of rock’ and hometown heroes that they are and have always been. It would hardly be surprising if most of the crowd had no voices left following the Chisel concert, and I bet that every one of them would be so proud of it! The boys may not live in Adelaide anymore, but they will always be our boys, our pub-rock legends, our Cold Chisel. George Kaplan Image courtesy of Athol Maxwell-Davis www.coldchisel.com