One From The Grave: World Wide Live
April 22 2009 at 09:30:25 AM  “You see microphones up in zee aiiir?! So you know what we doing toniiiight?! We doing a live recording toniiiiiight!” Only Dieter Dierks could’ve sat behind the soundboard and secured recordings that smack simultaneously of exquisite simulacra and most certain stadium rock vomit party. There’s cavernous reverb, goose-flesh inducing cornball banter, choreographed axe-work, steam-engine percussion, one-song-after-another with practiced precision. An endlessly emotive Klaus Meine leads the ring and worldwide crowds adoringly reciprocate. By the time Meine alto-nasal’s his way through the undulating opening of “Blackout” – “I realize I missed a day / But I’m too wrecked to care anyway” – Matthias Jabs and Rudolf Schenker have warmed over, volatile, hyperbolic. It makes little difference that the adolescent, baseball jersey’d you could never understand what follows from 18 Bitburgers, a few pewter thimbles of schnapps. Of course Meine’s only concerned with sexual prowess: “Did I make it? / Or did I flop? / Don’t want to find ouuuuuuut / Just want to get ouuuuuut.” German transliteration renders whiskey-dick as the flop of failure it is, and Meine unwittingly provides able emo precursor to Liz Phair’s “Fuck & Run.” Our gauze-headed mascot from Blackout, fork tines covering his eyes, wholly separate universes from the ‘caine and shrub fest underway in LA’s Forum. The songs? A tight and confident mixture of the last three records – Animal Magnetism, Blackout, Love at First Sting – with a few cocksure crooners lifted from Lovedrive. Post-Uli Roth Scorps isn’t entirely dissimilar from what transpired with Jabs and Schenker crossing pork swords. Three of the greatest Heavy Metal records ever – In Trance, Virgin Killer, and Taken by Force – all came about under Roth’s song-writing guidance. Roth’s riffs were inventive without being egg-headed. Aggressive without confrontation. Newfangled six-string mysticism bereft of stinky incense or annoyingly obtuse vade mecum. Schenker, who’ll see the grave before he admits as much, was always the crafty study, likely holding meeting clandestine with axe and amp in not so vain attempts at killing Herr Idol. World Wide Live doesn’t boil with brutal guitar pyrotechnics, but it does chug and squeal and shatter along, ably saucing Meine’s impeccably Metal vox forever smelling equally of Brut and bush. Case and point with “Bad Boys Running Wild,” which renders the lot of Randy Rhoads’ Blizzard-era output sluggish, concretized. Riffs locomotive, forever conveying movement: Visualize those two twinks: Spandex clad, stomp-foot dancing (see/hear more stomp-footing via “The Zoo”) to the front of the stage, a trio of blondes weighed down in hairspray playing Guess-Which-One’s-Shoved- The-Sweet-Potato-Front-And-Center. The shtick amped immeasurably with “Big City Nights,” an anthem decadent preceding Jay McInerney’s Less than Zero lite: Bright Lights, Big City, by two years. Claustrophobic TNA, glitzy hotel bars, neon body paint, a rambunctious limousine hummer: “I Want to Know What Love Is.”  The flipside here is the zeitgeist drenched “Holiday,” and get-those-Bics-in-the-air “Still Loving You.” Were Natassia Kinski and Harry Hamlin to have pawed together a soft-core beach flick filmed in Eos amidst besotted Brits and wild horses prancing upon saltwater soaked sands, “Holiday” would have played throughout its duration. “Exchange the cold days for the sun / A good time… and fuuuuuuuuuuun. Let me take ya far away / You’d like… a hawl-eee-day.” Meine sings from his tip-toes. Vowels soar; consonants blur. The guy’s in fear of the invisible proctologist. No one touches him. No one dares. His voice still scrapes skyscrapers, a bi-plane’s flag advert rendered in gasoline-soaked rainbows. When he exhorts the crowd he’s no more than a big brother bartender who’s just convinced you it’s perfectly acceptable behavior: Wasting away in a windowless bar, sipping Singapore Slings, feeding quarters into a tabletop Stargate. “You’d like a Holiday, no?” “Still Loving You” is Schenker the Show-Off, a lead bested by its bogus angst, a lovelorn anchor shorn for fortnight of vacant wall stares, handfuls of ‘caine, Blue Nun jugs, mail-order ass from Minsk. How many fuckers burned their thumbs off holding lighters aloft? Herman Rarebell bests nemesis Bobby Blotzer and floats flowers all over the river Jabs and Schenker manage to jerk from their tear ducts, the mock whammy shrieks almost too much in a song specifically brought into being to deride schmucks too willing to pine for designer pussy. White-knuckled rocker “Dynamite” and slowest ride to nowhere “The Zoo” wash unrequited love’s taste from the tonsils. This is Scorps in nuce: Objectless quests, passionless trysts, knocked about rocked about pub violence. The marginal operators are always the same: Spells, sensations, explosions, too hot, too cold. And the “euphemisms” nearly rival Bon Scott’s cum-on-his-sleeve one-liners: “Shoot my heat into your body / Give ya all my size.” Meine dispels with the smoke and mirrors and slathers on the smut, “Eat your meat until you’re breathless / Twirl your hips around / I’m gonna break my neck tonight / I’ll get you off the ground.” A poor man’s DeSade gone wild on Gewurtztramiener. Where “Dynamite” works at detailing carnal microcosmos “The Zoo” ably magnifies the macrocosmic. Urban expansion grows as its crime blotter lengthens. In true Warriors fashion, credo is shoved fist first down unassuming throats. “We eat the night, we drink the time / Make our dreams come true / And hungry eyes are passing by / On streets we call the zoo.” Meine voice-boxes the sendoff, simultaneously recalling Frampton’s hilariously egregious excesses and framing World Wide Live as a live album about a live album: Unintentional – and better for it – self-reference (see/hear “Coming Home” – a song about touring rendered by a touring band). Jabs and Schenker play bit parts into mammoth roles, sanding sharp riffs into slow-hump lump unawares. As the mansion on the hill furthered its dilapidation amidst Reagan’s second term, the world worked overtime at recasting Fitzgerald’s sense of the ‘20s – the “greatest, gaudiest spree in history” as ‘80s ideal. World Wide Live holds much of the petty diversion and oversexed ennui typical of those frequenting the Pleasuredome. The Scorpions may not have had a hand in defining the era, but this record effortlessly encapsulates core and margin in whispers and cries, claps and catcalls from California to France to West Germany. “More days to come / New places to go / I’ve got to leave / It’s time for a show.” [Stewart Voegtlin] Scorpions
World Wide Live Polydor 1985 
type: reviews
keywords:
heavy metal,
one from the grave,
lhp025,
scorpions,
bush,
designer pussy,
euphemism,
spandex,
pork swords,
germans,
natassia kinski,
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Roth is in a class that's full and providing no hall pass.
Of course I love all Scorps. Kraut Rawk, Stadia Party, et alia.
FUCK. YES.
Love this site -- thanks for helping me kill an entire day.