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Monsters of Rock 2006

Milton Keynes Bowl, 3rd June 2006

Stepping out of the car into Milton Keynes is like stepping out into a city in another country, in America or Australia, perhaps. For a start, the temperature is about 15 degrees higher than we've been accustomed to in recent months, the sun beating down relentlessly on acres and acres of concrete car park and small, neat, green trees. The pavements here are very very wide, separated from the roads by more concrete and small, neat, green trees. No-one walks on them, however – MK, like LA, is not a place for pedestrians. Which is why, having blithely decided to walk from the Holiday Inn to the Milton Keynes Bowl for the Monsters of Rock gig, we end up getting horrendously lost in an estate of small brown houses and miss the first act, Roadstar. Although as we've never heard of them and didn't even know they were playing, this probably doesn't matter much.

Sadly we don't miss Ted Nugent, but we do our best to ignore his brash, blustering US geetar rawk nonsense while we take in the stalls and revel in just what a great venue the MK bowl is, a perfect amphitheatre scooped out of a grassy hill, surrounded by slightly larger, neat green trees. But hardly any concrete in sight – bonus!

Next up, Queensryche. I didn't think much of their pompous pseudo-prog last time I saw them, at Donington Monsters of Rock in 1991, and fifteen years on they haven't improved much. And to add insult to injury, they don't even play their 'hit' (okay, the song we know), 'Silent Lucidity'. Oh well, we're drinking cider in the sun – who cares?

And what better accompaniment to cider in the sun than ultimate good time funsters Thunder? A band you'd never go to see headline a gig, but who go down a treat at a festival with their enthusiastic, cheesily English brand of pub rock. They know that probably 75% of the audience will own Back Street Symphony (isn't it vaguely illegal not to?) and will never have bought another Thunder album since, so pride of place goes to 'Higher Ground', 'Love Walked In Through My Door' and of course the infectiously cheery singalong 'Dirty Love' (the first of our 'na na na' songs for the night) although catchy new song 'I Love You More Than Rock'n'Roll' (now there's a sentiment) proves a crowd pleaser too.

At this moment, as Ian pointed out, heavy metal heroes Saxon would have gone down a treat. Instead we get AOR snooze merchants Journey. So snooze is exactly what we do. Although they do at least play the one we know (that'll be 'Don't Stop Believing', then) so they get more points than Queensryche. Oh well, we're drinking cider and eating hot sugared donuts – who cares?

And then: Hello! Hooray! It's the moment we've been waiting for: the original Monster of Rock himself, Mr Alice Cooper. Fortunately, nobody seems to have told the Coop that he isn't headlining, so he brings the entire Dirty Diamonds show with him, complete with evil henchmen, guillotine and of course the lovely Calico Cooper. The family who slays together stays together? So it would appear…

In the still pleasantly warm light of day, the full Alice Cooper stage show does seem a teensy bit cheap, but that doesn't stop it being marvellously entertaining – even if the rather lukewarm crowd don't give it the rapturous response it deserves. Still, Ian and I, the skull staffs (carved wooden skulls on sticks – you had to be there…) and the bloke who sang loudly and out of tune just behind us the entire way through certainly enjoyed it. For a full account of the playlist, you can check out my review of the Dirty Diamonds tour (the 'Awakening'/'Steven'/'Only Women Bleed'/Ballad of Dwight Frye' sequence was still definitely the highlight) – suffice it to say that Alice was on top sneering, snarly form, striding the stage in his rhinestone trousers like the leather-faced, horror sexgod he is. Second on the bill my sunburned a*se – you'll always be public animal number one for me.

So that leaves Deep Purple, climbing out of their box (or so we're led to believe by the wee video that precedes their appearance) and shambling onto the stage like the rock VIP OAPs they are. They may have invented heavy metal, but could this bunch of grey-haired granddads still really rock? Oh yes. Ian Gillan may look like an old codger, but those lungs still hold a heck of a lot of power, and he's a wonderfully warm, charismatic frontman to boot – or not, for, in time honoured '60s fashion, he's barefoot. Classic Purple tracks like 'Hush' (those catchy 'na na nas' again), 'Strange Kinda Woman' and 'Perfect Strangers' sound just as fresh and powerful as they did back in the day, and it's just great to hear them live. No 'Child in Time', sadly, but we do get 'When a Blind Man Cries', which sounds almost as intense and powerful.

With each song weighing in at a good ten minutes (including new material from the latest, somewhat psychedelic album, Rapture of the Deep) the setlist isn't lengthy, but we hear everything we want to, ending with a triumphant rendition of 'Smoke on the Water' and the fabulous 'Black Knight', which we haven't stopped singing since. With a 360 mile drive ahead of us the following day, these black knights certainly were a long way from home (and, worse, we were in Milton Keynes) but the journey had been worth every step of the way.

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