A View From The Back Of The Room: Y&T

Y&T, The Globe, Cardiff

American rockers Y&T are now in their 40th year of touring and as such they have embarked on an anniversary tour, thankfully hitting Cardiff's diminutive The Globe venue. Now myself and my compatriots opted for the pub instead of the supports (sorry) but part of me wished we had gone in earlier as when we arrived we were literally on the bar, which is at the back of the room, but still the beauty of The Globe is that the stage is high enough for a band to be seen, added to this is that Y&T are not the most visual band letting their music do the talking. The exception is guitarist John Nymann who is well up for it, but more about him later. We squeezed in next to the Y&T megafan next to us, who's love for the band was only beaten by his love for Rush, something one of number despaired at. Still the band took to the stage 15 minutes before the official start time and kicked things off with the awesome opening one two of Hurricane and Black Tiger which is Ron Burgundy distilled in a song. Because the band have been doing this for so long they have twelve albums they can draw from and they did so with L.A Rocks coming from Contagious, Lucy from Ten before the more Burgundy with Lipstick And Leather. I do kid as Y&T are from the late 70's and 80's so of course their songs will always have a hint of misogyny but this is more tongue in cheek now. What has always separated Y&T from their 80's brethren is the musicanship with a real blues rock edge coming through in the guitars of Dave Meniketti, who also happens to have a flawless voice too, his band are not to shabby either with the the rhythm section of Mike Vanderhule's drums, Brad Lang's bass (still feels weird without Phil Kennemore though) and the guitar dervish of John Nymann who ended up in the crowd at one point during a solo spot. Again we went back to Ten with Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark which Meniketti claimed many disliked, I can see that as both Ten and Contagoius are a bit poppy, not that this put off superfan who continued to sing back the lyrics to his wife during every song (I know one current Mrs that would have given him a swift kick to the gonads) Back to the old school with Dirty Girl and Mean Streak before the slightly cheesy All American Boy changed the tone again, the proto speed metal of Midnight In Tokyo gave Meniketti a chance to show his amazing guitar playing. We got one from Musically Incorrect with Cold Day In Hell before the middle of the set brought some album tracks, I'm Coming Home from 2010's Facemelter along with I Want Your Money also from their 2010 album towards the end of the set. I between the songs from the latter albums we got Rescue Me the evergreen cheese of Summertime Girls and the finale of I Believe In You which is still as anthemic as ever! 20 songs in the main set and 1 hour and 45 minutes gone by, with only 15 minutes left we got an encore of the supreme riff-fest of Forever which is very hard to follow and as the final song, Sail On By, kicked off this laid back ballad seemed to be a little bit of an anti-climax so we left. Y&T are always consistently good but they showed how strong most of their career has been on their anniversary tour. Roll on Hard Rock Hell for a second bite!! 9/10