Paul Jam - Paul Andrews' Blog - Dunsborough, Western Australia

Well, the first speed hump in the Rocktober itinerary- AC/DC have had to postpone six shows in the US after singer Brian Johnston was forced to undergo an undisclosed medical procedure and was ordered by his doctors to rest and recover for a couple of weeks.I think it has something to do with him being born with a Stiff... Upper Lip   

Typical, the guy drinks like a fish, smokes like a train and doesn’t look like he dislikes his food and then suddenly, when I have tickets to see Australia’s biggest band in America’s trashiest city, he decides to take doctor’s advice! Isn’t AC/DC a band founded on ignoring doctor’s advice? I’m sure any right minded doctor (with maybe the exception of Elvis’and Michael Jackson’s ) would have been giving these boys ‘advice’ to curb their ways for decades – why do they have to start listening now???

Given this news, I have drastically changed the first leg of my trip. I’ve dropped Las Vegas  and included a three day, ‘You’re 40 Now, act like it...’ trip to Santa Clarita, California instead. This city of some 177,000 people  sits 56 kms northwest of downtown Los Angeles and was rated as the sixth safest city in the USA according to the FBI. This bodes well because I plan to revisit a venue which caused great excitement and danger in my 1992 trip to the USA – Six Flags Magic Mountain!

To those of you of my age who have never heard of this amusement park: think Wally World from Vacation (Chevy Chase).  Picture the roller coaster at the end of the show – Colossus – the biggest wooden rollercoaster in the world. That my friends is Six Flags Magic Mountain and it has only grown bigger, faster, scarier and better. I’ll make sure I pack a spare pair of jocks for that day.