High Voltage: full voltage at the Jazz Café
With the Jazz Café packed, bagpipes on stage and a stand-in singer, the Costa Rican AC/DC tribute band did exactly what its name promises.
There are tribute bands that imitate and tribute bands that are contagious. High Voltage is the second kind. On Saturday, October 10, the Costa Rican band packed the Jazz Café in Escazú to do what it does best: play AC/DC as if the volume could never be loud enough.
The name is no accident. High Voltage was AC/DC’s first album, released in Australia in 1975, when brothers Malcolm and Angus Young were just starting to build the sound that would make the band synonymous with hard rock. Half a century later, that same sound of dry riffs, straight-ahead drums and fist-in-the-air choruses still fills bars and stadiums around the world.
The night had its share of real rock and roll: Josh, the band’s regular singer, couldn’t make it, and Juan Rodríguez “Popi”, a longtime friend of the High Voltage family, took the mic to cover for him. Luis Monge also joined them on stage with his bagpipes, the instrument Bon Scott made part of AC/DC history in “It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ’n’ Roll)”. And like any good rock show, there was a surprise: midway through the night, Iron Man appeared on stage. “They capture the spirit of Bon Scott and the energy of Brian Johnson,” one fan wrote the next day.
High Voltage has been championing this repertoire in Costa Rica for more than ten years: in May 2024 it celebrated its tenth anniversary in this very room, with guests and a catwalk over the stage. Behind the show is a full crew, with Alex on sound, Daniel on lights and Jonathan on visuals, and a band that signs off as Josh, Jose P, Roger, Betto and Jose C.
The show was built like a timeline. The screens marked the years of AC/DC’s history, from the “Wanna Rock ’n’ Roll” of 1975 to 1976 and 1977, while red devil horns glowed at every table. There were smoke jets, a guitarist playing on his knees at the edge of the stage and another swinging his guitar behind his head, straight out of the Angus Young playbook. Iron Man arrived with his repulsors glowing, a nod to the soundtrack AC/DC recorded for Iron Man 2, and ended up dancing with a kid who had climbed on stage. Popi went down to sing among the tables, arm in arm with fans in AC/DC shirts throwing the horns, and toward the end the screen announced 1979 and “Highway to Hell”.
At the Jazz Café, one of the country’s homes for live music since 1999, High Voltage proved that AC/DC’s rock doesn’t age: it just needs a band willing to play it at full volume.