•    HOME   
•    NEWS   
•    BUSINESS   
•    INTERNATIONAL   
•    TECH   
•    SPORTS   
•    LIFE & TIMES   
•    OPINION   
•    MY JAKARTA   
•    BLOGS   
•    EYEWITNESS   

Boyolali, Central Java. German hard-rocking hair band Scorpions announced they would play a concert as part of their farewell Sting in the Tail tour under the shadows of the stunning ninth-century Borobudur Temple.

Agus Canny, marketing director of PT Taman Wisata Candi Borobudur, Prambanan and Ratu Boko, which manages the temple site, said the concert would be held in June of next year.

“This concert will mark the end of the 45-year musical journey of the Scorpions. Their management agency has met us and expects the concert to be held in mid-June of 2011,” he told the Jakarta Globe on Monday.

Two Scorpions representatives from Indonesia and two more from Germany visited Borobudur Temple last week to map out the concert details.

Chief executive of the temple’s management company, Purnomo Siswo Prasetyo, said that as a Unesco World Heritage Site, Borobudur Temple had hosted its share of big acts through years.

“However, the Scorpions concert certainly will be a great honor for us since the band is a legendary [act] and very popular throughout the world,” he said.

However, due to the fragile state of one of the world’s iconic Buddhist sites, Purnomo said his company would need to evaluate the potential for damage to the structure from heavy sound vibrations caused by the group’s driving rock.

But that is probably little more than a bump in the road for the group, which has sold more than 100 million records worldwide.

Agus said that the band behind rock classics “Rock You Like a Hurricane,” “Wind of Change” and “Still Loving You” chose Borobudur Temple because they were “blown away” by the monument built four centuries before Cambodia’s Angkor Wat.

Next year will ring in the 20th anniversary of the temple’s induction onto the Unesco list, as well as 100 years since the structure was first restored by Dutch expert Van Berg in 1911.

The Scorpions formed in Hanover during the 1960s and found commercial success nearly two decades later behind a battery of guitar-driven songs. The band’s 1989 album, “Crazy World,” was heavily influenced by the political upheaval band members witnessed in Eastern Europe after the collapse of the Berlin Wall.

They had earlier toured the Soviet Union, being only the second Western band to do so after Uriah Heap. In the critically panned 1996 release “Pure Instinct,” the group collaborated with Indonesian singer-songwriters Titiek Puspa and James F Sundah on the song “When You Came Into My Life.”