This show was part of the Smokehead Rocks tour and whoever organised it got a couple of things wrong as there is no need to have a 6 band bill when your headliners are on a comeback and have more than enough material for a good 90 minute set. With this many bands squeezed between 7pm and midnight it's tough on most of the bands and when we got in just after 8 we had missed the first two bands and TAINTED NATION were already on. I'm guessing as the club was never more than half full (despite it being 6 bands for £12) that hardly anyone saw the first two bands.
So onto what we did see first band on when we got in there and had finished saying hello to 2 old school Metal guitar heroes. It's always nice to see Lea Hart (Fastway, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts etc etc) and Cliff (From Tank and Paul Di'Anno's Killers etc etc) we went and got a good look at the very old school Tainted Nation who all look like they have been around a few blocks and were playing some pretty good melodic rawk with good cheeky piss taking between songs. They sang about what its like to leave someone and realise it was the right thing to do and schizophrenia and while they were all good players and a good tight band I just don't know who's out there looking for the new Sammy Hagar or Gillan.
Inbetween all the bands, Simon Cruz from Crashdiet was the night's DJ and he did a good job of playing glammy metal all night long. It was ideal taken in conjunction with the bands on the bill.
Next on were MISS BEHAVIOUR. now please guess what a band called Miss Behaviour will be like. My guess was that they would be female and really scuzzy sleazy rockers in the vein of The Slags or L7! I was 100% wrong as they are 4 Swedish guys who seem to have grown up in houses that only contained 2 albums on constant repeat and those two albums would have been The Final Countdown and Wings Of Tomorrow both by Europe!!
Yes they are the cheesiest sounding metal band I have ever seen far far cheesier than Europe, Bon Jovi or Reckless Love who are the closest competitors to that title! Not only do they have a super cheesy keyboard sound and pouting band members who all think they are gorgeous, but the guitarist (as soon as he spotted anyone taking his picture) would start pouting and posing like he was on Sweden's next top model.
As you'd expect the songs are all about Love even if they are called Perfect War which is about the war between a loving couple. As for the ballad Till We Meet Again, that is dedicated to a dead friend. It was so bad I spent the song falling about laughing at just how cheesy it was. It was actually like someone was slowly melting 10KG of Tesco value Gouda all over me and I was slowly drowning in the stuff. Give her a sign is the sort of song that encourages her to react to that sign by asking if you really believe the crap coming out of your mouth.
Yet at the same time it has to be said this lot can really play and are tight, it's just not what I want to hear. If I want to hear Europe I will listen to them or go and see them live as at least they really vary the material more than this lot do. The only Emergency this lot might cause would be from the bottles raining down on them at the wrong festival.
Oh and one last dig at them they are the first band whose fans rush up to the front and are wearing t-shirts with the dreaded phrase Adult Oriented Rock on their backs. No no no! We don't need an AOR revival under any circumstances!
Next up were JETTBLACK who I last saw at the Relentless Garage last year I think, although I don't recall who they opened for that time. Still, they are a good tight 4 piece who play good old fashioned unashamed Cock rock and damn do they play it well.
Yes the songs are all (as with Miss Behaviour) about fucking and sex, but these ones are a lot more credible as no matter how hunky or pretty one or two of them may be you believe them when they sing about taking control on the opener Motherfucker and wrap it within a monster riff and great guitar histrionics.
Being Inbetween Lovers is a normal state for these boys and you aren't going to tie them down as they do their best to work the sparser than it should be crowd into life. Yes, the twin guitar attack is a little bit cliched but they have enough to rise above it and Chasing Love and Slip it On from the EP both sounded really good and got quite a few people singing along. I think they are now tighter than before the jeans certainly are and the bass player did claim to have split his oh so tight jeans. Pity he had his flies undone, though.
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Claiming that the woman your chasing is going to be queen to your King is nice and ballsy and the sort of line I could see the seriously cuter looking guitarist/singer using quite regularly just before he starts claiming that Love can keep Him Away or that he is Lonely For You in the same way he is lonely for a Van Halen riff or two to nick. Still, they finish by getting us all to singalong to Get Your Hands Dirty and they don't mean by doing hard work!! A good fun cock rock band worth seeing.
Finally it was time for the ELECTRIC BOYS who are back and promoting the new comeback album And Them Boys Done Swang. The last time we saw Connie Bloom and AJ Christell they were playing in Hanoi Rocks so it was nice to see them back as the Electric Boys who I'm sure most of you know are a great Psychedelic Glam boogie metal band who it has to be said would have sounded a whole lot better in a club full of smoke served up by the Reeferlord that the new album opens up with.
Still they opened with Psychedelic Eyes and ,wow, they sounded great and looked pretty damn great too. Like proper Rock and roll gypsies should. They then laid down a monster slab of funky bass driven madness known as The Groover. Oh hell yeah they grooved us all right and at the end of the song when Conny did his guitar change he just threw it at the guitar tech who threw the next guitar across the stage for him! Neat!
We then got the first of the new songs Father Popcorn's Magic Oysters which is as tripped out as it sounds and Conny admitted to having no idea what the song is about. We suspected they may have had a mushroom or two too many!! Well then we had Mary In The Mystery World; that had another good groove and the sort of sound that seemed to suggest her mystery world was some weird trip or other.
The House Is Rockin is just a statement of fact and damn did they all rock, so much so that Franco broke a string on his flying V and had to change guitars mid song, but it didn't slow them down any and soon enough Conny was telling everyone that he Was Knee Deep In You - something that most of the women in the audience would have been more than happy with. At first I thought they said the next new song was Angel in a Lame Suit but it turned out to be an Armoured suit which isn't quite as good but it's another good psyched out rocker that made me want to have a good old smoke.
Just as they seemed to be hitting their stride due to the amount of bands on it was time for the last song of the set a great version of Captain Of My Soul. It seemed like the set was over way too soon, but after a little while they came back out and did the big hit All Lips and Hips and then finished the night with a good old fashioned instrumental Psychedelic Freak out that included Conny Bloom throwing his guitar at the amps and picking up his effects pedal board and playing that with his hands instead of his feet. A memorable end to a far too short set.
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