This show was part of Joe Cushley's long running 'Not The Same Old Blues Crap' night and I'm glad to say I won the evenings competition by managing to know all four members of the Million Dollar Quartet.
Still as good as it is to win more CDs, I was actually there to see the first London show in quite a while from Glenn Maxx's long running and often mutating LAST MAN STANDING. His name also mutates so that some of you know him as Max Vanderwolf, but either way it's good that they are back. This was a showcase for the material on the forthcoming second album that should be out later in the year.
From the opening song, Autopsy Rock, with its lyrics about facing the last call it was apparent that the new material is somewhat more downbeat than the Junk-shop Glam of the first album with Max seated strumming an acoustic guitar and some nice gentle keyboards, it was a good understated opening.
That was followed by Not Fade Away, where over some great Keyboards that had been set to sound like a Hammond B-3 and were being played like Jimmy Smith in the Funks Oats-era, Max was ruminating on if he had one foot in the cradle or one foot in the grave with his vocals sounding more and more like Steve Earle as the song went on.
Well, we all needed cheering up so they gave us Summer Song. It still seemed bound up in loss and those departed too soon as the Angels were calling at them and somehow I was starting to think they might be starting to sound a little like The Eagles which is not a natural comparison for me to make with anyone's music. It was probably more likely the influence of Townes Van Zandt once more but this certainly had a desolate, desert rock feel to it. The feeling of that sort of soft country rock never really left on Shady Palms although the keyboards lifted just about everything in the set above the mundane and they were never boring just a little sad.
The new songs certainly aren't happy. Just witness Max's days of raging hunger as he tries to sate his Kamikaze Heart from yet another romantic entanglement as it hits the rocks while the band's music matches the emotions of the lyrics pretty well. But then they play Ain't Gonna Hurt No One No More, it's a real heartbreaker that makes you think Max might be signing up to a celibacy programme. A highly unlikely event indeed, especially as the organ keeps rising up and suggesting the opposite might happen.
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The Crusher is yet more love gone awry on the road to dissolution that can only mean we have reached Quitting Time: a song drowning in the B-3 organ and of course that means it sounds fantastic. Yes, as we have that one last drink it sounds like the keyboard player really is mainlining Jimmy Smith organ lines for our salvation.
With salvation in sight they then play the only old song of the set, Bar Room Floor, and yes we are once again rolling around drunk on that bar room floor. It is the most upbeat of the evening's tunes and still sounds great.
They follow that with more almost soft rock on Sumthin' for Nuthin' a song that pretty much sums up the prevalent attitudes of our times where everyone wants just that. They close the set with Tore Us Apart wherein Max tells us a tragic tale of what his darling has done to him and vice versa. It makes for a suitably dark ending, but they came back for an encore of SHPELKUS that had a fantastic line in it about how the protagonist never could see you in a mausoleum, proving that this year's Last Man Standing really knows how to tell dark tales of the heart very well indeed.
I look forward to hearing the new album as soon as it's finished and hopefully they will be touring as soon as it's out and doing the rounds.
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