Cherry Bar
Recently the cherry bar has sprung back to life after being closed indefinately and as far as I know is open on friday nights for 'Bootleg'. I cant compare the place to what it once was as this was my first time, but it felt pretty good to come in from the cold in to a toasty warm bar with reasonable prices. The sound was pretty loud, but no complaints; it was great! I do have to say something about the temperature, although it was nice and warm, once the band started it was boiling and airless. It also got a bit squishy around the bar once more peeps arrived.
Johnny Rock and The Limits 
These guys have some real fun-to-rock-your-head-to tunes. I'd definitely see them again live, just to have a good head rock! But....I don't think I'd care for any recordings, mainly because the music is fairly simple and only a slight bit repetitious. The keyboard parts in the songs were very hard to hear, and made Jim and I both question the presence of a keyboard on stage! The only time we heard the keyboard was at the end of a couple of tracks making ridiculously out of place sound effects, but maybe I just don't get it. I could be way out of line here, perhaps in the 2 shows of theirs we have watched the keyboard has been malfunctioning, hence removing our confusion over it's necessity on stage and maybe the keyboard is that missing ingredient of complexity to their sound. I liked what they did with The Police's 'I can't stand losing', that was nicely done, in particular I love the bass line in that song and wouldn't have changed it for fear of messing immanent failure, but they did it well.
The Greasers 
Being potentially named after the the gang in the outsiders it also makes them quite difficult to google! But check out their MySpace and listen/download their album here.
The first four-ish songs stood out as better songs ('how strong's my love' - excellent); that song 'Shelly' is pretty simple yet it's awesome live, must be because it says f&ck or something. I the last song was alright too. I like the way these dudes play and choose their song list etc. They are good live but there's just a little bit of magic absent in some of the songwriting but that was probably only noticeable because of the following act...
.
.
Fearless Vampire Killers 
...Rock! Another all star performance* from these guys. Tonight they told us that they were attempting to make a live recording. I think they wouldn't consider that attempt as a success; the crowd was dancing mentally yet they severely lacked the motivation to match their enthusiasm in noise making, then a bunch of guys made a mess of things (see "*" below). These guys have everything that The Greasers have in terms of gigging ability, except all their songs could be their best.
...Rock! Another all star performance* from these guys. Tonight they told us that they were attempting to make a live recording. I think they wouldn't consider that attempt as a success; the crowd was dancing mentally yet they severely lacked the motivation to match their enthusiasm in noise making, then a bunch of guys made a mess of things (see "*" below). These guys have everything that The Greasers have in terms of gigging ability, except all their songs could be their best.
*At least it would have been if a dude from Little Red hadn't gotten all munted, jumped up on stage and staggered around disconnecting guitars and pedals, knocking over microphone stands and being a general menace. I got the impression from the looks that he was getting from the singer (Sean) that the guy from Little Red was testing the boundaries of their friendship.
No comments:
Post a Comment