Album: Thunder ‘All The Right Noises’ (BMG)

Cover design for the standard edition of All The Right Noises

Many years ago I remember reading a review in a popular music mag of the day dismissing the new album from one of the top hard rock bands of the era. The scribe used a ‘checklist’ in which he systematically ticked off every trick they used and gave it the most condescending, sneery slating. That album was ‘Back in Black’ by AC/DC and it went on to sell millions, thus proving that it’s a futile – and less lucrative – exercise to be making music for critics rather than for your own fans. They gave their fans what they wanted and were rewarded many times over. The magazine? Long defunct, and the music scribe has returned to richly-deserved obscurity.

That might or might not happen with this new Thunder album, but it’s definitely a return to the style for which they are best known. All the regular riffs are present and correct, the drums cut through with that familiar, satisfying ‘snap’ and the voice – oh that voice – is in as good shape now as it was over 30 years ago when singer Danny Bowes wowed everyone at Donington. I can’t damn this band for doing what they do best, especially after they actually did take a diversion last time out with the ‘Please Remain Seated’ album; a collection of old songs radically rearranged from the rock originals. I’d wanted them to do something like that for a while; I did feel ‘Rip It Up’ reinvented the wheel once too often. Although the playing and performing was top-notch, I could tell a mile off exactly which way the chords were going.

The band had promised that after the pared-back styling of ‘PRS’ this album was going to rock once again and they deliver in fine style with opener ‘Last One Out Turn Off The Lights’. More pacy than your usual mid-paced Thunder rocker, it is built on a Zeppelin riff accompanied by a lyric which hits as hard as the guitar riff, slamming the whole agenda which led to ‘Brexit’. Musicians are going to be particularly hard-hit by this, and guitarist/songwriter Luke Morley has not held back in his contempt for those who drove that movement. The guitarist has much to say on this record; left both angry and frustrated by the antics of the likes of Donald Trump, Morley has made his contempt clear on songs like ‘The Smoking Gun’ (‘And we all let the Devil in, cos no-one believed he could win‘) and ‘Force of Nature’ (‘I’m gonna make us great again, you can take me at my word; I’ll tell you what you want to hear even if it sounds absurd‘) whereas on ‘St George’s Day’ he has a swipe at the sort of jingoism which led to Brexit (‘If you can’t see beyond your hate, in a changing world it’s true, one day it might be you… You’d better wise up before it’s too late – for St George’s Day‘). They say good music comes from bad governments, and if true I suspect there’s much more to come from Mr Morley’s pen yet.

Not all of this material is so dark; there are lighter moments such as ‘Going To Sin City’ all about Las Vegas and its surface glitz and glamour, while on ‘You’re Gonna Be My Girl’ the band go decidedly Rod and the Faces with a fun rock ‘n’ roll number that will go over well on stage – whenever it might be that we actually get to see these guys on a stage! ‘Don’t Forget To Live Before You Die’ is a song similar in lyrical content to ‘Living for Today’ from the much earlier ‘Giving The Game Away’ album; it reminds the listener not to let life pass them by while they’re busy working or even just whiling away their time on a screen.

No Thunder album is complete without the obligatory ballad; ‘I’ll Be The One’ has been hailed as ‘the next Love Walked In’ by some listeners. As usual, Bowes delivers it with such passion that you’d swear blind he’d written every word from his heart. He has admitted that he found this one hard to sing, so much so that it took him until the final sessions for the album that he got a take he was happy with. For Bowes, one of the very best rock singers this country has produced, to admit that – the song must have been tricky indeed!

The thing with this album that I take away is, that although the melodies, chord progressions, and song structures are arguably as familiar as they were on ‘Rip it Up’, there’s a freshness, a sense of renewed energy I pick up on here. I can’t put my finger on why that is, other than having made a left turn last time out they’ve perhaps come back with a renewed determination to show their own fans that they still have ‘it’.

At the end of the day it’s another quality product from the British rockers, you do know what you’re getting by now but there are a couple of slight variations to the overall theme this time around. For instance, the use of female backing singers is rather more prominent on here than on previous offerings (guest performers include Beth Blade of the Beautiful Disasters once again, and also Julie ‘The Duchess’ Maguire of Space Elevator, whose true identity has been outed on the credits of this album!)

The record is available in the usual myriad of different formats; from a regular CD or double vinyl to a deluxe CD with bonus tracks and live material, or even a limited-edition QUADRUPLE vinyl set with a gatefold sleeve that features a pop-up version of the cover art (a photo of the Singing Ringing Tree in Lancashire, chosen since it reminded Luke Morley of the kind of artwork produced by Storm Thorgerson in years gone by) and including all the bonus tracks and live renditions of the deluxe CD. If you’re a real retro geek, you can even have this album on cassette! Personally I went for the 4-disc vinyl set, of which I’m awaiting delivery at the time of this post, but I’d probably recommend the deluxe CD if you’re not quite as much of a Loonie as me!

Thunder fans can buy this album with confidence, safe in the knowledge they’re back firing on all cylinders.

www.thunderonline.com

4 – Deserving

‘Zipping up my boots, going back to my roots’: Delain disintegrate

The statement attributed to the symphonic Metal band Delain, released Monday 15th February 2021, started ominously: ‘Delain goes back to its roots‘ .

What that meant, effectively was that the band was no more. In that statement, founder and keyboardist Martijn Westerholt revealed that all of the other members of the band had departed, adding that ‘Delain will live on’ as a studio-based project, with himself at the core and an ever-changing cast of guest musicians to appear on future recordings. That was the original concept when he founded Delain in 2002 (following an illness-enforced departure from his brother Robert’s band, Within Temptation). After a demo release (‘Amenity’) with an embryonic line-up, it would be another four years before the debut album ‘Lucidity’ emerged, featuring many guests from the European Metal scene. He now had alongside him a regular vocalist, Charlotte Wessels, whom he discovered in 2005. The material featured reworked versions of those demo sessions, and the album became successful enough that the project turned into a full band, with a complete line-up being assembled in order to go on tour. Although some changes in personnel ensued, the band line-up stabilised and steadily grew into one of the big names of this scene, complete with an increasigly elaborate live show which, by the end of the last decade, looked ready to become a full arena production. Then came you-know-what, and this bands plans (like everyone else’s) were put on hold.

Nonetheless, the sudden announcement has taken the band’s fans aback, especially as statements from every member soon followed, some more revealing than others about what actually brought about this situation. So what happened, and can the founder member really put the genie back in the bottle after all these years? According to Westerholt, he claimed:

“The collaboration within the band ceased to work as well as it once had. Some of us were no longer happy with the current roles in the band. We all tried very hard to find a solution for over a year, but sadly we were unable to find one.“

He went on to add that as a result, the various members would ‘go their separate ways’ and going on to wish his former colleagues well. Long-standing lead singer Charlotte Wessels soon followed suit with her own statement, she didn’t give much away but conceded that there were ‘differences that we couldn’t overcome’. Typical of the singer, she added that ‘part of me feels like I am letting all of you down’, addressing fans directly. A little more clarity came from guitarist Timo Somers who stated that ‘(we were) dealing with a singular problem that had grown until it became too big to ignore’, and also from drummer Joey de Boer (the newest member of the group, joining in 2018) who added that it was about ‘one single problem… that created a lot of tension, making it so there was no good environment to work in any more’. Pointedly, neither mentioned Westerholt by name in their respective statements.

However it wasn’t until long-serving bassist Otto ‘The Baron’ Schimmelpenninck van der Oije posted his take on the whole thing, that flesh was added to the bones. He revealed that Westerholt had become unhappy, both at being on the road for prolonged periods and at the fact that Delain had evolved far beyond his original vision as a ‘project’ into a full-blown band. According to the bassist, these issues dated back as far as 2018, reaching ‘an all-time low’ in autumn 2019. He went on to reveal that the group met in early 2020 (before the release of their most recent album, ‘Apocalypse and Chill’) during which he, Somers and de Boer proposed that Westerholt sit out touring if he was unhappy, so that he could concentrate on writing. ‘Martijn had a different view’; reported ‘The Baron’, saying that the keyboardist wished to revert Delain to a studio project, curtail their live shows drastically and worst of all according to the bassist, downgrade Somers, de Boer and himself to mere ‘session musicians’. Hurt by this (understandably, after giving such service to the group), the three musicians tendered their resignations in March of 2020 (a month after the band played dates in the UK and Europe, but just as the COVID-19 pandemic had started to devastate all live events). Surprisingly, the bassist went on to add that a further proposition from Westerholt followed soon after, whereby he would cede control of the band to the remaining members (including singer Wessels) and himself focus on ‘other things’. For whatever reason (it isn’t made clear), that did not come to fruition and things drifted until February of 2021, when the musicians all went public with their respective statements. With Charlotte Wessels also announcing her departure on the same day, that brought the curtain down on the band – just as it appeared that their long years of hard work and touring were bearing fruit.

As a long-standing fan of this band myself I find the whole thing rather disappointing; I first saw the group play in Leeds in early 2010 in a small-ish venue and was immediately impressed, primarily with the singer who combined natural beauty with an easygoing charm that had her audience eating from her hand but also with the group as a whole. They had the look, the musicianship (I did note at the time that although this band did use samples for backing, that was less prominent than with other bands of this ilk) and above all, strong songs. I rapidly became a fan and went on to see the band on multiple occasions over the next decade, including several trips to their native Netherlands. I last saw the group a little over a year ago (just before the pandemic took hold) to a sold-out crowd at Manchester’s o2 Ritz. I would never have imagined there were serious issues behind the scenes; the show was the usual joyous occasion, the band looked to be having a ball and the crowd response was so enthusiastic you could see the delight on the singer’s face throughout.

The fan groups on social media exploded shortly after this announcement with much of the fire being aimed at Westerholt himself; it should be said that at the time of this post, he has yet to respond to any of the statements issued by his now ex-colleagues and in particular has not commented on the points raised by his former bass player. One thing he did make clear was that he intended to bring in ‘familiar faces’ for any future musical projects, while adding that it was ‘not the end of Delain’. Whether the fanbase will agree remains to be seen, with their figurehead lead singer/primary lyricist now gone and with little to no prospect of live concerts even when the pandemic does subside, there does not seem much to keep those followers on side. Unless of course, whatever he releases is an instant classic; if he puts out an album with great songs and with some of those ‘familiar faces’ to perform them, he might well pull it out of the fire. But if that happens, he will be faced with the clamour to perform the material live again. It’s clear that he doesn’t want to go back on the road now, possibly he feels he wants to devote his life elsewhere especially since he now has a family – how he deals with that if the next record is a success, will be interesting.

As for the rest of the band, all of them intend to keep performing in some capacity. ‘The Baron’ has stated outright he wants to get back on tour as soon as circumstances allow, while de Boer has made clear he would like to continue performing alongside his former Delain bandmates. Somers intends to carry on making music too, he is a highly-regarded guitarist with a particular love for Gary Moore, so he may take a more conventional hard rock or even blues-based turn in future. Finally, Charlotte Wessels will now focus on her solo material; she launched a Patreon page during 2020 releasing a song each month and will continue with that platform, while also engaging with her followers. The music she has released thus far is in a rather different vein to Delain (more pop-orientated), but now that this has become her primary platform instead of the side-project it was intended to be, she is free to collaborate with anybody. Whether that includes the other ex-Delain members remains to be seen, but it certainly appears that the fanbase would like them to do something together in the future. Whatever happens, it is unlikely in my view that the individuals can separately recreate the magic which made the Delain band as we knew it so special.

With this disbanding and the earlier announcement that Nightwish have parted company with their bassist/vocalist Marko Hietala (another frequent collaborator with Delain), 2021 is shaping up to be a glum year for fans of this Metal sub-genre.

Edward Van Halen 1955-2020

As if you didn’t already hate 2020 enough! This one is a monumental loss, not just among rockers but music fans in general. One of the guitar heroes that the mainstream *has* heard of, and an influence on everybody – and I mean, *everybody* who has ever picked up an electric guitar since 1978. The tributes that have flooded in from performers from right across the musical spectrum testify to that, as did every one of my social media feeds – within an hour of hearing this news, everybody shut up about Covid-19, politics, Brexit or whatever and posted messages, pictures, video clips all paying respects to Eddie Van Halen. It really does feel like the end of an era, this is the guy who redefined almost single-handedly the use of guitar in rock music.

Edward and brother Alex Van Halen formed the band in 1972, going through a couple of name changes before settling on using their own surname in 1974. By then bassist Michael Anthony had completed the line-up, alongside flamboyant lead singer David Lee Roth. The band caught the attention of Gene Simmons from KISS, who was impressed by their show and, after producing a demo, attempted (unsuccessfully) to get them signed to his band’s management. Eventually they were picked up by Warner Bros and recorded their debut album with producer Ted Templeman. A support slot to Black Sabbath (then in their final throes with Ozzy Osbourne) brought them to wider attention in both the US and the UK, with audiences used to the doomy, grinding guitar sound of Tony Iommi were astonished by this newcomer who popularised the ‘finger-tap’ technique and introduced it to hard rock.

From there on the band went from strength to strength; the debut included many songs which became classic rock staples such as ‘Ain’t Talkin’ Bout Love’, ‘Runnin’ With The Devil’ and of course the solo guitar showcase ‘Eruption’. Their run of success continued for five more years, while Eddie persistently scooped up awards for ‘Best Guitarist’. By 1982 he was so in demand that no less than the King of Pop, Michael Jackson brought him in to play on a song he had intended to cross over to a rock audience, ‘Beat It’. That brief solo, performed free of charge and as a favour to producer Quincy Jones, served to bring Eddie Van Halen to mainstream attention, and in the process make it fashionable for the next few years for every pop star to incorporate a lead guitar solo in their hit records. It is no coincidence that the album Van Halen next came up with following this collaboration (‘1984’) was a huge hit, led by the international hit single ‘Jump’. They headlined at the US Festival, a huge event held in Southern California in 1983 and were booked to perform in England for the first time in years at the Monsters of Rock festival at Castle Donington the following summer, as special guests to headliners AC/DC, on a stellar bill that also included Ozzy Osbourne, Gary Moore, Y&T and Motley Crue. That performance (at the time, critically lambasted) would turn out to be the final time that the classic line-up of Van Halen performed live in the UK.

The band parted company with David Lee Roth the next year, which disappointed many who were entranced by the flamboyant playing of Eddie alongside the vaudeville act of Roth. To many people’s surprise the group chose Sammy Hagar as the new frontman, while Roth went solo. The new line-up confounded expectations by lasting a decade, producing several albums, but they never really shook off the ‘Van Hagar’ jibes from those who preferred the showmanship of ‘Diamond Dave’ over the undeniable vocal and musical talent of Hagar. In 1996 Hagar quit the band, to be replaced by Extreme vocalist Gary Cherone for 1998’s ‘Van Halen III’. That album was a critical and commercial failure, and with nu-metal now the trend EVH’s style was now perceived as outmoded. The group quietly parted ways with Cherone and disappeared for several years until reuniting with Hagar in 2002 for a tour, then Roth in 2006, a reunion (now minus Anthony, replaced by Eddie’s son Wolfgang on bass) which produced their final studio album ‘A Different Kind of Truth’ in 2012. By this point Eddie had been diagnosed with cancer and had overcome several surgeries in order to continue playing.

Eddie Van Halen’s playing style has been imitated by so many who followed in his wake, that it has become stock – the fast fingers and tapping was taken up by many others and expanded upon, but all who came along afterwards would cite Eddie as a major influence. In an interview in Kerrang published in 1984, Jimmy Page surmised (correctly) that Eddie had been a piano player, adding that ‘you need damn good timing to do that’, when referring to the lead solo on Michael Jackson’s ‘Beat It’. (Eddie, and brother Alex, had trained on classical piano at a young age.) Page also admitted that he was amazed by the style of playing, so much so that he had tried unsuccessfully to emulate it himself.

As stated earlier, the passing of this innovative, legendary musician has heralded the closing of a chapter in music, as the years pass we will inevitably lose more prominent figures from the world of classic rock, but this (and the death of Rush drummer Neil Peart at the start of this year) has been significant in so far as it has had so many music fans stop, and take stock of just what a legacy was left by the Dutch-born guitarist who came to epitomise American hard rock.

I’ll add a few tributes from across the rock spectrum, posted via social media:

My heart is broken. Eddie was not only a Guitar God, but a genuinely beautiful soul. Rest in peace, Eddie! …Eddie Van Halen Dead at 65 from Cancer https://t.co/gITtcndQVv

— Gene Simmons (@genesimmons) October 6, 2020

Oh NO! Speechless. A trailblazer and someone who always gave everything to his music. A good soul. I remember first seeing him playing at the Starwood in 1976 and he WAS Eddie Van Halen. So shocked and sad. My condolences to Wolfie and the family. https://t.co/ExAWzFAEYJ

— Paul Stanley (@PaulStanleyLive) October 6, 2020

I’m just devastated to hear the news of the passing of my dear friend Eddie Van Halen. He fought a long and hard battle with his cancer right to the very end. Eddie was one of a very special kind of person, a really great friend. Rest In Peace my dear friend till we meet again. pic.twitter.com/Qs8tsLPANJ

— Tony Iommi (@tonyiommi) October 6, 2020

Just when I thought 2020 couldn't get any worse, I hear Eddie Van Halen has passed. So shocking- One of the nicest, down to Earth men I have ever met and toured with. A true gent and true genius. RIP. So sad.Thoughts go out to his brother Alex, and his family. pic.twitter.com/fwIw040YMX

— Geezer Butler (@geezerbutler) October 6, 2020

Edward…Thank You For Your Extraordinary Gifts You Chose To Share With Us…XXX pic.twitter.com/BLnmsPrYhW

— David Coverdale (@davidcoverdale) October 6, 2020

I am at a loss for words.
Eddie was the game changer.
A beautiful Soul, and talented supreme.
Rest easy my dear friend…
Your music will live on…
🕊🙏💜 pic.twitter.com/rS27HhZt1d

— Glenn Hughes (@glenn_hughes) October 7, 2020

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A post shared by Keith Urban (@keithurban)

Thank you EVH…. You changed the game and we were forever blessed to be on this earth with you.
God Bless the King…
R.I.P. Edward @ Heaven https://t.co/kaWSykWXdA

— DOUG ALDRICH (@Douglas_Aldrich) October 6, 2020

Shocked to hear of the death of the great Eddie Van Halen.
He was a consummate musician and an extraordinary virtuoso on the guitar.
He leaves a giant footprint and an irreplaceable void.
– Billy Joel

📸: Kevin Mazur pic.twitter.com/Y1uAoVp2NE

— Billy Joel (@billyjoel) October 7, 2020

What a Long Great Trip It’s Been.. pic.twitter.com/M5pmkVi7hW

— David Lee Roth (@DavidLeeRoth) October 7, 2020

Heartbroken and speechless. My love to the family. pic.twitter.com/MQMueMF2XO

— Sammy Hagar (@sammyhagar) October 6, 2020

Neil Peart 1952-2020

If you are a rock fan of any stripe, you felt this one.

The news of the death of Rush drummer/lyricist Neil Peart came as a shock to many, who had long held out hope that the band would do one final run or at least one last show. They actually retired from the road in 2015, before finally bringing the curtain down as a band in 2018. At the time Peart had admitted to suffering from tendonitis, citing that as the primary reason for wanting to retire from road work. Only after his passing has it become known that he had been battling cancer for the past three years; the drummer was intensely private and swore his friends to secrecy about his condition.

Joining Rush soon after their debut album’s release (taking over from original drummer John Rutsey), the trio of Peart, bassist/vocalist Geddy Lee and guitarist Alex Lifeson began to get recognition beyond their native Canada as their music evolved from Zeppelin-style hard rock into long-form progressive rock. For a while in the late 1970s you would always see denim jackets with intricately-embroidered recreations of the Rush symbol from ‘2112’ worn by rock fans of the time. Almost totally ignored by the mainstream, the band nonetheless attained, and sustained, success right up until their retirement. Their music evolved further, with the turn of the 1980s shorter, snappier songs began to supplant the progressive epics and the trio took full advantage of new technology, allowing them to perform their complex material live as a trio, without the need for additional musicians.

You didn’t need to be a devoted fan to recognise the band’s prowess; Lee regularly topped ‘best bassist’ polls in music magazine reader’s polls for many years, while Peart was cited as inspiration to many drummers, most notably Mike Portnoy who founded the Rush-influenced Dream Theater before founding Sons of Apollo. He was dubbed ‘The Professor’ for his mastery of the drums, although he left publicity to his two band mates preferring to stay in the background. He was known for travelling to shows alone, often taking to a motorcycle rather than travel on a tour bus, reasoning that he got to see more of the world around him that way. He suffered the loss of both his wife and daughter in quick succession during 1997, becoming all-but retired at that time as he took several years out from the band. He finally resumed his place with Rush in 2002, as the band toured their ‘Vapor Trails’ album to great acclaim.

Neil Peart leaves behind an immense body of work and remains a lasting influence on anybody who ever picked up a pair of drumsticks. His loss is a huge one, and impossible to overstate.

Some video to close this post: Rush ‘YYZ’ (Neil Peart cam) from Rio 2002:

Neil Peart solo from Rush R30 tour (viewed from above)

Neil Peart on David Letterman, 2011:

Caught Live: The Darkness (with REWS) o2 Academy Liverpool 18th December 2019

It’s been a long time since The Darkness and I were acquainted, I remember seeing them support Def Leppard just before breaking big themselves, then going on to see them play arena shows with all the over-the-top excesses that brought. They split in 2006, but after the brothers Dan and Justin Hawkins had done their own things for a few years (Stone Gods and Hot Leg, respectively) they reunited in 2011 and have continued ever since, though original drummer Ed Graham has since stepped down; his place is now taken by Rufus Tiger Taylor (son of Queen’s Roger). This date in Liverpool was their first in several years too, and the set would comprise a complete performance of latest album ‘Easter Is Cancelled’ plus a selection of favourites from their back catalogue.

I wanted to get there handy enough to catch support REWS however; the band as I knew it split earlier in the year and I was interested to see how singer/guitarist Shauna Tohill would fare without drummer/vocalist Collette Williams, who announced her departure in April this year. Since then REWS has continued with a revolving cast of players alongside Tohill, including a bassist for the first time, making the new-look band a trio. For this tour bassist Ele Lucas and drummer Scott Hislop completed the line-up, and I was intrigued to see how the dynamic had changed now that two had become three. Sound-wise, it wasn’t THAT much different; a little fuller yes, now that there’s a bassist present but the important element for me of this band’s sound was the vocal blend of Tohill and Williams. It soon became clear Lucas was a perfectly capable deputy in the vocal department, leaving their male drummer to just concentrate on tubthumping. Tohill has always been an energetic performer, often jumping or headbanging away, now she has an accomplice with the equally enthusiastic bassist to her right. The set was mostly comprised of tracks from 2017 debut album ‘Pyro’ but recent single ‘Birdsong’ was also performed. Whenever I’ve seen REWS before Shauna has always spent the set grinning throughout, seemingly pleased just to be let up there with a guitar, and tonight was no exception. The second album will come out next year, and with a tour already booked for March it’s recommended to get to a date and see REWS v2.0 if they come nearby.

The Darkness made their grand entrance minus their frontman, who could be seen but not heard for the first part of opener ‘Rock and Roll Deserves To Die’. When he emerged, it seemed he’d pinched Freddie Mercury’s old Bohemian Rhapsody jumpsuit – a white number very similar to that iconic outfit from 1975. The jacket didn’t last long though, he soon ditched it to reveal his heavily-tattooed torso, to the approval of the crowd! The first half of the show was the current album performed in full, but there was plenty of room for banter and joking about, this is a band and a frontman not afraid to laugh at themselves. The ‘Easter Is Cancelled’ album is somewhat eclectic, I thought it a little bold to perform the whole thing but it does show they have faith in the record. ‘Heavy Metal Lover’ sees them flip from thrash to melodic swaying in the blink of an eye, while ‘Deck Chair’ has guitarist Dan Hawkins switch to bass, while Frankie Poullain takes an acoustic guitar and drummer Rufus Tiger Taylor leaves his kit to play keyboards. ‘We Are The Guitar Men’ closed out that part of the show, with only Justin Hawkins on stage while the other three dashed off for a quick change.

Resplendent in a bright red jumpsuit, Justin and the guys reappeared with ‘One Way Ticket’ (a song which always made me think of The Sweet), all in different attire and Dan now in his trademark Thin Lizzy t-shirt. The fun was ramped up even more in this part of the show; before ‘Growing On Me’ Justin mockingly made fun of a fan who’d been looking at his phone throughout the show up to that point, and got the audience to do the same – challenging them NOT to look at the stage during the song! That didn’t work of course, and they stopped it in the first verse so that we could all put our phones away and enjoy the song! This segment of the show was a selection of their hits, including slowie ‘Love Is Only A Feeling’ which sees Dan Hawkins take the lead guitar spotlight rather than his brother, who plays most of the lead and regards himself as just ‘the icing on the cake’! A rocked-up cover of Radiohead’s ‘Street Spirit’ preceded the last two, crowd favourites ‘Get Your Hands Off My Woman’ and of course ‘I Believe In A Thing Called Love’. For the encore, it had to be their Christmas hit ‘Christmas Time (Don’t Let The Bells End)’ and for this, they got the whole crowd to link hands while they played, Justin using a sparkly red Les Paul just for that song. It was almost like watching Slade in the 1970s (he imagines!) with a fun rock band performing their Christmas hit single!

Watching this show it was easy to see why they exploded in popularity so fast in the early part of the millennium; coming along at a time when it was not ok to rock out and you were supposed to be glum, serious and certainly not supposed to bash out lead guitar solos, they flew in the face of that and brought back good old-fashioned fun to the rock scene. It’s no coincidence that once this band broke, many other classic rock bands suddenly found themselves enjoying a renaissance. The near-capacity turnout in Liverpool this close to Christmas shows that their audience has held up, and long may they continue to bring the good times to the scene.

The Darkness Facebook Page

REWS Facebook Page

4 – Deserving

Caught Live: The Lancashire Hotpots,o2 Academy Liverpool 13th December 2019

I almost missed this one! Not because I failed to buy a ticket in time, no – I had that in plenty of time but a busy week had caught up with me and I snoozed early Friday evening. I woke up realising that if I was going to this gig I’d have to hurry, and so a bleary-eyed correspondent soon dashed off to the city centre for this gig. The place was already busy, the tour (dubbed ‘Beerhemian Rhapsody’ and themed loosely on Queen) had seen several shows sell out. This one was one of them, much to the delight of Dickie Ticker and company who have been making regular stop-offs to this venue for several years now.

I’d missed Stu Penders and Spladoosh! by this time, but they always open the show seeing as Penders himself and his two bandmates do look somewhat familiar (!) so there’s no doubt I’ll catch the King of Clubland another time. Coming the night after the General Election the mood in this part of the world wasn’t exactly bright given the result, and no doubt many were looking to Bernard, Dickie, Bob, Kenny, Billy and Dr Ron Seal to give us all something to smile about. They had a 2D cutout of Freddie Mercury at the back of the stage, and when the band came on it was to the strains of ‘One Vision’ – all six were in Mercury masks! Even more bizarrely, they actually opened the set with a faithful cover of ‘We Will Rock You’ before commencing the usual Lancastrian tomfoolery. Frontman Bernard Thresher completed the Queen theme by wearing the iconic yellow jacket, topped off with his usual flat cap (!)

The rest of the night was a celebration of all things dear to we Northerners, from ‘Let’s Get Leathered’ to shopping in IKEA (‘I Fear Ikea’) and consuming hearty meals regardless of what the dieticians say (‘You Could Get Hit By A Bus Tomorrow’, ‘Egg, Sausage Chips & Beans’), while Bernard ‘encouraged’ a detente between the North and the South before performing ‘We Love The North’ – he wasn’t entirely successful in deterring jeers at any Southerners who may have been present (!)

Many Hotpots favourites were delivered, and for anyone reading who is from a certain international sporting body, they performed a song now called ‘The Beer International Non-Profit, Non-Governmental Sporting Quad-Yearly Event’ (honest!) while poking fun at said sporting body for their ‘cease and desist’ letter they sent to the band! As ever, ‘Chippy Tea’ closed out the main set before an encore of several songs included ‘Christmas in Lancashire’ and the rarely-performed ‘straight’ song ‘Carry You Home’. That one was preceded by bassist Bob Wriggles urging us all ‘not to give up hope’ – that was as political as they got, but we all understood where Bob was coming from.  The usual singalong of ‘Shopmobility Scooter’ with ‘Hey Jean’ (‘Hey Jude’) interpolated then followed, closing things with ‘Do The Dad Dance’.

These guys always bring good cheer wherever they go and this show was the perfect tonic. They like to style themselves as a bunch of nutters, Bernard would have you believe they’re not like ‘proper bands’. They’re not fooling anyone, these are seriously good players behind all the comic bluster. They’ve outlasted quite a few ‘proper bands’ in their time though, and I can think of a few other more celebrated acts who’d have liked to see as many ‘sold out’ signs as the Hotpots managed this tour.

Something tells me that the humour that the Lancastrian lads provide will be needed more than ever in coming years, and as long as they keep coming around I’ll be there to cheer – even if it means wallowing in ‘the austerity blues’ in order to do so!

The Lancashire Hotpots Facebook Page

Stu Penders and Spladoosh! Facebook Page

5 Shopmobility Scooters – Delightful

CD: CATS in SPACE ‘My Kind of Christmas’ (Harmony Factory)

Those CATS in SPACE have really pushed the boat out for the holiday season this year, with a specially-recorded Christmas single released on multiple formats. You could have had a 7-inch satsuma-coloured vinyl (very clever, CATS!), a 12-inch picture disc featuring the new artwork created for the season by the band’s regular artist Andrew Kitson, or a CD which contains the song plus additional new tracks with reworked versions of older songs. Alongside all of that fans could also buy a limited edition print of the cover artwork, or for the well-heeled CAT fan, a ‘Catmas Tin’ box set containing the CD, two 7-inch vinyl records, plus various CAT-branded items such as a Christmas decoration and even some candy (!) all presented in an aluminium tin with the now-familiar CATS in SPACE logo on the lid. If like me, you’re short on both house room and readies especially at this time of year, the best bet is that CD since it features a lot of material for your tenner, so that was what I plumped for. At the time of writing, there are still various formats available for the CAT completist to indulge themselves with however.

My Kind of Christmas cover (art by Andrew Kitson)

The band are also pushing for a Christmas chart hit with this single, having launched a campaign on their fan group. They’re up against strong competition as you might expect, but after having held off playing this disc until the calendar finally reached December, it’s time to give this seasonal offering an appraisal. Starting off with the Christmas song itself, as you’d expect by now there are numerous nods to their many influences. They’ve chucked the kitchen sink at the production; it’s all there – sleigh bells, lyrics touching on everything from ‘mini-skirts at the office party’ (are we hoping for a mild December, lads?) to ‘Eric and Ernie on the box’, vol-au-vents and ‘flat warm beer’. (They stopped doing Watney’s Red Barrel years ago, guys!). They have gone full Wizzard with a children’s choir on the last chorus too, although the over-arching message is to urge us all to have this mindset all year round (‘don’t wait for the snow to fall, to wish peace and love for all‘) set to a song which evokes memories of classic 1970s Christmas chart-toppers. The melody in the chorus did make your correspondent think of Petula Clark’s hit ‘Don’t Sleep In The Subway’ though, and I bet that was not entirely unintended!

Track 2 on the CD (‘This Is London’), written by ‘7th Cat’ Mick Wilson, is a paean to the capital city, praising London as ‘the jewel in the crown’, set to a melodic rock song not a million miles from the sort of thing Cutting Crew did in the 80s, all harmonised vocals and gently soothing guitar backing. Another new one from Wilson follows, ‘If I Were You’ is a mid-paced acoustic track showcasing new vocalist Mark Pascall’s voice as well as those trademark harmonies.

‘Hollywood’ is the last of the new material; bassist Jeff Brown picks up the writing credit  as well as taking lead vocal on this one, a not-quite-so complimentary view of Tinseltown (‘land of the greedy, home of the vain‘) where ‘the faces may change but the dreams stay the same‘. All these tracks are in a rather gentler style than perhaps we’ve come to expect from the albums; that’s not to suggest the new album will be all like this but it does offer further proof that the band aren’t all bombast, they can rock you gently as well as heavily.

The remainder of the tracks on the CD are reworkings; there’s a new, acoustic version of ‘Chasing Diamonds’ as well as the new version of ‘September Rain’ which they issued separately in, September! The trilogy of Pascall reworkings concludes with ‘Yesterday’s News’; this is flagged on the cover as the ‘audition tape’. All of these new versions of older songs are to establish Pascall as the CATS singer now, having taken over from Paul Manzi who sang on the first three albums he is now putting his own stamp on the back CATalogue. The last track on the CD closes with a karaoke (or ‘kataoke’ as they would have it’) version of ‘My Kind of Christmas’ for you to sing along to. (The lyric is provided in the CD booklet, helpfully!)

As is the case with everything CATS in SPACE do, a lot of thought, time and effort has gone into the production and presentation of this release. I’d have liked this CD to be a little more lively, maybe with a cover of a party classic just for fun, but as it is, it is another quality product. I do hope the next album has a little more dirt under the claws however!

The band have today (as of the time of this post) just issued a promo video for ‘My Kind of Christmas’ – at the time of writing it is only available on their own Facebook page. Directed by none other than Toby Jepson, they have themed the video on ‘A Christmas Carol’ interspersed with the band playing on a stage set just like you saw on ‘Top of the Pops’, complete with audience attempting to dance!

CATS in SPACE Facebook Page

4 – Deserving

Caught Live: Last In Line, Tivoli Venue Buckley, 27th November 2019

Guitarist Vivian Campbell raised more than a few eyebrows when he launched this band in 2012, then featuring all surviving members of the original Dio band. He’d fought shy of revisiting any of this material for many years, ever since he was ousted from that band in 1986. His relationship with Ronnie James Dio never recovered from that moment, although Campbell had established enough of a reputation by then for other bands to come calling. He had a brief stint in Whitesnake during their late 1980s successful period, and later joined Def Leppard in place of the late Steve Clark, a position he has held to this day. Only after Dio’s passing in 2010 did Campbell revisit the music he helped to create in the early 1980s and then after his own health scares, which hopefully he is over the worst of now. Last In Line set out to revive that music but also create new material in that style, recruiting vocalist Andrew Freeman into what had to be a hugely daunting role.

The group initially included keyboardist Claude Schnell, who had toured with Dio since 1983, but he departed in 2015, before the band released debut album ‘Heavy Crown’. By the time they did, they’d also lost Jimmy Bain who passed away suddenly, while on duty with the band at ‘Hysteria On The High Seas’, a rock festival hosted by Def Leppard, held on a cruise ship.  In Bain’s place the band recruited veteran British bassist Phil Soussan, probably best known for his time with Ozzy Osbourne but well-known in the scene and importantly, a friend of Bain’s. This line-up has since released a follow-up album, ‘II’ which came out in early 2019. Campbell can only fit in these dates around his regular schedule with Def Leppard, and with that band off the road at the moment he was able to arrange a run of UK dates, including this one in the famous Tivoli in Buckley.

The date was originally scheduled for 5th December, but was brought forward for unspecified reasons. As I’d already booked this date it meant not going to see another gig that was happening on the same night, nor could I watch the Champions League game between Liverpool and Napoli, which was also that night! This was a bit of a bugbear not only to me, but Tivoli manager Rokib Miah (a fellow Red!) and when I greeted him that night, I asked him to ‘tell that bloody Vivian not to arrange a gig on the night of a game’ – jokingly of course (!)

It being a midweek gig it is always tricky to get to Buckley for door opening after a working day, so apologies once again to Gin Annie for missing them again. I was there in time for Vega, a melodic rock band I’ve seen before. They’re a fine band, with good players, songs with catchy hooks and in Nick Workman, a great singer and front man. But – they don’t ‘push my buttons’ and I can’t put my finger on why that is. They certainly do have an enthusiastic following, with a good crowd in place already as these guys went through their paces. For me though, they’re a band I’ll watch if on a bill like this, but not one I’d go out of my way to see.

It’s been 35 years since I last saw Campbell play Dio material live and so I was looking forward to this. The first impression I got was that drummer Vinny Appice has really scaled his kit back; I was accustomed to him having a huge kit when he was with Black Sabbath and then Dio, so to see a basic kit with just a snare and one floor tom was a bit of a surprise. The other thing I picked up on was that this band were going to play with no keyboardist, just a straight four-piece line-up. Opening with ‘Landslide’ off the current album, that went over well but the treats weren’t long in coming. ‘Stand Up And Shout’ was followed by ‘Straight Through The Heart’ and for a few minutes, yours truly was back in 1983. Those were the two songs that Dio opened their debut UK set at Donington with of course, and those who were there will remember the absence of guitar. Not a problem this time, Campbell not only brought the black Les Paul he used in those days, but THAT guitar tone. Immediately recognisable, he showed us in five minutes just how much he brought to that band. He also played the solos almost exactly as they were on record, which pleased me greatly since his solo in ‘Straight Through The Heart’ was one of my favourites on ‘Holy Diver’. (As an aside, he is playing them closer to the original recorded versions now, than he ever did when he was actually in Dio!)  For Appice’s part, his drum fills are also a big part of that Dio sound, and despite the scaled-back kit his own sound was also recognisable.

Four tracks from ‘II’ were played alongside two from ‘Heavy Crown’, and though they went down well, it was the vintage stuff we wanted and these guys didn’t disappoint. Freeman has the biggest shoes to fill, but is eminently capable of hitting those notes that the great man used to do. He isn’t Dio of course, there was only one of those, but he gets close to the sound and can do this material justice. He would often step up close to the front row and ‘high-five’ the punters, clearly not someone lacking in confidence!

Midway through, he gave Appice the microphone for him to introduce the band members, before they picked up again with ‘The Last In Line’, which has a bassline in it that Phil Soussan has said he wished he had written. He gets to play it now, and as well as resembling Bain in appearance he plays in that same heavy but understated style. Soussan himself took to the microphone later on to give a shout-out to Bain as well as Ronnie James Dio, but while the mood was definitely one of celebration Freeman did emphasise that they wanted to keep things moving by creating new music as well, indicating that they intend to make another album after this one.  The set closed out with a full and complete rendition of  ‘Egypt (The Chains Are On)’, which as far as I know wasn’t done live in full by Dio themselves. It certainly wasn’t in 1984 when I saw that band in Liverpool, but despite no keyboardist they gave a fine rendition of the epic closer to the ‘Last In Line’ album. Following that, Freeman teased the crowd by getting them to count the band in, promising that it’d be ‘worth it’ – they did, and the band kicked in with ‘Rainbow In The Dark’. Once again missing that keyboard motif which runs through the song on record, and once again it mattered little. Campbell delivered the solo perfectly, one of his signature lead solos and a real crowd-pleaser.

That was the main set, but of course we weren’t done. A three-song encore saw the quartet play ‘Don’t Talk To Strangers’, once again with Campbell playing the solo just how we remember, then after ‘Devil In Me’ they closed with what else, but ‘We Rock’. Going off to big cheers, all around I heard comments of  ‘that was bloody brilliant’ (or words to that effect) as the foursome bowed out.

As far as I’m aware that’s their first gig in this part of the world and I hope they get to play there again, this was a top-drawer show from some of the most highly-regarded players on the rock scene. The guitarist and Dio may not have seen eye-to-eye from the moment they parted company to the day Dio left us, but Viv did remind us all why he was so highly rated during those far-off days.  A real treat for fans of classic rock, and once again hats off to the Tivoli for bringing such a great band to Buckley.

5 – Delightful

Last In Line Facebook Page

Vega Facebook Page

Gin Annie Facebook Page

 

Edit this setlist | More Last in Line setlists

Edit this setlist | More Vega setlists

 

The SoapGirls release ‘Chains’ music video online

South African punk/rock sister act The SoapGirls issued a new video this week for their track ‘Chains’, taken from their fourth album ‘Elephant In The Room’. The duo, plus their touring drummer Sam Ogden, recently wrapped up a lengthy tour of the UK and Europe culminating in a riotous show earlier this month at The Hive in Rotherham. That gig featured much slapstick including a machine set up at the back of the hall generating large quantities of foam suds which soon turned the floor into a quagmire, while folk sprayed shaving cream, silly string and other substances all over each other. It was rather like a scene from ‘Tiswas’ for those who remember, and great fun to be a part of if not something I might write about in more detail on this blog (!)

Anyway, the video was shot earlier this year in between live dates, and features footage of Mille and Mie (Camille and Noemie Debray, on bass and lead guitar respectively) on stage with rapid cuts to shots of them applying makeup as only they know how to (!) and of them posing with a snake! I always did think they were influenced a lot by Alice Cooper, especially with their stage antics, and this provides further evidence. But as the song is called ‘Chains’, maybe there’s as much ‘Alice In Chains’ as there is ‘Alice Cooper’ to the band’s makeup… 😉

Poor puns aside, presented below is the new video for ‘Chains’ with parental advisory regarding the lyric, which anyone who follows this band should be aware of by now!

The girls, along with their mother and manager Sam Debray, are back home in South Africa now, taking a well-deserved break. They plan a return to the UK in Spring 2020 for more live shows here and in Europe.

The SoapGirls Facebook page

Album: Jason Aldean ‘9’ (Broken Bow Records)

Album cover of Jason Aldean ‘9’

What’s this – a COUNTRY artist featuring in my blog? Looks that way – after all, I’ve watched acts such as Sarah Darling and Striking Matches live in recent times, and this isn’t my first introduction to Aldean, one of America’s biggest stars in this genre and a huge concert draw in his homeland. I’ll be honest, he wasn’t on my radar at all until early this year when I was introduced to his music by a former colleague. This is his ninth album as the title suggests, however it’s the last two albums of his which I’m most familiar with (‘They Don’t Know’, 2016 and ‘Rearview Town’, 2018). Both of those albums followed a similar template; 15 songs all around three to three-and-a-half minutes long, some in the slower more traditional ‘country’ vein but others not only bordering on, but blasting right into, hard rock territory. For someone like me who still associates ‘country’ with Dolly ‘n’ Kenny, this was a revelation and I thought I should investigate further, especially considering bands such as Blackberry Smoke or even the Brothers Osborne have found favour with hard rock fans in the UK.

If you’re a fan of those bands, or somebody like the Cadillac Three, you will probably not find this album a stretch. Like the previous Aldean offerings I have heard, this album treads familiar ground. All the same tropes are applied in the songs on ‘9’, whether they be songs about relationships and/or breakups, drinking, life in a small town or just about cranking it up and partying – it’s familiar territory even to me, a relative newcomer to this artist. I do get the impression that these songs are crafted deliberately to push the right buttons with his fanbase; there are sly namedrops for the likes of ‘Hank’ (Williams, they don’t differentiate whether it’s Sr, or Jr.), Marshall Tucker and in what I take as a calculated pitch to the hard rock crowd, a mention of ‘Back In Black getting blasted in the bleachers’ in the album’s heaviest track, ‘We Back’. The subject matter is also intended to be ‘relatable’ to the listener, even if that means going back over ground trodden many times before. For example, both ‘Blame It On You’ and ‘Champagne Town’ has the song’s protagonist downing shots of whiskey to get over a breakup (‘I could blame it on the whiskey‘ – ‘Blame It On You’; ‘Sitting here drinking whiskey in a champagne town‘ – ‘Champagne Town), recalling songs from older albums like ‘Ask Any Ol’ Barstool’ and ‘Drowns The Whiskey’. Even on hard rocking opener ‘Tattoos and Tequila’ he’s already in a bar getting blasted in order to get over his latest lost love! (‘Tattoos to remember, tequila to forget‘). Of course, we’ve all been there so it’s going to be something which will resonate with his fanbase, no matter how many times before they’ve heard something similar from this artist.

In that vein of subject matter, the standout for me is ‘Some Things You Don’t Forget’ – Aldean delivers this one with some real feeling (‘Goodbye don’t come easy with a girl like that, I swear sometimes I wish we’d never met – cos some things you don’t forget‘) alongside a huge sound provided by his band, led by guitarist Kurt Allison. Of course the album isn’t all about breakups; it wouldn’t be an Aldean album without something about life in small towns (‘we’re just keeping it small town, keeping it slow, keep that dust stirred up on them old dirt roads‘ – ‘Keeping It Small Town’) and ‘dirt’ crops up yet again in ‘Dirt We Were Raised On’ (‘It’s on our boots, it’s on our trucks, it’s in that cloud of dust we stirred up‘) once again recalling older songs such as ‘Dirt To Dust’ or even ‘Dirt Road Anthem’. ‘Camouflage Hat’ also touches on familiar territory as it celebrates the ‘good ol’ boys’ who come into town with ‘muddy boots, muddy tyres‘ to ‘raise a little hell and drink by the county line‘.

For me as a hard rock fan, the songs that grabbed me immediately were opener ‘Tattoos and Tequila’, and ‘We Back’ – despite the presence of a little lap-steel guitar in the background, this one’s closer to 80s hard rock than country, with that mention of AC/DC’s classic album and of a guy with ‘a beat-up Tele and a Marshall stack’ telling the listener that Aldean and his band can throw it down with the best of them. What will jar with rockers though, is that Aldean has not written a note of music on this album. All of these songs and indeed all of them on at least the last two albums I have heard, are from outside writers. He justifies this by saying that if he has a choice between a song he has written himself, and one from outside writers, then if he thinks the one from those writers is better than that’s what he’ll record. That approach didn’t hurt classic rock bands such as Heart or Aerosmith of course, who both had mega-selling hit albums with help from outside writers, but one or two from Aldean himself wouldn’t go amiss once in a while.

Of course the ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ approach has served Aldean well over the years, and while he hasn’t fixed anything unnecessarily here either, he has sprung one surprise at least with closing track ‘She Likes It’. Here, unlike everything else on this album or indeed the last two, where the song is done in around three minutes including a two-bar guitar solo, he’s let guitarist Kurt Allison off the leash for a lengthy outro solo lasting over a minute and pushing what would have been a standard Aldean country-rock ballad into classic rock territory. I do feel that Aldean is as much a rocker as he is a country boy, and those who like Southern Rock bands will find much to enjoy here.

The album was released on 22nd November and is available to listen to on all platforms online. A Spotify link is provided below, alternatively the whole thing can be accessed via YouTube.

4 – Deserving

https://www.jasonaldean.com