Carlski's Gig Blog: Also Featuring Arbitrary Strangeness!

I go to loads of gigs, reviews of which will appear here, with added bouts of other strangeness!

Thursday, May 29, 2008

Joe Satriani & Paul Gilbert - 15/05/08


Joe Satriani at Manchester Apollo, with Paul Gilbert, so let's start with Mr. Gilberto. He started off in Mr. Big in the late 1980's and his gimmick was of course playing guitars with Makita cordless drills!


Gilberto played mainly songs from his new CD: "Silence Followed By a Deafening Roar" which other than his Mr. Big albums are the only one i've got, but his playing was magnificent very, very, close to good ol' Joe himself!


Gilberto finished with Mr. Big's "The Electric Drill Song" which ended up being the only song with singing, and also featured the drill moment! There was also a bit of a Jimmy Page style violin bowing! Overall great stuff!


The crowd pretty much loved Gilberto and even gave him a standing ovation, pretty good for a support act! So Joe had a lot to live up to!


Joe had as usual, Jeff Campitelli on drums, Galen Henson on rhythm guitar and the return of the BASSmaster: Stu Hamm! So probably his best ever backing band!


Joe, not surprisingly played 7 out of the 10 songs on his new album: "Professor Satchafunkilus and the Musteron of Rock", which is probably his finest album in years!


Joe also played many of his claasic older songs, finishing off with the brilliant sing along to the guitar part: "Crowd chant" The audience went suitably ape-shit! Anyone who thinks Satriani tracks are just widdly diddly guitar shit with no tunes, were proven wrong by such catchy numbers as "Always You, Always Me", "Summer Song" and "Flying In a Blue Dream".


A special mention goes out to Stu Hamm for possibly the best bass guitaring heard since Geddy Lee and Rush! At first I though every one was booing him, but it turns out they were "Stu"ing him - Awesome!


Blaze Bayley is next at Rock Of Ages! on the 7th June. Also need a ticket for Paul Gilbert at Rios in November!

Saturday, May 10, 2008

Robert Plant/Alison Krauss - 07/05/08

Had terrible cold, didn't feel well so didn't end up going :-( Mam and Dad enjoyed the show though! Apparently it was really good! Hopefully will be back in action for guitar fret wankery from Joe Satriani and Paul Gilbert next week!

Saturday, May 03, 2008

3 Inches Of Blood - 02/05/08


Yes, Mr. Somebodyelse, Rios is now indeed in Leeds and not Bradford! I also agree that Facebook sucks serious ass! I'm very close to deleting my account as it's the most annoying f*%ked-up shit on t'interweb! Anyway let's talk about Vancouver, Canada's very own, 3 Inches Of Blood - You would think that they were a Scandinavian battle metal if you didn't know any better and they frakkin' rock big time!


Last week we only saw the last two songs from the 3"ers, this week we got to see the whole show, but still with crazy shit going on! 3" had a small but devoted crowd gathered in Leeds on Friday for an excellent set of rowdy battle metal anthems, Cam Pipes was in good form with his "Evil" Rob Halford inpressions, awesome!


THe crowd were a set of complete nutters with one of the craziest circle pits i've seen in a long while, this was also the cause of Friday's comedy!


Honk decided that at 50 years old, you are still young enough to have a mosh in the circle pit, this was of course after several pints too many... After running out of the pit looking somewhat green, he proceeded to spew all over my arm and then the floor, before being booted out by the bouncers! At this point Brian, came over wondering what had happened to Honk, and slipped on his back straight into the pool of vom! It was classic!


So this was two strange gigs in a row for Honk Stewart, pissing off half way through last weeks, and then getting chucked out of this one! God knows what will happen next....

The next gig is a complete change of pace - Robert Plant & Alison Krauss at the Manchester Apollo on Wednesday, see you after then!