Michael Schenker Group - Lynch Mob - 15 Minutes - Baby Jayne - Kat Atomic -- Jaxx - July 30 3010

Kat Atomic - Yeow, so much for lasting at the back of the dance floor. The sound man behind me has the vocals high enough that the female singer's powerful bursts really pierced my ears. Whatever happened to the good old days when sound men screwed the opening bands out of full volume? Time to move back to the corner. It is a sold out show tonight, so it will be tricky. Still annoying to my ears, so I put my headphones on. Then the music starts to annoy me, so I actually turn my IPOD on. Well, that's too distracting. Pedestrian hard rock which if I still drank and plunked down $3 to hear a covers band, I could tolerate. Pat Benatar's "Heartbreaker" was covered, probably other covers. The band looks smart enough and old enough not to quit their day jobs.

Baby Jayne - What ever happened to...? Well, they became a glam rock band that could have fit in at the Batusis show, but not as well as the two that played that night. It seemed a bit more Black Oak Arkansas than New York Dolls. They did a decent "Highway to Hell" and thankfully didn't cover any Baby Jane songs like "Message to Daddy" (see the movie), but the originals were all over the place. "Road Rockers" was painful, but others were quite decent. Still a bit too many cliches and inane chatter. Maybe a bit more experience...

15 Minutes - The first song sounded like a reworking of Zeppelin's "The Immigrant Song". I took me about two minutes before I was certain it was just a very similar song. They then covered "Fairies Wear Boots" by Sabbath. Coincidentally, I just saw a documentary where Black Sabbath's drummer said that was one of his favorites to play as he could do some of his jazz moves. Well, this drummer reminded me of what a drummer will do when he doesn't have any jazz moves. Otherwise it sounded nice. Oh, now we hear "The Immigrant Song" covered. I was psychically confused earlier. They did it a bit slower which was good to put a personal stamp on it. I know the next song... I think it's Soundgarden. "No Shame"? Decent. And 15 Minutes finishes with one more song completing their set in 23 minutes, shortened due to some technical issues and a late start. Fairly good set, but with loads of covers.

Lynch Mob - This band features George Lynch who is well known guitarist, although I am not up on him. He's drummer has played with Ozzy Osbourne and Foreigner, and the band is solid. Lynch can play clearly. The songs are ok, some inventive moves here and there, kind of basic hard rock. Jaxx security has me and some other people move from our corner as they had to set up a "meet and greet". Fine, whatever, I just took a seat out in the room by the door where you can't see anything and barely hear the music. And right after the set, I go back and see that they did not do anything in the corner I was at and more wisely, put the meet and greet of Lynch Mob at the Lynch Mob merchandise table some 30 feet away. Nice of these guys to all come out and chat with fans and sign CDs and at least six guitars that fans brought with them.


Michael Schenker Group - Schenker was one of my early guitar heroes in high school when his blazing style was pushing UFO to new heights. Since then, we've had Eddie Van Halen and plenty more speed demons, so there are loads of fast guitarists to choose from. Schenker still has a nice style with the speed and demonstrated it this evening. He has a solid band including the great Carmen Appice on drums. Appice looked good, but sounded kind of simplistic actually. That may be a bit harsh, but he just did not have the power and panache I used to see from him. But he's 63 and this was a bit of an all-star lineup with who knows how much rehearsal time. Speaking of which, I missed seeing the great Rev Jones (who I saw with Leslie West) who will be joining on bass for the month of August. Anyway, this was a good set and although I was not expecting much from the songs themselves, they picked some pretty good ones, so most everyone had a good time.

T-shirts of the Night: The quotes were some of the lamest, dullest heavy metal talk, so just watch Spinal Tap instead. But the t-shirts had plenty of variety. The soccer jersey of note was Aaron Lennon of Tottenham Hotspur/England which is another odd choice in this diverse area. I saw a Tattoo parlor shirt on someone in shorts that had no visible tattoos. Wait, maybe one peeking through on upper arm. An Anvil shirt, well not so odd anymore. MSG 25th Anniversary shirt was nice since this was the 30th Anniversary tour. And some ugly shirt with a long legged torso only in underwear with some message saying "Don't be gay"? on it. I am glad I did not see the front.