Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Great White
Label: Frontiers Records
Release: 2013
Length: 76:33
Rating: 4/5
Great White simply needed this album. Know the Queensryche story? Great White’s is a similar one. There are two Great White bands out there. One is led by Jack Russell, the band’s former frontman, who split from the mothership amid some pretty toxic bad blood. The other brought in XYZ singer Terry Ilous, and together they put out »Elation« last year and proved that losing Jack Russell didn’t derail them in the slightest.
Last year Great White celebrated thirty years as a band, one that shook things up with its first EP, »Out in the Night«, back in 1983 (the EP was steered by the production duo of Don Dokken / Michael Wagener). That got them a deal with EMI Records at the end of 1983 and, the following year, their self-titled debut »Great White«. Although the band’s roots reach back to 1977, 1982 counts as its birth year, since that’s when they changed their name from Dante Fox to Great White.
What could be better for a band from Southern California, one that always cultivated its own idiom, heavily steeped in blues and shamelessly branded with the erogenous threads of Led Zeppelin’s musical lovemaking, than to celebrate its (first) thirty years at the famous Los Angeles club »Sunset Strip« and rock a sweltering Saturday night into a rock’n’roll haze for a packed house of overheated heads, right down to the last corner of the room? With their ironclad repertoire of biggest hits, of course. Let me quickly rewind for anyone who doesn’t know the band all that well. Great White are among the most successful acts American hard rock gave us in the eighties. The album »…Twice Shy« went double platinum, and the band also picked up a Grammy nomination in the »best hard rock performance« category for the song »Once Bitten, Twice shy«. So, snacking on little fish alongside the »Great White« just isn’t healthy.
Ilous is a fantastic singer. The evergreen excellence of the classic albums by his home band XYZ proves it one way or another, and his tone and approach fit Great White’s idiom like a glove. He’s wildly convincing in every register, especially in the dizzying heights of the »wail«, that famous raspy, frenetic Plant-style approach, which means he fills Jack Russell’s boots with total confidence.
And Great White just keep getting better and better. They age like a fine old wine. They serve up a warm, stripped-down, raw-to-the-bone sound, without the faintest trace of the production bombast of their golden-era albums. This is organic, seductive hard rock itch at its purest, and the sheer authenticity gives you goosebumps from the first second to the last of this live release. Led, of course, by the incredible emotional charge of Terry Ilous’s striking vocal performance. If nothing else gets you, the outstanding rendition of the ballad »Save Your Love« will definitely bring you to your knees! And with that fantastic ballad mentioned, it’s obvious that »Face The Day« and »Rock Me« are on the album too. That’s all three songs that carried Great White’s name across the Atlantic pond in the eighties and earned them international fame, while the album closes, as expected, with the famous cover of Ian Hunter’s 1975 classic »Once Bitten, Twice Shy«. The stretched-out »Can’t Shaeke It« is especially moving, working live like a distant sister of the Led Zeeppelin classic Whole Lotta Love.
The roots of the blues couldn’t be showcased better than in the improvised intro to the shamelessly incendiary »Mista Bone«. The band delivers an outstanding, tightly focused, feet-together hard rock assault. The bottom of the rhythm line, with its nicely accentuated kick drum, is built like a bulletproof wall of reinforced concrete, the guitars shine in the suppleness of the riff ritual, while Ilous cashes in full-bloodedly on his gleaming vocal character, which sealed a blood pact with the blues long ago.
Great White fans, this is definitely the album for you. With or without Jack Russell. No worries. Ilous is the band’s answer for the new times. There’s no room on this live record for songs from the new album »Elation« or its predecessor »Rising«, while the only newer song in the set, »Back To The Rhythm« from 2007, slots in beautifully with the band’s classics on stage. »30 Years – Live From the Sunset Strip« is the album the guys had to put out to drown out Russell’s version of Great White. Thirty years together is a great alibi for it. And with it, the white shark proves it’s nowhere near done wearing down its enamel.
»30 Years – Live From the Sunset Strip« is available now at:
Lineup
Terry Ilous – vocals
Mark Kendall – guitar
Michael Lardie – guitar, keyboards
Scott Snyder – bass
Audie Desbrow – drums
Track list
1. Desert Moon
2. Lady Red Light
3. Face The Day
4. House Of Broken Love
5. Save Your Love
6. Mista Bone
7. The Big Goodbye
8. Back To The Rhythm
9. Rock Me
10. Can’t Shake It
11. Once Bitten Twice Shy
