Kee Marcello, Marco Mendoza, Mike Terrana and K2 Throw an Orgy at Rock Club in Ronke! (2009)

Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik

Venue: Rock Club / Ronchi Dei Legionari (Ronke) / Italy
Concert date: 20.11.2009
Attendance: 100
Ticket price: €20.00

Kee Marcello, that excellent Swedish musician who tasted plenty of glory during his time with Europe, keeps his spirit alive these days through the mission of K2. Kee Marcello is known as a hugely approachable, open, fun and friendly guy to talk to, with a distinct sense of humor, even though he could shamelessly milk an air of aloof, unreachable grandeur, which his status as a rock star and guitar hero would, in principle, allow him.

Kee isn’t a guy who wants to outdo Malmsteen or Steve Vai. This musician writes his music so that compactness and melody always take priority in his hard rock approach over the “show off” ecstasy of firing a sea of notes into the room. At the same time, Kee keeps his exceptional virtue. In the instrumental parts he shows why he’s such a fascinating musical soul. His solos fit perfectly into the average ear of any curious music fan who comes to sample the guitarist’s musical essence.

Until recently K2 were Kee Marcello (vocals, guitar), bassist Klatuu and former King Diamond and Therion drummer Snowy Show. A fascinating lineup already, but the trio has recently turned into something even more fascinating, because the former Europe guitarist, who also plays in the reunited Easy Action, has gathered nobody less than two out-of-this-world, do-it-all musicians for the new November European tour. The first is bassist Marco Mendoza  (Thin Lizzy, Blue Murder, Whitesnake, Ted Nugent, Neal Schon, Soul Sirkus – and the list is far from complete), the second is a drumming spaceship going by the name of Mike “The Troll” Terrana (Y.J. Malmsteen, Axel Rudi Pell, Rage, Malmsteen, Tarja Turunen – and that list isn’t over yet either). Mike Terrana stopped by Križanke in Ljubljana a good month ago, where his employer Tarja Turunen, the former Nightwish queen, played one of her concerts (RockLine report HERE). So all three of them are constantly active. Mendoza, who two years ago released his solo album “Live For Tomorrow”, on which Richie Kotzen (ex-Poison, ex-Mr. Big) dug very deep with his producing and songwriting chops, was already “terrorizing” European stages last year in the project La Famiglia Superstar alongside former XYZ singer Terry Ilous (RockLine report from Bluesiana – HERE), while Mike Terrana, like a true legionnaire, keeps turning up in one lineup or another on stages around the world.  Mendoza returns to Europe with his trio Straightjackets right after the K2 tour wraps up, and on 12.12.2009 he’ll once again visit the Austrian club Bluesiana in Vrba in Carinthia. In short, the stage held three passionate workaholics who don’t know the meaning of rest.

Before K2 hit the stage, Rock Club once again rang with the notes of Italian bands from the Slovenian borderland region, which Ronke is part of too. Sadly, I didn’t manage to catch the names of either band. The first one was devoted to playing covers. Saxon songs fit the singer/bassist like a glove, and I strongly recommend that this band specialize in nothing but Saxon. The similarity of the singer’s vocal tone to Biff Byford is simply staggering! We got to see for ourselves with Motorcycle Man, Solid Ball Of Rock and especially Princess Of The Night. The band opened its set with the AC/DC tune Riff Raff, we also heard Shoot To Thrill (orig. AC/DC), a less convincing version of the Judas Priest classic Hellion/Electric Eye, and the band finally confirmed how tightly they play together when they tackled Iron Maiden and Number of The Beast, where the singer’s voice, instead of B. Dickinson, came closer to K. Hansen of Gamma Ray. That it’s unwise to mess with these guys was proven by their bold and vehement move when they took on the Deep Purple classic Burn, where both guitarists superbly filled the gap left by the Hammond organ and, happily, caught at least a shade of Blackmore’s “juiciness”. The vocals in Burn were an especially big surprise, fitting superbly into the framework of the song. Shock. Playing Deep Purple usually ends in disappointment. This time it was nowhere near that. Excellent!

The next band, sadly, wasn’t up to the task of warm-up act. The mistake was made right at the start: these young pups with milk teeth shouldn’t have played as the first support band. What followed was a small stage where the quintet was “crammed” into just 4-5 square meters, and the right-hand guitarist practically crawled into the singer’s only square meter, so that he couldn’t develop any stage presence at all. And the main thing that sank the band’s set was, of course, youth and inexperience – which is exactly why they should have been first on the bill. Above all, we witnessed sound mishaps and technical hiccups that even forced one of the guitarists to leave the stage mid-set to swap guitars, and the band also allowed itself a few decidedly overlong pauses between songs, where you could see they were literally learning how to handle the stage and talk to the crowd. A band trying to build songs on a melodic hard rock foundation, they never managed to impress or leave a mark. What put me off most was the singer, who in his shrill howling, straining to follow in the footsteps of his idol Jon Bon Jovi, left the impression that his voice is much better suited to garage punk rock bands, or something like the Beastie Boys. On top of that, the stage was full of “fussing” and mimicry from all five of them. However you look at it, bands like this need stages most in their first steps, and the gesture by the organizer and club management to give them a chance to prove themselves was really lovely.

So it happened that Kee Marcello, Mike Terrana and Marco Mendoza only took the stage at five past twelve at night. They spent some 1o minutes tuning their instruments on their own. Then, about ten minutes to one in the morning, Kee addressed the crowd and said the concert was about to really begin. The band also presented the upcoming new K2 studio album “Dog Eat Dog” (release planned for the start of next year), from which they played the very promising The Harder They Come, Dog Eat Dog and Bad End Highway, and Kee didn’t leave fans of his record “Melon Demon Divine” (2005) hanging either, tackling the songs Enemies and Raptor and especially the smasher Evil Ways.

Kee was, of course, first and foremost a magnet thanks to his exceptionally rich repertoire, which he shows through his approach to guitar playing. Solos in particular are the sweet candy of every song, without which music would be completely bland or “dry”, like soup without salt. Kee is fascinating in his hellish speed, since his fingers must be “half a size shorter” than those of some mutant of the human long-fingered species like Steve Vai or Paul Gilbert, and he doesn’t even use his fourth finger much when soloing, but races up and down the neck at extreme speed with just three fingers. The solos are built on a juicy balance of notes and follow in the footsteps of idols who developed new directions in this craft, like Michael Schenker or Randy Rhoads. In other words, you don’t just get shredding across all boundaries here: Kee weaves in lots of ornamental licks along the neck, tasteful tremolo bends, switches to wah-wah through a solo, so the listener can fully enjoy these solos with the hugely varied palette of this charismatic musician’s rich knowledge, which is of course fundamentally rooted in classicism. Put crudely, Kee only waded into blues waters once, when the trio tackled Hendrix’s Red House, which Marcello visibly enjoyed, as it’s one of the bigger detours in the band’s repertoire.

Mendoza is the link who first breaks down the barrier between audience and band and melts the ice. He pulls it off with great simplicity. He plays a total madman on stage, but at every moment it’s clear that it’s a perfect act, a facade built on rich experience, part of the necessary showbiz hustle of earning a living, which adds the needed ingredient of fun and a feeling of spontaneity. Mendoza kept egging on his two companions on stage (seemingly almost altruistically); at one of the wild moments of “provocation”, Kee and Marco even “locked tongues” for a second, and the funniest sight was the audience right below the stage in front of Marco Mendoza’s position, because whatever flew off the musician became the object of reflex movements from a watchful little lady in the front row who clearly badly wanted his picks. So they nearly came to blows over a missed splash of water, or rather a thrown-away pack of “chewing gum”. The “quotation marks” are there because it isn’t even certain there was gum in that pack. During the concert, Mendoza used a Zippo to sprinkle “something” onto the outer part of his wrist (the outer joint area between the thumb and index finger of his right hand) and then snorted that “something” up his nose in an instant. Do you imagine that too? Or maybe Mendoza is just asthmatic, and that (so to speak) powder was an ordinary medicinal pine needle extract for easier breathing. No wonder the bassist is such a “wild” presence on stage. Marco Mendoza amazed as an excellent singer, even better than Kee Marcello. He complemented the vocal harmonies with Kee superbly, and above all confirmed his great singing with two songs from his solo record “Live For Tomorrow” (2007), I Want You (where Kotzen can be heard a mile away in the guitar phrasing) and Look Out For The Boys, where he took over lead vocals. The man has that soulful bite that also adorns his countryman Richie Kotzen, and a big role model for it is of course the venerable Mr. Glenn Hughes, as well as older soul and funk singers, especially of Black origin. Mendoza wielded his arsenal across three six-string Yamaha bass guitars. He stepped into the spotlight especially when the band launched into a longer jam, where he started off by placing completely innocent but beautifully melodically rounded chords on the fretless version of one of the basses. That jam continued very spontaneously in the style of a salsa rhythm and Latin melos digest, with Mendoza as its main player, of course. Later Marcello joined the accompaniment, while Terrana in the background still wasn’t entirely sure when it was his turn. Mendoza approached him with hints and the trio started raising the intensity of the jam. It was followed by Marcello’s insert of Midnight Sun Mojo (orig. Europe), and after that Mendoza and Marcello cleared off the stage and it became Mike Terrana’s.

The great “TheTroll”, who sadly wasn’t in the best of moods this evening, staged a 10-minute soloist’s paradise on Earth. Really. Terrana is one of those drummers whose soloing you never get tired of. And there aren’t many such drummers. Usually drum solos serve as lubricant while the rest of the band rests and eat up the audience’s time (unless you’re Neil Peart of Rush, of course). In Mike Terrana’s case, his solo spot is always one of the highlights of the concert, no matter what lineup you catch him in. This time he had a smaller drum kit with him, because the one he once used with Rage, for example, wouldn’t fit on the stage of Rock Club in Ronke even in his dreams. Mike once again looked like a climbing gecko (a type of reptile), especially because of his characteristic setup of crash cymbals, which stand on extremely tall stands and stick out of the kit like two antennae. He played part of the solo with bare hands like a percussionist, and the closing part standing up. Animalistic. Fast, full-force and unpredictably wild. With acrobatics you don’t see every day. Twirling sticks mid-swing as if breathing air,… But as I said. It wasn’t his day. A perfectionist as he is, he loves to “go nuts” over every hair that can make him nervous and just isn’t in the right place. This time he spent the whole concert tightening the stands of the drum kit and moving the snare drum, whose position just didn’t suit him. In one swing, when a stick flew out of his hands, he visibly got angry at the snare drum and lifted it almost theatrically, as if he wanted to hurl it away from himself. Still, amid the loud ovations of the fascinated crowd, he thanked the audience loudly. The madness of a one-of-a-kind talent that you mustn’t miss in any way if you’re a music gourmet looking for nothing but perfection!

The band also included Ted Nugent’s Hey Babe, where Mendoza again took over vocal duties and got the entire crowd in the room singing the chorus. The band brought an intense, emotion-charged set to its end with the Europe classic Superstitious, where the club came alive again with great joy, and they left the stage. Amid the ovations they quickly reappeared and, after a short chat, decided on an express rendition of the folk-hit Flight Of A Bumblebee (an electric version of the famous “Flight of the Bumblebee”, written by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov), which you might call “Flight Of A BumbleKee”, where Kee once again showed who’s the boss tonight on the Rock Club stage. Fascinating finger agility, hard-to-fathom speed and precision on top of it, and with it, of course, a newly projected showpiece of big fun in the club.

The hour and 40 minutes, which started somewhat reserved, came alive in every way somewhere around the third song (Dog Eat Dog). You could especially see how well the roomy stage suited the trio. The guys are so experienced and seasoned that nothing can derail them. They turn every situation to their advantage, and the trio works in an energy that is unbelievably positive, free and relaxed. As such, this trio is a guarantee of unfathomable fun, since at times their audacity literally pokes at the limits of the possible and the “Earthly” rational. K2 are in full swing, and let’s hope it’s not just a short-lived combination that will release only the album “Dog Eat Dog” next year and then vanish from the horizon. The bravura spectacle was also topped off by signing CDs, promo posters and anything else you could wish for. Also photos with members Kee Marcello and Marco Mendoza, who sold their CDs at a measly price of 10.00€. Only Mike Terrana never appeared again, staying (probably furious) backstage instead, waiting for the club to empty out.

The very next day K2 travel on to the Austrian club Bluesiana in Vrba in Carinthia (21.11.2009), and the day after that to Boogaloo in Zagreb (22.11.2009). Given the completely different characters of the two clubs compared to Rock Club in Ronke, both concerts will be entirely different experiences. What’s especially fascinating is the feeling (I say only a feeling) of a touch of spontaneity. This lineup chats on stage as they go about which song to play, who steps up front with a solo, and so on… So that touch of unpredictability brings extra juiciness, variety and dynamics to a repertoire of otherwise compact songs, and it never stops thrilling the audience. Make time for one of their concerts and get fascinated too.

photos: Aleš Podbrežnik

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