Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: New Age / Roncade (Treviso) / Italy
Concert date: 04.12.2010
Attendance: 550
Ticket price: €28.00
Skid Row in 2010, without Sebastian Bach on vocals, are definitely a double-edged sword. On one hand, you know something’s missing the whole time, even while you’re pouring your energy out with them at a gig. On the other, you know it’s the only way to catch a bit of that magic that catapulted the band into multi-platinum stardom, with over 20 million albums sold. Why is the brawler Bach no longer in the band? Hell if I know. But there’s surely a strong reason in his difficult character, and it’s a safe bet the guys had a hard time getting along with him without their blood boiling over every other day.
And that’s exactly the catch. Skid Row are now sentenced to the club circuit. The pretty bad boy got kicked out of paradise, or maybe he kicked himself out, and with him gone from the lineup, Skid Row are a lot less of a draw live these days. To put it in more “brutal” terms: even uninteresting. Very ironic, but that’s how it goes.
That doesn’t mean everybody has turned their backs on today’s Skid Row and similar “convalescents”. No. Far from it. There will always be a healthy core “pool” of glam metal fans who’ll stay in direct contact with this music for as long as Skid Row can physically shuffle around and play their stuff live. On top of that, there’s been a strong factor for a few years now keeping the glam legacy alive. It’s called the “revival” wave, and it was of course kicked off by Scandinavia.
That bands of the extravagantly teased-hair variety are hugely popular in Italy is nothing new. It’s partly down to the national character itself. This crowd doesn’t care that much about what’s happening on stage. What matters is that someone notices THEM, that they’re seen at the gig. That’s when they’re happiest. So they dress to stand out, and the whole thing goes hand in hand. That’s why the New Age club was jam-packed for W.A.S.P. on Halloween, 31.10.2010, and why we got an even better turnout this time, when Skid Row’s modern-day lineup came to the club: Johnny Solinger (vocals), Dave “The Snake” Sabo (guitar), Scotti Hill (guitar), Rachel Bolan (bass) and Rob Hammersmith (drums). The place was practically bursting from all the steam of euphoric anticipation. The great energy of this little Italian temple devoted to the debauched, mischievous mission of rock n’ roll in all its offshoots and basic variations (take your pick) rarely lets you down. It’s one of this club’s signature concert experiences.
The evening was opened by an “all-female” crew from Venice! Locals who go by Baby Beluga. A beluga is a type of whale. But the girls in the band are definitely not heavyweights when it comes to any tangible amount of general bodily abundance, so in this case it’s really hard to link them to any resemblance to a whale calf. Dirty rock n’ roll, cut in the style Italian women’s music understands it. Likable, fun and no doubt good quality. But very generic, so no seismic shocks of surprise on that front. Just a very pleasant time, with even more pleasant scenery.
It’s quite possible that today’s Skid Row have had to morph into a low-budget outfit that obviously guards every hard-earned penny. There was no official merch available. So the budget slice of the pie is seriously cut thin. And we were left without official Skid Row shirts.
The club, with 500 people crammed into it, went thoroughly hazy as the silhouettes took the stage. A quick hello and boom! The sound? As expected. Guitars muddy and indistinct. Still, it was impossible to miss the famous riff of Big Guns, which kicked off the gathering. Vocally, Johnny Solinger is a very worthy replacement for Bach, and in that department he justifies filling Bach’s boots in the revamped Skid Row. The sturdily built guy boldly blends a clean approach with a throaty, cheeky edge, and Skid Row convincingly function on stage even today. For the most part, though, they lean on the success of the first two albums to do it.
That’s how they built the setlist, too. They went through the first two albums up and down, and slipped in three “Solinger era” songs from the album “Thickskin” (2003). Paradise conditions, then. And believe me, the crowd went nuts. Hammering out hit after hit, classic after classic, simply can’t have any other effect. Solinger also picked up the stage moves, the movement, and a bit of the outfit from his notorious predecessor.
Still, you could tell the guys weren’t in their freshest form. They allowed themselves two very boring, drawn-out jams, the first during Monkey Business, the second during I Remember You. They stretched the show out for no reason at all. But the trick is in the reason. Solinger had to cool his head and, above all, his overheated vocal cords. Especially in the second half of the show his voice got a little sandy and sounded somewhat worn, so he repeatedly handed the lead melodies over to the crowd, who clearly knew every verse perfectly. Of course, keep a foot on the brake pedal here – we’re talking about the Italian command of English. So Skid Row cheated the crowd in the hall out of a good 15 minutes this way. You could have fit three songs into that. But times are different. Even more than that, though, the inclusion of the cover of The Ramones’ Psycho Therapy was a miss. Who’s fooling whom here? Sadly, the Skid Row crowd.
But with a crowd this wild, which never runs out of atoms of energy, there’s nothing to worry about. The crowd kept Skid Row afloat, so the ship of poorly disguised “energy saving” didn’t sink to the bottom. Yes. The audience saved a show that would otherwise have felt a lot more sluggish, routine and reserved. It was a similar story with W.A.S.P. a good month ago at the same venue. And one more thing is for sure. Skid Row wouldn’t dream of getting away with this kind of laxness in Scandinavia or Germany. There, a much less feverish crowd (compared to Italy) would have quickly written them off their list of gigs to attend after a performance like that. Yes. Skid Row didn’t play full throttle. And that was the minus side of the night. The poorer sound during the show, which the techs didn’t manage or didn’t want to fix given the band’s evident laxness, matters less in this case.
Whatever. Thanks to the fame of their first two albums, Skid Row got away with it. The crowd got the energy bomb it demanded, a repertoire full of the classics it demanded. That’s why, after an hour and a half, it didn’t hide its visible satisfaction. Unwittingly, the crowd saved a show that thus left an overall impression of feverish, positive debauchery and sweaty fun. Simply put: the trip was worth it. The question is whether every attendee would do it again for a Skid Row show in the new millennium.
photos: Martin Prezelj
Setlist
1. Big Guns 2. New Generation 3. Mudkicker 4. Piece Of Me 5. 18 And Life 6. Thick Is The Skin 7. Makin’ A Mess 8. Monkey Business 9. Sweet Little Sister 10. Ghost 11. Psycho Therapy 12. I Remember You 13. Slave To The Grind —encore— 14. Quicksand Jesus 15. Youth Gone Wild
Photo Gallery
