Author: Urban Bolta
Location: Kavarna Sputnik / Ljubljana
Concert date: March 20, 2012
Attendance: 120
Ticket price: €15
It’s not every day that a band of L.A. Guns’ caliber makes the pilgrimage to Slovenia. And I’m not saying that because the »California Pistols« are some commercial mega-success that steers clear of small countries, but because '80s hard rock in Slovenia is clinically dead. Next door in Italy they regularly host bands like W.A.S.P., Cinderella or Winger, but you could hardly say the same about our little country under Triglav. Just the fact that 20 Slovenians made the trip to Treviso a few weeks ago to see Hardcore Superstar, the modern-day torchbearers of glam metal debauchery, tells you plenty about whether there’s any appetite for this kind of music here. And then, wouldn’t you know it, just two weeks before the show the news hit like a bolt from the blue: L.A. Guns, with Tracii Guns at the helm, were coming to Ljubljana. Hallelujah, miracles still happen!
The gig went down at Kavarna Sputnik, a venue the rock crowd had never really been to. Still, a respectable number of souls showed up by the evening and filled the inviting main room of the café.
Opening the night were Tomcat, already a household name in hard rock circles thanks to all the gigging, even though they’ve been around for less than two years. The band has weathered lineup troubles and now runs as a quartet, and there was some shuffling on stage too – Rok on guitar and Šuja on bass swapped positions. All that gigging has the instrumental trio well oiled and increasingly versed in stage tricks to rope the audience into joining in. This time they slipped Creedence Clearwater Revival and Mötley Crüe covers into their original material and, with an energetic dose of the real deal heavy rock, nailed the warm-up job.
Up second were Dirty Passion, Swedish youngsters who are tagging along with L.A. Guns for the whole tour. The Swedish quartet’s dirty dance was a pleasant surprise and took us on a time-machine ride back to the turn of the '80s into the '90s, when Skid Row ruled America. Dirty Passion build their show around the vocal charisma of their blond frontman, but the other three aren’t far behind either! The Swedes presented their still-current debut »Different Tomorrow« and, with a confident performance worthy of top-tier bands, surprised most of the people there. Of course, Scandinavia has been the leading exporter of hard rock derivatives for a good while now, and I’d bet we’ll be hearing the name Dirty Passion again!
It was already late when the last act of the night followed – L.A. Guns! I should mention that besides Tracii’s version of the Los Angeles Pistols there’s also a version fronted by vocalist Phil Lewis, but Tracii and company come to Europe far more often, which is how Rockline already ran into them a good year ago in Ronke, Italy (report here).
The moment they walked on stage it was clear the band was (once again) a completely different crew from the one on the previous tour. This time Tracii hired the entire band Burning Tree to play under the L.A. Guns banner. They’re an outfit nobody knows outside the local California scene, so the guys took the offer with open arms and set off to meet the proverbially unforgettable experiences of the Old Continent. Their roots in bluesy rock waters showed throughout the whole set, nudging the usually glam rock vibe of L.A. Guns into slightly different territory.
In the first part of the show L.A. Guns fired off Face Down, Hellraisers Ball and Killing Machine, strolling through the different phases of their existence. The flirtations with blues elements and the loose musical flow in the form of longer jams were a surprise, and Tracii Guns, on the right side of the stage, made no secret of his command of the six-string. Machine Gun melted at the end into Hendrix’s Hey Joe motif and set off a real spark of excitement in Sputnik. Though he’s hard to compare to the charismatic Lewis, new frontman Scott. F. Harris, with a similar vocal timbre and a heartfelt approach, won the crowd over and slipped into the L.A. Guns frontman’s shoes with total credibility. The bouncy quartet tossed out most of the band’s classics, from Electric Gypsy to the tender Ballad of Jayne, with a solo spot from Tracii Guns on the way out. He made no secret of his love for the classic rock heritage and threw Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love in among the originals. But those additions of well-known riffs were purely cosmetic; L.A. Guns spent most of the set showing off their new – interpretively rich and spontaneous – face. The vocal harmonies of the '80s melodic rock school weren’t brilliantly executed, but the main point of the show this time was the witty delivery of songs in instrumentally richer versions than the originals. Mind you, at the gig in Ronke a good year ago L.A. Guns shortchanged the crowd by serving up covers of this and that classic and drifting away from their own musical treasure chest, so in that respect their Ljubljana show was a pleasant surprise.
A proper rock’n’roll expedition, it also threw in Over The Edge, One More Reason and Sex Action before the hour-and-a-half journey through L.A. Guns classics came to an end. The night beat expectations (admittedly not high ones) and, for a moment at least, brought to this sleepy corner of the world the spirit of the Sunset Strip, something Slovenia is chronically short on.
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