Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Vrba in Carinthia (Velden Am Wörthersee) / Bluesiana Rock Cafe / Austria
Concert date: 14.03.2016
Attendance: 120
Ticket price: 44,00€
In the run of extremely interesting and unforgettable nights at the Buesiana Rock Cafe club in Vrba in Carinthia, there’s the occasional gig that nobody would care if it happened at all. One of those instantly forgettable ones was brought to the club by Gilby Clarke, the former Guns’N Roses guitarist.
The waiting alone, which finally delivered the man to the stage a little before ten in the evening, hinted that the crowd might get shortchanged this time. Well, for the first half hour Gilby stood up there by himself. With an acoustic guitar, he warmed up a small crowd of 50 people, with quite a few fired-up Guns N’ Roses loyalists up front waiting for their moment. Right off the bat the guy burned a good chunk of minutes just tuning the acoustic guitar properly. While waiting for the electric part, that half hour of acoustic felt like an eternity. But as much as the acoustic part dragged, the electric part flew by that much faster, and it wasn’t much longer than the acoustic one. For the electric part, Italian rockers Stonecracker joined Gilby on stage and gave things a real shot in the arm.
Gilby was buried in the sound mix that night under both Stonecracker guitarists, which ultimately even worked in his favor, since he wasn’t exactly delivering the repertoire at full tilt. In the solos he never came through at all, and a few times you could feel hesitation in how tight the crew was, especially in Surrender, originally by Cheap Trick, where one of the two Stonecracker guitarists was »hunting« for the right chord progression in the first part of the song. The laid-back guitar playing also showed that Gilby treated this gig more like a casual trip to the nearby pub for a drink, since he racked up a good pile of mistakes along the way. A heap of sloppiness in muddy chord grips, as well as unfelt soloing, with no real punch in how the solos wrapped up. In short. The band played four Clarke originals (Wasn’t Yesterday Great, Under the Gun, Cure Me or Kill Me, Tijuana Jail), tacked on a pair of Rolling Stones covers (thoroughly overplayed in the age of rock) (It’s Only Rock’n’Roll, Dead Flowers), threw in a not exactly successful take on the aforementioned Surrender (Cheap Trick), and tried to squeeze some credibility and confidence out of its »artistic figure« by dragging along the expected Guns N’ Roses crowd-pleasers (Knocking on Heaven’s Door, It’s So Easy at the end). Through it all, Slash’s Monkey Chow came off best (Gilby played in Slash’s lineup for a while too).
After a good hour of playing (acoustic part included), Gilby and the band left the stage. And the ticket cost 44,00€. For that money you get standing room in the pit for Alice Cooper’s show in Ljubljana, where he plays on 12.06.2016! Hellooo?!?!? Amid sloppiness, a lack of feel and flubs. Okay. Gilby was never a singer. He didn’t convince vocally, but you let that slide. On the other hand, he’s basically a guitarist, and when it comes to guitar playing he should have brought a lot more lived-in feel, genuine emotion and passion. In that respect the show was completely neutered. Nothing to add. A star is a star. Well, at least he thinks he still is. Shame.
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