Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Velden am Wörthersee, Carinthia / Bluesiana Rock Cafe / Austria
Concert date: April 13, 2017
Attendance: 60
Ticket price: €28.00 (advance) / €33.00 (day of show)
It doesn’t happen very often that a band from the days when glam metal was riding its commercial peak stops by anywhere near our neck of the woods. Ladies and gentlemen, this time the culprits behind that original sin are America’s Enuff Z’Nuff!! The crew is still led today by one of its founding members, bassist and, for a few years now, lead vocalist Chip Z’Nuff. To make the gig even more tempting, Enuff Z’Nuff also invited Venrez along on the joint tour, another American hard rock outfit made up of no less seasoned guys, but with a considerably shorter track record.
All I missed that evening was a bigger crowd. Considering that Austria was already deep into the Easter festivities, that might have played a part in the low turnout. What was surprising above all was that there was no real influx of Italian fans of good glam rock and metal. To be fair, after the show in Velden, Enuff Z’Nuff head off to the last three concerts of their European run, which are booked right in northern Italy.
Venrez were the first on stage. The band is fronted by the fifty-six-year-old Venrez (»Ven« for short among friends), real name Steven Berez. Keeping him company is co-founder and former Juliette Lewis and the Licks bassist Jason Womack, who plays guitar in Venrez, and together with Steven he’s one of the two driving forces pushing Venrez forward. The rhythm section is covered by (a proper Italian import) bassist Nico D’Arnese and drummer Charles Ruggiero. In a three-quarter-hour set the band presented material from its three studio albums, »Sell The Lie«, »American Illusion« and the current »Children Of The Drones«, and more than satisfied the handful of hard rock enthusiasts who showed up at the club that night. »Ven« is a superb stage performer, just roguish enough and just dandyish enough, and his banter with the crowd is infectious. Naturally (for a guy), he aimed most of his attention at the female part of the audience, who luckily were standing right up front. The band served up a superb, infectious mix of classic hard rock aesthetics, shot through with a basic fusion of rock’n’roll and dirty punk rock arrogance, blended into a cloud of its own that hit you with energy instantly. The key factor is Steven’s voice, which is special in that it sits in the middle and lower registers, so it doesn’t add much to the melodic punch and instead evokes alternative rock, which is no wonder, since over the years the band has shared stages with acts that like to dip into the legacy of punk rock in their own vocabulary. Those are: Alice Cooper, Slash, Buckcherry, Fuel, Hardcore Superstar, Richie Ramone and others. A superb, sharp and hugely committed opening to the Enuff Z’Nuff set.
Chip Z’Nuff opened by greeting the crowd with a warm address, praising absolutely everything essential about Austria, led by the girls, the landscape, the drinks and the food, while adding that the one thing that bugs them is that they can’t get their hands on “the real stuff” anywhere, which, as a provocation, landed incredibly well. Chip Z’Nuff is rock’n’roll from head to toe. In the one outfit that keeps alive the glam rock legacy of the eighties, the very scene the band came out of, he walked on stage dressed so that I mistakenly thought for a moment that Robin Zander (Cheap Trick) was with us. Well, Enuff Z’Nuff’s music does flirt quite a bit with that famous Cheap Trick essence, something Chip Z’Nuff pointed out loudly during one of the breaks. The man is an incredible bassist. He does everything with his fingers, no pick, and in transitions and intros he loves to reach for complex melodies. At the same time he sings extremely well and adds to the sheer fierceness of the band’s music that much-needed “naughty” and “goofy” element, which gives you the feeling of a band that can’t be tamed. Somewhere in the middle of the set the band cut loose with a superb version of Bowie’s classic The Jean Genie, and otherwise, in a far too short show that lasted barely an hour (encore included), they played the biggest hits of their career, with the emphasis on four tracks from their self-titled studio debut released in 1989. Those were the expected ones: Fly High Michele, New Thing, Kiss the Clown and In the Groove. Two more songs from the album »Strength« (1991) joined them, namely The World is a Gutter and Heaven Or Hell, and before you knew it, more than half the show had flown by. Enuff Z’Nuff closed the concert with the brand-new Dog On A Bone. That’s a song Enuff Z’Nuff created with their current lineup.
Chip Z’Nuff has some incredible names in his lineup. Drummer Danel B. Hill, for instance, is the son of ZZ Top bassist Dusty Hill. Guitarist Tory Stoffregen (who also has his own band, New Black Sabbath) put on an incredible, even astonishing show on his black Fender Telecaster. Especially interesting is rhythm guitarist Tony Fenell, who hails from Birmingham, England, and in the mid-nineties spent two years playing and singing with Ultravox, during Midge Ure’s absence. In short, the new Enuff Z’Nuff crew, led by the incredibly charismatic and street-smart Chip, boasts an exceptional musical background, plenty of miles on the clock and, because of that, big musical character.
Short but sweet, and the performance was downright phantom-like and brilliant. Full throttle and no brakes! The delivery was top-notch and as such was one of the most convincing hard rock shows ever at Bluesiana. The hunger was extraordinary in every moment of the dynamic whirl on stage. Enuff Z’Nuff were very loud that night, and their phrases and the famous choruses of their biggest hits chipped the plaster off the walls of Bluesiana and tried to knock the windows off their hinges. The band came back for an encore and played the brand-new Dog On A Bone. This excellent song came out on the album »Clowns Lounge« (2016), a kind of compilation CD that mostly holds the band’s archival and still-unreleased material. Still, the single Dog On A Bone, with its incredibly catchy chorus, confirms that the Enuff Z’Nuff of the new era is a quartet armed with the real know-how for building a riff and a composition that ignite irreversibly in rock ‘n’roll.
An exceptional and unforgettable evening, explosive stage theater with no pretense! After the show, the RockLine crew decided to make an exception and stay longer at Bluesiana to chat with every single member of both bands. We heard plenty of stories from the golden days of Hollywood’s Sunset Strip and its excessive nights. Let’s hope Enuff Z’Nuff come back to Velden very soon. Shows like theirs are something you can only wish for.
Photo Gallery
