Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Velden, Carinthia / Bluesiana Rock Cafe / Austria
Concert date: June 25, 2017
Attendance: 220
Ticket price: €44.00 (on the day of the show)
That’s it. When the iron is red-hot, you strike as hard as you can. And The Dead Daisies, an international rock’n’roll supergroup stitched together from nothing but renowned, high-profile names in world hard rock, know that all too well. After less than seven months, they were back in Europe on a new tour. And where else would they land but for two back-to-back shows in Velden, Carinthia, at the local temple of rock’n’roll culture, the one and only Bluesiana Rock Cafe. At the end of December, The Dead Daisies sold out Bluesiana. RockLine decided to catch them this time at the first of the two new shows at this Austrian-Carinthian club we all love. And once again, the turnout was superb. A little over two hundred heads showed up for the notorious quintet, made up of Marco Mendoza (bass), Doug Aldrich (guitar), John Corabi (vocals), Brian Tichy (drums) and bandleader David Lowy (guitar), just as it should be! Thunderous! In the front rows we spotted a bunch of fired-up, almost screaming-with-euphoria fans from Italy. Next came a slightly calmer, let’s say marginally more uplifted, mixed Austrian-Slovenian crowd that filled the middle and back of the club. Plenty of people watched the show from the side, with a left-angle view of the stage.
This time the quintet played without a support act, completely on their own, and thankfully saved us a nice chunk of waiting around. Bandleader David Lowy is an Australian citizen, while the rest of his companions are Americans. Lowy could never have put a band like this together without a healthy fortune behind him. The passionate aviator and music lover is, after all, a multi-billionaire. What’s funny is that his four bandmates on stage are (proverbially) incorrigible rascals, while David is considered the most easygoing, calm, approachable and unbelievably friendly conversationalist in the whole band. Still, the main mouth of the night was former Motley Crue screamer John Corabi, who once again handled the crowd with feather-light ease, all his cunning and his routine experience. He dropped a few punchy lines during the show, and at least two of them stuck in my memory. First, when he was introducing the musicians and got to Marco Mendoza, he »warned« the women in the audience: »Don’t look at him if you don’t want to get pregnant!« The second, extremely wicked dash of his comedy repertoire came when he asked the crowd if they wanted to hear a ballad. The sour response from the crowd was far from approving. That was followed by Corabi’s (a cappella) cabaret-chanson interlude: »I don’t like ballads either, they make me want to smash your head with Brian’s underpants….« and he meant Brian Tichy, of course. And so on. This stage folklore of Corabi’s, along with his constant mugging while flirting with the crowd, is the real definition of a heaping helping of rock’n’roll fun. It’s the kind of humor that has accompanied rock ‘n’ roll worldwide since the dawn of time, and it’s the kind of rock’n’roll Slovenian music culture simply can’t get its head around, which is why Slovenian music journalism (what little of it there is) often gets it wrong too.
What about the other four musicians, and how many words of praise do we even have left? The strapping, eternally seductive Mexican stallion Marco Mendoza could easily replace Corabi on vocals at any moment. Alongside his outstanding bass playing, he keeps up an outstanding vocal game too. Once again he came down off the stage on foot and made a lap through the crowd with his bass during Join Together, originally by the legendary The Who. Aldrich soloed like he was in a trance, and there’s no point wasting words on him. Every hard rock band on the planet would want him on their team, if only they had enough money to afford him. Brian Tichy delivered an outstanding drum solo spot. The kind that doesn’t steal your minutes, but serves up a top-class showcase of drum acrobatics. Just like his current Whitesnake successor Tommy Aldridge, Tichy played half of his drum show with his bare hands, impressing with an incredible knack for inventively weaving in the double bass pedal, which made up for the temporary shortfall in decibels from the snare drum. Putting it mildly, Tichy is a drumming beast who went wild once again in Bluesiana.
In short, a brand-new, wildly electrifying and fun show from head to toe. The best a hard rock band can serve up: the raw, stripped-down version of rock’n’roll at its most authentic. And in a club, where world-class musicians stand just a meter from the crowd with nowhere to hide all night. It doesn’t get more real than this. The band’s show the next day in Velden was in no way inferior to the first night. The only difference was in the lineup, as David Lowy had to rush home to Australia because of urgent personal matters. Stepping in for him was the American Yogi, who has played with Buckcherry and Chris Cornell. Corabi said he jumped in without any rehearsal, and he did his job in truly unbelievable fashion. Let’s just hope the guys come back to Bluesiana soon, because shows like the ones The Dead Daisies deliver every single time are simply not to be missed.
One more tip for Slovenian hard rock fans. Anyone who, say, shelled out fat stacks for a ticket to the current Guns’ N Roses tour absolutely should not have missed The Dead Daisies in Bluesiana. Plenty of Slovenian hard rock »golden mouths«, under the weight of whose words all of Facebook buckles, and who didn’t show up in Bluesiana this time, completely flunked the exam on the basics of healthy rock’n’roll manners.
Setlist
1. Intro : Whole Lotta Sabbath (Whole Lotta Love / War Pigs mashup)
2. Long Way to Go
3. Mexico
4. Make Some Noise
5. Song and a Prayer
6. Fortunate Son (orig. Creedence Clearwater Revival)
7. We All Fall Down
8. Lock ‘N’ Load
9. Last Time I Saw the Sun
10. Drum Solo (Brian Tichy)
11. Join Together (orig. The Who)
12. All The Same
13. With You and I
14. Band Intros
15. Mainline
16. Helter Skelter (orig. The Beatles)
—encore—
17. We’re an American Band (orig. Grand Funk Railroad)
18. Midnight Moses (orig. The Sensational Alex Harvey Band)
Photo Gallery
