Author: Urban Bolta
Location: Festival Lent (Večerov oder) / Maribor / Slovenia
Concert date: 23.06.2014
Attendance: 500
Ticket price: 25€
For a long time it looked like the Styrian capital would go without its biggest cultural event this year, the Lent festival, which brings several weeks of carefree fun to the city on the Drava every summer. In the end things played out the way we’d hoped: enough sponsors turned up, and the organizers put together a fitting lineup for 2014 too, with Inner Circle, Rade Šeberdžija, Đorđe Balašević, Elvis Jackson, Divlje jagode and plenty of others (either already played or still to come). And among those others, Skid Row!
When the (once) prestigious American hard rockers were announced, plenty of online commenters jumped on the fact that this is now just a “tribute to” project. But is that really the case? The bone of contention among the band’s fans is the absence of their former lead throat Sebastian Bach, a charismatic frontman and, at the same time, a hugely difficult character, which is why he closed the band’s doors on himself in the mid-nineties (for good?). Today Bach is begging, pleading through the media for his old bandmates to take him back, and they won’t hear of it. Money isn’t always king, and as long as guitarist Dave “The Snake” Sabo and bassist Rachel Bolan think that way, the band deserves all the support for sticking to its principles and following its ideals.
Monday night brought a nasty storm to Maribor with heavy downpours, so most Lent visitors had found shelter in one of the covered tents along the Drava. Because of a late departure from central Slovenia due to work commitments, our little crew only arrived in Maribor at ten in the evening, so sadly we missed the set by the rockers Tide, which was followed by a long break and waiting for the weather to improve. The sky slowly began to clear, the rain eased off, and the crowd in front of the Večerov oder stage got thicker and thicker. Everything was ready for Skid Row!
“If you thought we’d leave you hanging because of a little rain, you’re wrong,” frontman Johnny Solinger, who has fronted the band since the late nineties, told the playful crowd during the show. Skid Row, who just two days earlier had played in front of an endless sea of people at France’s Hellfest, brought the spirit of good old American rock’n’roll to Maribor, getting the front rows moving despite the muddy ground.
Even after two decades of commercial decline, Skid Row remain the definition of a well-oiled unit, built on the chemistry of the classic instrumental trio Dave Sabo / Scott Hill / Rachel Bolan. Their standard set included two newer tracks, Let’s Go and Kings of Demolition, but the soaked-to-the-skin crowd saved its loudest cheers for the older material, of which they played Big Guns and the unforgettable ballad 18 and Life early in the show. The alternating solo duels between Hill and Sabo weren’t placed in the center of the mix, so the ears of each side in the front row were kept busy by one guitar or the other, but not both at once.
Frontman Johnny Solinger had the reins when it came to talking to the crowd. The guy has long been wrestling with the thankless role of Bach’s successor, and the comparisons keep coming even now that his tenure with Skid Row is twice as long as Bach’s. Solinger, with his hat pulled down over his forehead, even looks a bit like his predecessor, but he treats the audience with a lot more respect, even if it’s lubricated with the occasional slightly cheesy speech in typical American rhetoric. But so what! The front rows, well supplied with beer and glued to the barrier, fed the covered venue with energy and helped the band with loud vocal support on the closing songs of the main set, I Remember You and the obligatory Monkey Business. The party was at its peak, so after a metallized take on Slave to the Grind, the farewell song Youth Gone Wild brought a euphoria with the kind of Friday-night energy you’d expect from a way bigger crowd, never mind that most of the visitors had a regular workday waiting for them the next morning.
Skid Row played Slovenia for the very first time in their career, treating our little country to another brief flash of eighties American glam rock. Even on a predictably tight schedule, Skid Row brought a slice of their former glory to the Styrian capital and gathered everyone, young and old, who lives and breathes this kind of music in one place.
Setlist
1. Let’s Go
2. Big Guns
3. Makin’ a Mess
4. Piece of Me
5. 18 and Life
6. Thick Is the Skin
7. Riot Act
8. In a Darkened Room
9. Kings of Demolition
10. Psycho Therapy
11. I Remember You
12. Monkey Business
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13. Slave to the Grind
14. Youth Gone Wild
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