Location: New Age / Roncade (Treviso) / Italy
Concert date: 01.11.2007
Attendance: 0
Ticket price: 18,00€
“Dude, Skid Row are playing Treviso in November, heeey!” some random guy whispered to me about two months ago. Skid Row? Hm… . The Skids are a band I listened to in high school until my ears bled, right alongside Guns N’Roses, and the proof is still visible today in the huge patch on the back of my jacket. But after Sebastian Bach left and two below-average albums, I seriously wondered whether I should even bother going to the show… Fast-forward two months, and there I was with two fellow sufferers of the male persuasion and two of the female (Blex, Hellfucker, Danaja and Aljan – you were an awesome crew) in a purpose-built tin box on four wheels, blasting every kind of guitar racket imaginable, already galloping into the land of pizza, macaroni and an overdose of stinky hair gel. With the help of “GPS” navigation, finding the club was a piece of cake, so we got there almost first, at 7 pm, and had plenty of time to enjoy the cold hoppy beverages we’d brought along. Soon a few of our fellow countrymen joined us, and a little after nine in the evening (which was officially listed as the start of the show) we could go into the club, which was already well packed by the time the opening act Side One hit the stage around ten.
The young Italians showed right from the start what they play and why – pure “kickass sleaze rock’n’roll”. Long hair, bandanas, Gibson guitars, “gang” choruses, hard-hitting, and not a single ballad in sight are the main traits of a band I knew absolutely nothing about beforehand, and not much more afterwards either, since the singer, who had no trouble with English between songs, talked to the crowd exclusively in Italian. Before the end they torched Billy Idol’s White Wedding, tinted with a slight “Sisters of Mercy” vibe, and then immediately started clearing the stage at express speed. All in all they left a very good impression and I was pleasantly surprised.
Then came a long stage setup (apparently Skid Row only have one roadie?) and by 11:20 pm I was already grumbling out loud, since the shoving and the heat in the front row were unbearable, and a long drive back was still waiting for me. And then they hit it – the one and only Skid Row! With Makin’ A Mess, a collective delirium instantly swept over New Age, and Piece of Me and Sweet Little Sister fanned the flames right away. A Triple Treat from the debut as an appetizer, then! The band is tight on stage, hardworking and, after all these years, still hungry – Johnny Solinger proves again and again that he’s not just a decent replacement for the legendary Sebastian Bach at this point, but outdoes the moody pretty boy in every respect. There’s not the slightest criticism to be made of his vocal performance, and all the range and power that are already badly chipped in his predecessor are still untouched in this guy, so the only thing he lacks is Sebastian’s cult status, which sadly he’ll probably never reach. Next to him, the stage is dominated most by Scotti Hill, dressed in nothing but ¾-length army pants and classic “All Stars”, with a distinctive hairdo that hasn’t visibly changed since 1989, running wild up and down the small stage, jumping around and rarely missing a note through it all. Rachel Bolan with his “I-wanna-join-blink182” haircut looks a bit comical, but the unmistakable bass lines and the “sick lead” vocal on Pscyho Therapy still make it crystal clear who’s who on that stage. In place of Snake Sabo, who was forced to stay in the US because of trouble with the authorities, the second guitar is handled by Hair Of The Dog guitarist Ry Cott, who, both visually and with his playing style and his chosen Gibson axe, makes a good stand-in for the band’s founder, who according to Johnny wants to get back in as soon as possible. Behind the drums sits a young guy whose name I missed. With his little tuft of hair and tattoos all over his body, he looks like a product of America’s new emo school, but when he sits down behind the kit you realize he’s a beast without equal – with his energy, his crowd-baiting and his “groove” he can stand shoulder to shoulder with Tommy Lee himself, who’s considered the alpha and omega of drummers in that department.
After Sweet Little Sister came the first real peak of the night – the legendary 18 And Life, the saga of a young lost rebel that in 1989 catapulted the Skids among the biggest “hard’n’heavy stars” in an instant. Its power showed this night too, as the whole club joined in on Solinger’s flawlessly delivered performance. Then came a mix of old material (Big Guns, Monkey Buissnes, I Remember You, during which I snuggled a little closer to my sweetheart, the already mentioned Pscyho Therapy, and a surprise in the form of Beat Yourself Blind from the album Subhuman Race) and newer stuff (Another Dick in the System from the latest album, New Generation from “Thickskin”). The first encore followed with “Disease” from the latest album and Get the Fuck Out from the legendary “Slave to the Grind”, and then the band left the stage again. And yet. “There’s one more song you come to a Skid Row show to hear.” Rememeber, no matter how old we are, we’re always gonna be the Youth Gone Wild!” was how Johnny introduced perhaps the band’s most iconic song, driving the crowd into one last stampede.
What to say in closing? Skid Row are definitely a new band, but maybe that’s just natural evolution. Cut out the band’s festering wound and replace it with healthy parts. And live, Skid Row are still without a doubt a force that has to be taken very seriously. Let’s hope they show it again on some new studio album.
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