Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Izola / Hangar Bar / Slovenia
Concert date: 16.05.2018
Attendance: 100
Ticket price: €10.00
Most rockers know Marco Mendoza very well, maybe even a little too well. Over a rich career that has seen him play in Thin Lizzy, Whitesnake, Ted Nugent and Black Star Riders, among others, he somehow never got lucky enough to step onto the wide-open stages of Slovenia. Even though his solo career is nothing to sneeze at either, not to mention his recent success with The Dead Daisies, who put out an excellent new studio album last month, until today we’d mostly caught his shows in Villach, Austria, in Carinthia (Bluesiana Rock Cafe). This time he actually made it all the way to the Slovenian coast.
When Mendoza goes out on a solo tour, he always needs a drummer and a guitarist in the crew. This time he brought in the current, active Tygers of Pan Tang guitarist, who isn’t Rob Weir but the young and ambitious Micky Crystal, a sharp, well-honed fast-fingered virtuoso. The third member of the trio is a drummer who has played with Ron Bumblefoot, among others, and goes by the name Kyle Hughes. With his hairstyle and especially that baby face, he fleetingly recalls a younger Nick Beggs (KajaGooGoo).
Mendoza invited the band Black Cage along on this European tour, and they opened the night at the Hangar Bar in Izola too. They’re a young Austrian quartet playing textbook hard rock revivalism with a touch of glam and punk. Nothing special, or at least nothing special enough to lodge itself in your ears and stay there. Black Cage mostly grabbed attention thanks to the well-polished stage act of the singer and rhythm guitarist, who sadly doesn’t have much vocal charisma. The band handled their job confidently enough, but you can tell they’re short on mileage and experience. They covered that up pretty well, though, with a very dynamic and lively stage performance.
Marco Mendoza actually delivered less with his show than you’d expect. Part of that can be put down to a slightly sore throat, which had him resting at a nearby hotel all afternoon. But he’s hugely experienced and has an incredible knack for talking to the crowd and working it. With his charisma and a bag of »tricks« that are tried-and-tested crowd-igniters, he quickly hypnotized the audience, had them hooked, and threw a confident and thoroughly decent party. Routine, though over the course of a good hour he mostly played covers, which he also stretched out like crazy, eating up minutes. Right at the end the band even played a new original, Viva La Rock, from his new studio album of the same name. That was the highlight of the show, but it didn’t make up for the debt that had piled up. So, a forgettable encounter, with the feeling that someone had splendidly ferried you across the water while you were parched. Crystal and Hughes did their job with the excellence of true concert legionaries, since they’re both incredibly technically sharp and, in that respect, always explosive. If anything goes wrong on stage, they react fast and use their skills to cover up any slip-up during the show. It was a lovely evening of rocker souls hanging out, a lovely party. Lots of fun and good vibes, even though Mendoza had his foot on the brake and was saving energy because of those problems. There was plenty of attention from the ladies, and that kept him going, even long after the show, when he just couldn’t tear himself away from hanging out in Hangar Bar.
One last thought. You get more out of going to gigs by Slovenian rock bands like San Di Ego and Stray Train. Seriously. In Laško, when the man plays this year’s edition of the “Pivo in cvetje” festival as part of the super rock lineup The Dead Daisies, things will of course be totally different. That’s a show you true-believer rockers absolutely have to catch.
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