Venue: Bluesiana Rock Cafe / Velden am Wörthersee / Austria
Concert date: 15.04.2008
Attendance: 53
Ticket price: 30,00€
The Bluesiana parade of visiting acts rolls on into fickle April, this time with Eric Martin and “his” Twin Dragons (or maybe it’s Twin Dragons, with a dash of Eric Martin?). Either way, the one-time main pipes of American rockers Mr. Big, a good few months after the gig by his colleague Richie Kotzen, is carrying on in his own style with Mr. Big’s gradual conquest of Bluesiana territory. Once again the place proved itself the perfect playground for music nuts to cut loose without a care, young and old alike, a more or less unchanged crowd that every single time experiments with catching the pulse of world-class stars. And Eric Martin’s name undoubtedly belongs in that category of gems of the music world.
Funny thing is, Eric Martin doesn’t look like a fabled rock star at all. Quite the opposite. His scrawny little frame, draped in plain threads, looks pretty forlorn. But looking poor can only be a compliment given what the little gentleman served us in Bluesiana last night. Call it a chronic case of adolescent fits — you can see it in Eric’s every move. The show he delivered with such special gusto in front of a good fifty-odd people looked like anything but a gig by one of hard rock’s eminences. “Thanks for coming” were Eric’s first words, and judging by what we saw, he was truly glad to see us, from the bottom of his heart. Probably even too glad, judging by the enthusiasm with which he kept spitting out cheap one-liners between songs, like on an assembly line, on all sorts of mostly boring topics. There was accordingly precious little room for any real stretching out in the rhythms of the Mr. Big hits.
So, was Eric Martin’s set a catastrophe on every front? Not at all! Despite the hard-to-swallow stage antics, Eric predictably got the small crowd fired up in no time. The big musician’s reputation surely remains spotless in 2008, and the response was fittingly big, especially to the long-awaited sound of the people’s flower To Be With You and a fleeting acoustic dip into Wild World, which Eric most likely was only using to tease us. Apart from the excellent vocals, which still earn Eric the highest possible mark, that’s sadly, and disappointingly, all there is in the category of noteworthy moments from Eric Martin’s performance.
The raw energy of Twin Dragons made sure we didn’t run into any annoying circulation problems. In perfect contrast to the circus-style charming above, the rest of the night, under this sensational quintet’s direction, turned out to be a real revelation — less in an educational sense than in the shameless broadcasting of basic blues-rock vibes, under which a raised blood pressure, in short and highly unpredictable bursts, soon reaches the most intimate parts of the body. Twin Dragons are simply phenomenal. The gents boast an interesting mix of well-oiled guitar brilliance, tailor-made for fans of technically polished hard rock, with the now downright rare glow of vocal blues tradition. The latter, in the funny delivery of the famous Nathaniel Peterson, in its spiciest moments often even recalls the legendary “falsetto yodel” of Howlin Wolf. With a physiognomy for which I doubt Nat ever won any design award, the band’s outward image, already beefed-up, gets weighed down even more.
With a cunning mix of character and color in songs like I Ain’t Superstitious, Evil and the fired-up Dont’ Kiss My Lips, Twin Dragons reach an enviable level of variety in their own expression, its impact boosted even further by the pop-song elegance of Angelina and Send Me An Angel. Then there’s the ever-stormy relationship of the indestructible guitar duo Hickey/Cerrone, whose spontaneous switching from sharply dictated duels to calm and back again seems tireless. Now, in combination with Martin, the whole Twin Dragons concept doesn’t work nearly as convincingly. What’s more, in the so-called grand finale of the night, which besides a rather goofily hacked-off Hoochie Coochie Man also threw in elements of James Brown, we were treated to a heap of tasteless experimenting that, rather than a respectable charge of bloodthirsty blues-rock warriors, was more reminiscent of some “after party” of totally disconnected guerrillas who, after months of chewing overcooked bark, have no idea anymore what they’re fighting for.
Words: Daniel Pavlica
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Setlist
1. I Ain’t Superstitious 2. Steppin Stone 3. Angelina 4. Crossfire 5. What Goes Around 6. Evil 7. Think It Over 8. Dance With The World 9. Send Me An Angel —intermission— 10. Stone Cold Lover 11. Mother’s Child 12. Break The Chains 13. Don’t Kiss My Lips —encore— 14.Hoochie Coochie Man
Photo Gallery
