Index of Shows | Homepage | Write to me
I've never been upstairs at Charlie's before. Nor, for that matter, have I seen any of these bands before. Aloud are playing when I arrive, and I like it a lot. The music is basic modern rock, a little bluesy and a little Stonesy, with good melodies that pull me right in. The bass lines are driving, creative, and solid. Jen and Henry share guitar and vocal duties, trading lead on both. I find Henry's guitar solos a bit more interesting, but Jen has got the pipes. Holy shit, can she wail and growl. (No one has ever reminded me of Johnette Napolitano before!) Like a lot of power-wailers, she's a bit tentative in the low and slow parts, where Henry is fine, so they could divide things up a little differently and be even better. The drummer drags a bit on his fast, complex parts, but he's really young and has recently joined the band, so I have high hopes for him.
American Pulverizer are damn near perfect at what they do, which is pretty straightforward old school punk. The three chord verses, the one note choruses, single lines repeated four times; it's all here. And it all sounds great, even if it's not really my thing. The playing is great, just perfectly accurate and fast-fast-fast, and after the lead-mic-less first song, the singing is good. Good (very fast, very short) guitar solos, too. In mid-set, we get one song that's a little bit slower and a lot more melodic and more to my taste; then it's back to the shouting.
Kenne Highland & His Vatican Sex Kittens are the band you'd expect to see at a place that looks like Charlie's. They take us even farther into the musical past, with a raucous set of roadhouse rock 'n' roll. A harmonica makes a brief, obligatory appearance. Chuck Berry is invoked, implicitly and later explicitly. Kenne's voice is a bizarre thing, kind of a strangled, quacking scream, and it could be really bad if he did not transcend such considerations. He does, though. He's the total frontman: hilarious, confident, and More Flamboyant. His rhythm section is fiercely tight, and the lead guitar is hot and kinda masturbatory, though not in a bad way. We get a mix of goofy originals and goofy covers, and the smallish crowd eats it up. Again, not really my thing but really well done.
