Gig mood rating : still good, still feeling happy and relatively relaxed. Bloody hell, that's lasted a week.
Come closer my cherubs. Want to share a thought. Wow, what's this? Surely not. The much rumoured but rarely seen. Yeah, it must be. Bloody 'ell. It is. It's a queue at a gig in Nottingham. Praise the lord.
Come on, a little closer. Another thought to share. The thought is that sometimes I bottle it in CD reviews. Give the bands the benefit of the doubt and then live give 'em both barrels. And I wonder why? Maybe it's just that if the band chooses to do things live, then it's the old suck it and see principle (though that could be something completely different, but we won't go there at the moment). Sally are one of those bands. The CD? Well it did nothing for me. It was a bit boring, but I tried to be positive. Live? Well, to be honest, how can I put this. They were shite. Yeah, that's one way of putting it. Really did nothing for me. The opening few minutes were ok, some kind of instrumental, nice groove. The vocalist whose doing himself no favours by having longer hair than me and not going bald struts on to the stage, and things plummet. Nowt wrong with his vocals, nothing special. But it's just an interminable dirge being played. Tuned too low and with no hint of a song. Maybe it's that my ears are delicate in my older years, and the fact that my clothes are vibrating from the volume does them no favours, but this just drags on. It's too sludgy for me. But that was the case with the CD, yet I didn't really say it in the review. Dunno, but tonight Sally didn't cut it.
And I didn't expect Karma To Burn to either. The prospect of listening to close on an hour of stoner music, with no vocals, of which I'd previously heard exactly zero didn't fill me with pleasure. But, BUT, they pulled it off. I don't know how. Well I do, because there were tunes, melodies. There's no need to tune down as far as Satan's corridor. There's even one song (this'll fuck so many people off)m there's one song that reminds me of Maiden around the Powerslave era. I think it's in the bass runs. But it's there. 31, 4 20 hut hut hut. Sorry, forgot I'm not a quarterback. But that's how the song titles come out, including a new song - forget the number. Of course they could do with some vocals to improve it further, especially as a number of the tracks have definite grooves where it's just crying out for some non-sensical lyrics. But there are none so it's down to a tight rhythm section and some interesting enough riffs to carry it through. Of course on first listen it's difficult to say any more, but whereas before I'd not even contemplated buying the CD because I knew it was going to be sheer hell, now, well now I'm not so sure. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I'll peek a little closer. Maybe.