Last night's Slash gig at Claudelands in the Tron will not be remembered in the same breath as Slash Live in Stoke.
The sound was a wall of caustic noise that felt like my ears were being invaded by a dental drill. I hardly heard the second guitarist playing those awesome scratchy funky Izzy parts that so deserve a big place in the mix alongside Slash's riffs, power chords and solos. Only the drums and vocals had much shape in the mix, but if I wanted only drums and vocals I could hang out at Raglan with a new age drumming group and save myself the gig price.
The length of the gig was shorter than his Vector Arena gig in 2012 - why skimp on the repertoire when you have a back catalogue of Slash's quality? Also Slash played fewer of the classics of AFD, the first VR album and the first Slash album. Slash only played on song of Apocalyptic Love, which was rather a good disc. The emphasis last night was on the forgettable songs off the anodyne new album, which managed to whip the crowd into a coma - the only exception being the ballad Bent to Fly. Gamely Myles asked the crowd to sing along to one of the new ones, which no-one really knew - at which point I looked at my feet and hoped that the awkward moment would pass. Slash's guitar choices were good but not great - I don't remember seeing his original AFD guitar or any really nice '59 reissue, both guitars he rolled out at Vector in 2012.
During Slash's long, long, long, long solo in the breakdown in Rocket Queen, a massive workout of largely legato licks in all positions in F sharp minor, some guy next to me had time to buy and then eat a massive hot dog and burp several times, to my obvious olefactory delight. When the solo ended and RQ kicked in again, we were reminded how fresh and interesting Slash's old playing was compared to the new, fluent but unoriginal style.
From the top-hatted guitar playing road-loving guitar icon who normally delivers a huge show, that was a lazy gig.
Slash Live at Claudelands
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- werdna
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Re: Slash Live at Claudelands
Good thing I didn't actually walk the full block from my front door I'd have needed to have travelled to go to the gig then.
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Re: Slash Live at Claudelands
LOL. Great review. Why come all this way then do a half-arsed job? The effort needed to go a great gig can't be that much more than to do a pedestrian one FFS.werdna wrote:
During Slash's long, long, long, long solo in the breakdown in Rocket Queen, a massive workout of largely legato licks in all positions in F sharp minor, some guy next to me had time to buy and then eat a massive hot dog and burp several times, to my obvious olefactory delight.
I saw Slash's Snakepit at Donnington Monsters of Rock festival years ago. They were so pissed they could hardly play and the singer managed to fall over his monitors. Absolute crap.
Reading his biog at the moment. Pretty good so far.
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Re: Slash Live at Claudelands
Cheers for the write up. Didn't bother going this time as had already seen him a bunch of times. Plus I really enjoyed the 2012 gig so I didn't want to taint that memory; glad I didn't go to this one. Bring on the Foos!
Loving it so far
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Re: Slash Live at Claudelands
?? no commentary on Devilskin???
GrantB wrote:
“You might be cool, but you’ll never be playing a white Steinberger through a JC120, wearing a white jumpsuit with white shoes and sporting a mullet cool”.
“You might be cool, but you’ll never be playing a white Steinberger through a JC120, wearing a white jumpsuit with white shoes and sporting a mullet cool”.
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Re: Slash Live at Claudelands
clearly they would have kicked slashes arseLawrence wrote:?? no commentary on Devilskin???
If Less is More Then Just Think How Much More More would be