Like a satellite reaching out through the night/I could almost be touching you

Friday 23 May – What a mixed bag of marbles. We started the evening at Fibbers, paying £12 at the door to see The Hamsters, acclaimed Hendrix and ZZ Top covers band. Now we’ve seen these before and frankly the guitar work is like listening to The Man himself, they really are that good. Sadly, tonight they gave us about 2 hours of their own material and some lacklustre covers, sprinkled sparingly with a pinch of Hendrix (All Along The Watchtower, Stone Free), and ZZ (Legs).

At the mid-point interval I picked up the usual “Fibbers – up coming shows!” sheet and was stunned to find that the, normally fact-filled, paper had been reduced to a simple list that finished in early July. It’s pretty thin and gave the appearance that Fibbers is winding up. Are all the bands going to defect to Tim’s The Duchess? If so, I hope we find out soon. The music scene in York took a body blow when Cert 18 closed and the replacement, Speakeasy, seems to be struggling to get any noteworthy bands in. Times are desperate, we need Tim, saviour of music in York.

With an air of disappointment we left Fibs and sauntered across the road to The Terrace where The Supermodels were playing. Again, we’ve seen these before and they were very good. This time, they were even better. We should have saved our £12 and come here in the first place. We only caught a small portion of their act but the crowd were loving it and singing along to every song: ELO (Mr Blue Sky), Manic Street Preachers (A Design For Life), Stereophonics (Dakota), Queen (Don’t Stop Me Now), U2 (Beautiful Day), The Who (Won’t get Caught Again), Lenny Kravitz (Are You Gonna Go My Way).

I don’t know if anyone takes any notice of my reviews, but I don’t care, so here are some more. I’ve just acquired Thunder’s latest EP, …half a dozen of the other, the follow up to their six of one… In a similar format, HADOTO consists of three entirely new tracks and three live versions of established tracks. We start with Make My Day, a stomping, mega-riff story of lust across the bar. Bowes’ voice is superb on Bette Davis Meltdown, with a fantastic guitar solo from Morley. It’s a shift of mood for third new track, I Believe, a slow tempo ballad that, again, showcases Bowes’ vocal range. Onto the live tracks and we start with the atypical political anti-Bush Last Man Standing one of my favourite tracks off their Robert Johnson’s Tombstone album. I just love the staccato drums, guitar solo and bass riff in the middle eight. It’s up there with Led Zep’s Kashmir. The filling in the live sandwich is Chain Reaction, a bit cheeky as this was newly released on the previous EP but already becoming a favourite with fans. Finally, an oldie. From their Laughing On Judgement Day album comes, Like A Satellite. This starts with a brilliant piano intro, sounding not unlike Waterbug by the Flaming Lips. Of course, being Thunder, the song rises and rises into the hand-banging mammoth that it really is. OK £6 for an EP sounds a bit pricey, but you get 31 minutes of proper rock. What a pity Whitesnake can’t produce consistent quality tunes like this.