You wanna have peace, gotta love one another

Wednesday 25 June – Yes I know it’s a school night, but three of us are out at what is probably one of the biggest gigs I ever seen at Fibbers, Black Stone Cherry (and on MyFace). A first for me was actually having to queue up outside. Quite why they didn’t just let people in as they arrived I’m not sure. Anyway, it led to an evitable crush at the bar. Luckily the other guys were in front of me and had secured a prime position. Tonight was a capacity crowd and a real mixed bag of people. For once I wasn’t the oldest bloke there, there were some oldies, some middle-aged folk and few youngsters. The other major division was with hair. About half the audience had short or no hair, half had big barnets, and there was even a sprinkling of Mohawks. There were also a fair few woman in attendance, some with their chaps and some in groups.

Support came from the Sons Of Albion, a five piece from London consisting of Nuno Miguel (guitars) and Francisco De Sousa (drums) both from Portugal, Richard Fulgoni (bass, backing vocals), Barnaby Dick (guitars, keyboards, backing vocals), and Logan Plant (vocals). To be honest, the crowd were there for BSC and the Sons didn’t really stand much of a chance. Basically a hardcore rock band with a bit of electronica in the background, the vocals sounded a bit flat in the higher register and the lead guitar was mixed down and muddy sounding, so pretty indistinct.

We had a half hour interval whilst final checks for BSC were being carried out and as the time approached for them to take to the stage we supped up and headed further down into the crowd. BSC came on to stadium-sized roar from the crowd and immediately launched into Rain Wizard from their eponymous self-titled album. On the CD they sound like a cross between The Answer and Nickleback with a bit of Slash-style guitar soloing, live they have the energy and power of Rage Against The Machine or the heaviest of Black Sabbath, this was a real Southern-Fried Grunge Metal fest. There was some serious head-banging on stage with hair flailing in all directions. The band proceeded to play pretty much their entire first album: Backwoods Gold, Lonely Train, Maybe Someday, When The Weight Comes Down, Crosstown Woman, Hell And High Water, Violator Girl, Tired of the Rain, Drive and Rollin On. We were also treated to some tracks off their forthcoming Folklore and Superstition album: the first single to be taken from the album Blind Man, and apparently played live for the first time, Reverend Wrinkle. Drummer John Fred Young was constantly drumming whilst standing up and the band had a great time bantering with the audience. The sound, although grungy in nature, was mixed to perfection with crystal clear vocals and crisp, sharp guitar solos and bass lines.

The highlight of the evening for me was the final piece in a jigsaw started on the previous Friday when we had watched the awesome guitar talents of Chantel McGregor. One of her scheduled encore songs was to be Hendrix’s Voodoo Chile, but she ran out of time. Tonight, BSC gave us their take on Voodoo Chile with the three guitarists playing with their axes behind their heads. Probably the best gig I’ve seen this year