PlanetMosh Keeping it Metal
Tonight’s support was The Wild Lies who got the night off to a good start. When a support band is faced with a fairly empty venue when they go on stage it must be quite demoralising, and I’ve seen some bands in that situation putting in pretty underwhelming performances whereas others like The Wild Lies still give 100% as they do tonight. It’s a good performance and does a good job of getting the crowd warmed up. After their show they gave away copies of their EP free – a nice Christmas gesture.
Next up was the man people were here to see – Phil Campbell and his band – Phil Campbell’s all stars. The band consists of Phil Campbell alongside his three sons, Todd, Dane and Tyler
A mid-week gig less than a week before Christmas is never a great time to have a gig as people tend to be either short of cash or are just too busy preparing for Christmas. That plus lack of publicity is presumably why the turn-out tonight was poor, but the fans that had made the effort to come out were in for a great night.
As you’d expect, Motorhead songs were on the setlist, but alongside these were plenty of covers, and it was a cover that got the show underway – Black Sabbath’s “Children of the grave”, and that was followed by Ted Nugent’s “Cat Scratch fever”. After the first Motorhead song of the night (Iron Fist) came the only song I was disappointed by – “Nutbush city limits”. It’s a great song but I just don’t think the singer is able to do it justice. Happily though that was a rare disappointment – the rest of the set was better chosen and played and sung very well. As well as some obvious choices of Motorhead songs (“Ace of spades”, “killed by death” and “Over the top”) it was nice to hear something a bit more obscure – “Dog faced boy”, and possibly the only chance you’ll get to hear it as Motorhead tend not to play it live.
Ending the set with “Ace of spades” and then the Rolling Stones hit “Jumping Jack Flash” the band left the stage but were soon back for the demanded encore. An encore of Beatles of Led Zeppelin songs followed to bring the night to an end. There can’t be many gigs where you’ll hear songs from Motorhead, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Tina Turner, The Rolling Stones, Ted Nugent and Black Sabbath but that’s what we got tonight and it was great.
It was particularly nice to see that while The Wild Lies were playing, Phil Campbell and the rest of his band were out in the crowd watching and supporting them, and after their set Phil was posing for photos with fans
Setlist:
Children of the grave
Cat scratch fever
Iron Fist
Nutbush city limits
Born to raise hell
Dog faced boy
Over your shoulder
Over the top
Orgasmatron
Killed by death
Ace of spades
Jumping jack flash
Encore:
Come together
Moby dick
Communication breakdown
