We did say this was a blog for everyone, and by jimminy, we weren't wrong. Newsroom colleague Robert Alcock paid a visit to Southport Arts Centre on Saturday night (shouldn't he have been at a Eurovision party..?) to see ZZ Top and Jimi Hendrix tributeers The Hamsters.
Were you there? Do you agree with Rob's words?
THE HAMSTERS
Southport Arts Centre, Saturday, May 12
TRIBUTE shows are all too often pretentious exercises in suspending
disbelief, and some claim they are beyond the artistic pale entirely.
But The Hamsters’ set of Jimi Hendrix Experience and ZZ Top numbers is a
welcome tonic from the dreary doppelgangers who are ten-a-penny at venues
off the main concert circuit.
The Essex power-trio played, for 140 minutes on Saturday night, the music of
two of the greatest power-trios, with no sense of enforced emulation but as
if it was the most natural thing in the world.
They didn’t hit their stride immediately. Opener ‘Are You Experienced?’ was
actually one of the weakest songs of the night – a woozy come-on on
Hendrix’s debut LP it was rendered too sharp before a packed Arts Centre
crowd, with over-miked drumming.
But then the band catapulted into a frenetic ‘Fire’ that allowed frontman
Snail's Pace Slim (yes, really) to show off some quite stunning six-string
chops.
Second ZZ Top song, ‘I’m Bad, I’m Nationwide’ was a highlight, with Slim
showing he has Billy Gibbons’ Texan drawl pinned down on a track that is a
glorious ode to low rider culture.
Song after song was delivered with verve and aplomb, a rock-solid rhythm
section in the form of Rev Otis Elevator and Ms Zsa Zsa Poltergeist proving
the perfect foil for Slim’s studied vocals and virtuoso axe-work.
The crowd was clearly weighted in favour of hearing the Hendrix numbers,
with bearded rock veterans among the crowd seen exchanging words of
appreciation between a slew of Experience favourites, including ‘The Wind
Cries Mary’, ‘Stone Free’, ‘Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)’, ‘Little Wing’ and
‘Purple Haze’.
Were there any nits to be picked? Hardly. At a push, ‘The Hamsters’ amped-up
‘All Along the Watchtower’ was technically impressive but failed to capture
the subtle menace of Hendrix’s exposition of the Dylan original.
The set closed with the ZZ’s breakthrough 1983 hits ‘Gimme All Your Lovin’
and ‘Sharp Dressed Man’ – with Slim and bassist Ms Poltergeist duck-walking
into the seating aisles mid-solo – then a call and response rendition of
‘Tube Snake Boogie’ as the final encore.
No matter that Jimi and the Top are not the most natural of bedfellows
beyond a shared blues-rock base, with musicians as well versed in both their
oeuvres as The Hamsters, who cares?
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