THE GRAVELTONES, The Cadillac Three, Buffalo Summer @Birmingham Institute Temple 26/2/14

You certainly cannot accuse South Wales Classic rockers Buffalo Summer of not working hard. This is the third time inside 12 months that the band have been in the West Midlands to our knowledge - it's probably more. 

All this touring has led to the fact that they pretty damn good. Like we've said before on this blog, if the Black Crowes were Welsh they'd sound like this. 

Still touring their debut record, which is a fine affair - and includes the cocksure stomp of "Down To The River" - but already looking to album number two, from which they play a pair of tracks tonight, the pick of which is perhaps "Money". We like these boys a lot round here, and with the world perhaps ready for a new breed of classic sounding rock, Buffalo Summer could be at the forefront, and that's no BS.

Just before half eight The Cadillac Three finish tuning up. They don't bother with an entrance, singer/guitarist Jaren Johnston just waves a simple "hi y'all" and away we go. 

Not that we should have expected any frills from the trio. This is after all a group who's opening song tonight contains the couplet "I'm southern and it ain't my fault/my daddy came from Louisiana like the hot sauce". The aforementioned track  is "I'm Southern" and acts as the lead on their brilliant album "Tennessee Mojo" which emerged last year and with which RTM has bored everybody since. 

Are they rock? Yes. Just listen to the album's title track. Are they country? Hell yeah. Are they superb? Absolutely. 

In Europe to support country rocker Eric Church (who by the way is fabulous in his own right) these shows are a stop off in that tour's downtime. If the tortuous way they got here was like something akin to Planes, Trains And Automobiles, then the show was worth it. Swigging Jack Daniels and beer onstage (the latter bought by an audience member) for just over half an hour they turn The Temple into a Brummie Honkytonk. From the plaintive "White Lightning" to new US single "The South," it would sound wrong played by anything other than a band from Tennessee - in the hands of The Cadillac Three, though, it sounds damn near perfect. Yee and indeed ha.  

We began the evening with a hard working ensemble, we end it with a hard working duo. The Graveltones have barely been off the road in the last year. Whether it was opening for Rival Sons just across the landing from where we are tonight, or on the bill with The Temperance Movement throughout their various jaunts, the beardy twosome have been here, there and everywhere.

They are still - just like the first time you see them - a little bit strange. The description of an exceptionally heavy blues band just about sums them up because, by crikey, they make an almighty racket. 

Jimmy O smashes his guitar around creating a wall of huge riffs, and drummer Mikey Sorbello bangs his kit around like The Muppets Animal made flesh. Honestly like nothing you have ever seen, Sorbello on occasion uses four sticks during the course of the 70 minutes onstage.

When it all clicks, like on "I Want Your Love" and "Catch Me On The Fly" the band are excellent, but there are moments when it just doesn't and it all gets a tad samey. 

Occasional missteps aside, the Anglo-Aussies deserve credit for being genuinely different and those lazy comparisons with The White Stripes need to be ended now.

Closer "Six Million" - which is also the ending song on their debut "Don't Wait Down", is perhaps the best of the lot. A slow burner, it builds to a tremendous and tumultuous climax. 

With that the most eclectic bill so far this year is ended, and with all due respect to the headline act, as good as they were in large patches, they were rather eclipsed by the two fantastic support bands.

KADAVAR, Buffalo Summer @Slade Rooms, Wolverhampton 24/10/13

Welsh band Buffalo Summer have apparently never played Wolverhampton before, but they are not strangers to the Midlands. RTM had seen them in Leamington, opening for Skid Row back in March. We liked them then, we like them now.

Back in the spring we wrote: “This is hard rock with a bluesy tinge that has no pretensions to be anything else” and at the risk of tooting our own horn in a quite self-regarding way, we were bang on. The only thing we can add to that tonight is that since then, this type of retro rock is bang in vogue and Buffalo Summer could find themselves getting in on the whole Temperance Movement bandwagon.

They aren’t too dissimilar to TM and singer Andrew Hunt looks the part dressed in his flares. The fella can sing too, and there is a real Black Crowes type charm to songs like “A Horse Called Freedom” and new single ”Down To The River.” Look out for Summer, as their sun is shining brightly.

What can you say about Kadavar? The German three piece are perhaps the hairiest band this side of ZZ Top and if a band that that sounds like Led Zeppelin jamming on a Black Sabbath song while a pencil thin drummer beats the crap out of his kit sounds like it might be for you, then ladies and gentlemen, welcome along to your new favourite band.

The group stuck out album number two earlier in the year. Fantastically titled “Abra Kadavar” it is nine songs of sheer 70s sounding brilliance. However, they are slightly more contrary than you might expect, they only play four songs from it in their 75 minute set, choosing instead to showcase nearly all of their self-titled debut record.

In common with most of the crowd we suspect, RTM isn’t too familiar with the older stuff (albeit it only came out last year) but no matter, it is quite majestic, indeed it always amazes how a band with three members – whether it be Motorhead or Rush, or indeed Kadavar -  can sound so huge. The seemingly impromptu jam in “Eyes Of The Storm” is just massive, the band cutting loose and having fun in a mass of hair and riffery.

The tunes from “…Kadavar” are even better than you would have hoped. “Doomsday Machine” and “Come Back Life” are particularly majestic, while the other stuff sees plenty of vinyl being sold at the end.

The group are not particularly demonstrative and apart from the odd “thank you” they barely speak, whether this is because of a lack of confidence is unclear, but really you wouldn’t want them any other way.

There is no encore, all three just waving as they exit the stage, before Bon Jovi’s “Runaway” plays us out. That unexpected track proves if nothing else that these German’s do things with tongues in cheeks on occasion, what happened before proved that they are very special indeed. 

SKID ROW, I Am I, Buffalo Summer @Leamington Assembly 12/4/13

On November 20^th 1991 RTM went, along with my still best mate, to the NEC for our first ever gig. Back in those days, ripped jeans and leather jackets were the order of the day.

What happened that evening had a profound effect on my life. Rock n roll has never again sounded quite as cool, or as dangerous as it did that night. So began a lifelong love of live music that has – despite many changes – never left us. The headline act that night – after LA Guns and Love/Hate had played – was our favourite band at the time, New Jersey’s Skid Row.

Arriving at the Leamington Assembly (or Academy as Skid Row’s frontman Johnny Sollinger refers to it as) we see people like us, and ok there might only be 500 of us as opposed to the 1000s from 22 years ago, but it is testament to what Skid Row meant to people.

Time will tell whether Buffalo Summer ever get that sort of following. The South Wales band are to release their debut record this month and on the evidence of their 25 minute set tonight they have some decent songs to go on it. “Waltz Right Through” and “Down to The River” echo bands like Heavens Basement, while reminding RTM of No Sweat, an Irish rock band from the late 80s/early 90s. This is hard rock with a bluesy tinge that has no pretensions to be anything else.

I AM I, though, have pretensions to be quite big. Any band with ZP Theart as its singer would. The former Dragonforce man has a rather overbearing stage presence, which you either love or hate. We are in the latter camp, which is a shame because we do like I AM I’s songs. We were at the band’s first ever gig, last May in Birmingham and the opening track was ruined by Theart’s microphone not working, strangely the same thing happens tonight.

The band has changed since then, and it’s a better, more confident showing than that night. Theart, though is at the centre of everything they do, marching into the crowd during “Cross The Line” as he doesn’t feel its lively enough. “Kiss of Judas” is an excellent song, as is “Silent Genocide” but quite what possessed them to play John Farnham’s “The Voice” who the hell knows? A band that could, perhaps be excellent, but still has work to do.

The Ramones “Blitzkrieg Bop” blasts out as Skid Row join us. Perhaps oddly for the bands of the glam era, three of the original members, guitarists Scotti Hill and Dave “Snake” Sabo and bass man Rachel Bolan remain – this is crucial as the trio were the main songwriters in the band, and while the elephant in the room is that former singer Sebastian Bach isn’t here, his replacement Sollinger is an able singer, and Bach, a man of such …urrmm “character” that he makes Theart look demure, isn’t really missed. Perhaps the salient point here is that Solinger has been fronting Skid Row for 14 years and, as such has been there longer than his predecessor anyway.

The unmistakable riff to “Slave To The Grind” kicks us off and instantly, perhaps for one night only, Skid Row are the best band in the world again, the heroes of our youth, the most dangerous band in the world. “Big Guns” only reinforces that point as do “Piece of Me” and “18 and Life” both from that astonishing debut record.

However, if most of the set does come from the first two albums, this not just an exercise in nostalgic wallowing, there are two songs from the “Thickskin” album which are better than we recall,  but best of all are the two songs they play from the forthcoming new EP “United World Rebellion Part 1.” “Let’s Go” and “Kings Of Demolition” both – on this listen – sound like they are right up there with anything in the back catalogue.

The band know, though, that they have to play the classics, and seem happy to do just that. “I Remember You” and “In A Darkened Room” are two superb ballads, while “Monkey Business”- which they use to let Snake and Hill play a solo -  is still full of groove and menace.  

The encore is the punky “Riot Act” before “Youth Gone Wild” finishes things, just like it always used to. It might be a touch incongruous to see men in their late 40s (in band and crowd) talking about being young and rebellious but, as Solinger points out “it doesn’t matter how old you are,” which is a fair point and one which neatly sums the night up.

There is always a little trepidation in nights like this. You are desperate for your old heroes to still be good. Tonight, though, Skid Row proved they are a few notches better than “good.” They were proof positive, that if you have some of the finest songs ever recorded, then some of your original members stand up and play them, nothing can really go wrong, and it doesn’t matter whether its 1991 or 2013.