FM, Toby Jepson @ The River Rooms, Stourbridge 28/7/13

It’s almost like finding out Father Christmas doesn’t exist.

You remember that moment? That moment that ensured your life was never quite as good again? Well RTM had a flashback to that revelation when we pulled up at The River Rooms tonight and did so at the same time as Toby Jepson.

Jepson (the now sadly former, again) singer in the Little Angels – one of our very favourite bands no less – the ex-singer in Gun, now producer of bands as diverse (but superb) as The Virginmarys and Saxon, should not be getting out of a Renault….!!

Dammit, if countless biographies have taught us anything it’s that rock stars should live like a combination of Lemmy, Keith Richards and Slash. At no point have those three got out of Renault.

Anyway, Jepson is here to support his old friends, FM (and most probably left his Ferrari at home…) and is doing so acoustically, with a mix of Angels material, stuff from his criminally underrated solo EP’s and others. There is “Deliver Me” from the album he made with Fastway a couple of years back. He even invites a local man, Ross Graham onstage with him to sing “Womankind” after he got in contact with a touching story, and any set that ends with a medley of “Young Gods” and “Back Door Man” is better than one that doesn’t. Excellent stuff, but did you expect anything less?

Seldom has a band passed us by for so long at RTM and ended up being such a favourite as FM. Regular readers will know that we didn’t know a great deal about the band until they opened for Thin Lizzy last Christmas. And so good were they we went to see them again in March and couldn’t pass up the chance to do it again tonight.

The set they play tonight is more reliant on older material than the latter show a few months back, but does begin with “Tough Love” – the opening track on stellar new album “Rockville.”

That album appears to have put the band on an upward curve, with Planet Rock getting behind it – indeed tonight’s show comes in the same weekend that they played the station’s Steelhouse Festival with a host of other big names in the hard rock world. “I Belong To The Night” follows, and proves that this is timeless music that doesn’t belong in a “scene” and doesn’t need the word “core” to be suffixed anywhere near it.

Other highlights include “Wildside” from the 2010 comeback record “Metropolis,” “Burning My Heart Down,” with all its Bon Jovi-isms and the quite superb “Crosstown Train,” which was the first single from the new CD. The latter is complete, like so many other songs tonight, with some fine guitar work from Jim Kirkpatrick, proving that, unfortunately for  bands of this type, musicianship often gets overlooked. Singer Steve Overland, for example, has a voice that is almost perfect for this sort of music.

What FM have proved tonight is two-fold. First there is an audience out there for good quality melodic hard rock (the show is a sell out) and second that in this country we do melodic hard rock better than anyone else does. And almost no one does it better than FM. 

FM, Vega @ Slade Rooms, Wolverhampton 16/3/13

“We work on the principle that you can never have too many whoa’s whoa’s in a song,” so says Nick Workman. The Vega frontman used to be vocalist with Brit AOR merchants Kick many years ago, but seems to have fond a decent home here.

Tracks like “Saviour” have all the right melodic boxes ticked. Massive choruses abound, which combined some crunchy riffs supplied by guitarist Tom Martin they posses a sound that is not unlike mid-period Europe. This is a hometown show for Workman and one which is to be enjoyed immensely.

It is fair to say that The Slade Rooms is packed this evening. It is also on the warm side. But its also correct to assert that there is much anticipation for this show on FM’s first headline tour for ages.

Whether people are doing what RTM is doing is open to question. In our case they were a name we knew. When we were kids and buying Bon Jovi, Kiss and so on, we vaguely remember the debut album “Indiscreet” coming out to rave reviews in Kerrang and Raw, but we don’t recall actually buying a record.

All that changed, though, when we saw them support Thin Lizzy last December. In preparation we acquired a copy of the recent EP “Only Foolin’”. It’s title track is quite magnificent affair, of the type that people just don’t write anymore. They then preceded to give a stunning account of themselves at the Lizzy gig.

Happily that was no one off. Since December, FM have stuck out not one, but two records in the shape of the “Rockville” CD’s. Mighty fine slabs of Thunder-esque rock they are too. It is with “Tough Love” the opening track from one of these that they kick off this evening, before a delve back to the debut album for “I Belong To The Night” and the tone is set for a quite superb 90 minutes.

The aforementioned “….Foolin’” rears its spectacular head about halfway through, but might well have been eclipsed by “Let Love Be The Leader” which ends in a triple guitar solo, with keyboardsman Jem Davis joining singer Steve Overland and Jim Kirkpatrick in wielding the axe.

In microcosm that song shows just what is so good about the band. Excellent musicians, with choruses to die for, when topped off with Overland’s voice – which is as perfect for this type of music as you could get – it is a pretty formidable mix.

For the encore they choose to come air “Crosstown Train” nominally the first single from “Rockville” it is six minutes of catchiness that probably won’t be beaten in 2013 and proves why this band was so right to reform in 2008. A tumultuous gig ends with “Otherside of Midnight” and all you can say is “thank goodness they supported Lizzy.”

In a world where bands like Journey are supposed to rule the melodic rock roost, we are doing what we often do in this country and looking across the pond for stuff, when we might just have the best of the lot right here. FM proved that tonight.  

THIN LIZZY, Fm, The Treatment @Rock City 9/12/12

We had The Treatment marked down for big things when we first saw them nearly two years ago, stick as they were at the bottom of a free gig in Nuneaton. Happily – and unusually given our past tipping record includes seeing a then unknown band called Muse open for Feeder and not only saying “no one will ever like these” but also tipping the other support band Straw as ones to watch – we seem to have been right.

A summer of touring with Kiss and Motley Crue has done them no harm at all, and given them a profile stateside, but moreover it has given them quite a confidence. They are making headway in this country too, and Rock City is packed for a performance that not even the loss of bass halfway through can spoil. The Treatment have good songs “The Doctor” chief amongst them, which they combine with a willingness to meet the public (they are stood by the exit shaking hands with nearly everyone at the end) and what they lack in originality they make up for in effort. They might just break through in 2013.

If they are looking for role models they could do a lot worse than look at FM. The kings of 80s AOR have been riding the crest of a wave since their return a few years ago. Full length reformation album “Metropolis” was a fine affair, while this years “Only Foolin’” EP contains a title track so good it would make even Thunder weep.

That they also back it up with “Don’t Stop” and “Over You” with its Bon Jovi-esque hook, before rounding the whole thing off with a version of “I Heard It Through The Grapevine” that sounds like they wrote it, only re-enforces the thought that FM are very, very good indeed.

As, of course, are Thin Lizzy. The band have been one of our favorites since we were in short trousers and scored third place in the gigs of 2011 for a quite stunning affair. They did it all again this January too, so much so we came back for a third go.  This apparently is the final time on stage for this incarnation. A brand new album is to come out under a different name next year.

For now though, we must just enjoy them while we can. The secret to what makes Lizzy so good, is that there is no secret at all. Just a collection of some of the finest songs ever written. The setlist, broadly speaking, is the same as they have trawled around with for a couple of years. But somehow, although you have seen it before, right from the time “Are You Ready” kicks things off to the time 90 minutes later when “Black Rose (Rosin Dubh)” ends it, it is quite simply the best hard rocking party you could wish to see.

Then there is Lizzy’s diversity. The metal of “Massacre” mixes so effortlessly with the rock n roll of “Dancing In The Moonlight” while “Killer On The Lose” is full of menace and swagger and “Jailbreak” is simply an anthem.

If anyone doubts the fact Lizzy are perhaps the finest band of their type in the world, any group that can better “Cowboy Song” and “The Boys Are Back In Town” and then follow that up with “Rosalie” and the aforementioned “….Rose” can send me their album.

As ever Scott Gorham takes a backseat and allows Ricky Warwick to give a phenomenal performance as frontman and if this is to be the last time that Lizzy perform these songs then, dammit, they went out on a high.