SKID ROW, UGLY KID JOE, Dead City Ruins @Wulfrun Hall, Wolverhampton 2/11/13

You can only take your hat off to bands like Dead City Ruins. Any band that finds their way over here all the way from Australia deserves our support – especially when it seems they have done things all by themselves. They deserve credit too for another thing: they are one of the very few bands from down under who don’t sound like some AC/DC facsimile. Rather these boys have a Thin Lizzy-playing-Iron Maiden vibe about them, and if singer Jake Wiffen looks like he might mug you down a dark alley for a sandwich, then that just adds to their rock n roll appeal. Keep an eye this mob, they might be worth it.

When RTM saw Ugly Kid Joe were the co-headliners for this thing, our first reaction was “blimey, are they still going.” We hadn’t been the biggest fans of UKJ back in the day if we are honest and didn’t know they had reformed. Consequently we weren’t that bothered about seeing them.

So after some dreadful gangster rap plays them on, the band kicks in.  We are barely paying attention when singer Whitfield Crane marches out onstage and bows. After that, it has to be said, all hell breaks loose and Joe are quite unexpectedly brilliant.

“Neighbour” gets everyone singing along, as does “Milkman’s Son” and although the mawkish and horrible “Cats In The Cradle” is a low point for us, they are soon playing a couple of tracks from their new EP “Stairway To Hell.” “Devil’s Paradise” is sleazy fun and “I’m Alright” has a real Bon Scott era AC/DC feel about it. Before long they are playing “Everything About You” – the one you know from “Wayne’s World” and it sounds excellent. If ever a band proves why you should go and watch a support it is Ugly Kid Joe.

We have written many times about our never ending love for Skid Row. It is coming up to 22 years since they changed our lives forever when we watched their gig at the NEC Arena. We can still remember the very second their show started with the opening riff of “Slave To The Grind and however many gigs we’ve been to since, it’s never been with quite as much excitement.

This is their second time on these shores this year and they play the same set as back in March. And whilst you can be swept along on a tide of nostalgia once, to keep coming back there has to be something still there. Happily there really is.

The band are evidently extremely proud of their new EP “United World Rebellion Vol 1” and well might they be too. A track from it – “Let’s Go” kicks things off, before it is “Big Guns,” Makin’ A Mess” and the still menacing “Piece Of Me,” during which singer Johnny Sollinger sounds like he really is “sleazin’ in the city, looking for a fight.”

Rachel Bolan and Dave “Snake” Sabo – who along with Scotti Hill give this band the legitimacy of having three original members – both give what you assume are genuinely meant thanks to the crowd and the whole thing is largely magnificent.

Indeed, if there are a couple of small criticisms they are that the short set means there are only three tracks from “Slave to the Grind” and the guitar duel in “Monkey Business” disrupts what is a truly magnificent song.

Ultimately though, this is not a night for moaning, it’s a night to remember why you loved music in the first place, and if neither they – nor most of the audience – are, as the closing song says “Youth Gone Wild” anymore, it does no harm at all to occasionally transport yourself back to a time when Park Avenue really did lead to Skid Row. 

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.