The Metal Files

This won’t be a long review.  John’s played here several times in recent years and I kept missing it for whatever reason.  I almost missed tonight’s show as I neglected to add the show to my calendar.  Luckily a friend on FaceBook posted about it.  Then I couldn’t find my ticket.   Then found it.    Show was set to start at 8 and he was to play 75 minutes.

I’m tired and have been since the marathon of shows 2 weeks ago.  Seems that I have been going non-stop since then and there’s no slowing down for November.

John came on just a little after 8PM with a trio of songs by The Babys.  His voice sounded great.  He’s a bit of a wiry fella and moves around a lot.  Told some quick jokes and was pretty affable with the audience.  He played a mix of some newer and older solo songs as well as Bad English’s When I See You Smile.   Best of What I Got was slated to be played but they didn’t do it.  Apparently this was a one off show in between his normal opening duties for the current Pat Benatar tour.  They also played a Vince Gill cover as well as All Along the Watchtower.  The encore was Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love.  I’m not a Zep fan in the least but I gotta say that John belted that out so impressively that he should contact Jimmy Page to do a flurry of Zep shows.  Holy crap the dude has the pipes.

His bassist was a complete badass as was the drummer.  One of the hardest hitting drummers I have ever seen but was as solid as could be.  The guitarist however, not so much.  Sloppy, choppy and for me, painful to listen to.  His riffing was fine, but when he went into his solos, it was just painful.  Either you can play those licks or you can’t.  Maybe he was having an off night.  I don’t know.  But overall the show was fun.  It looked like maybe 100 people showed up.