Here's a review of the second revved-up rock and
roll review in Eindhoven. It's written by
Chris
This festival was held at 27 december 1997.
We had a great night yesterday at the the second revved-up rock and roll review in Eindhoven. I saw and met some people of the list (you asked me to remind you of that Astroboy). To keep you informed about the evening here a review. As I was on of the co-organizers maybe my opinion isn´t really objective, so I hope to see more reviews of the people who were there.
The festival started at 4.00 p.m. and some 150 people first entered the concert hall. They directly went to the bar to fulfill their urgent needs to alcohol. The concert hall was really dark, but fine. Even if you would be in the back you could see the gig going on. The organizer arranged a good PA for a change so DJ Rob could open with some classic psychobilly and rockabilly sounds.
As said the first band, Roadkill, attended some 150 people. The band comes from the Eindhoven area and sounds a bit like the German Raymen. A combination of garage rock, rockabilly but also some surf. The singer was screaming the lungs out of his body and some of the audience really reacted enthousiastically to the band. Me personally thought they were allright, but not great.
The second band to come on stage was the German Chibuku. The band members are all pretty wellknown faces in the scene so a lot of friends entered the concert hall to have a view. The guys really did their utmost but to be honest, I wasn´t really impressed. The singer has to take some lessons and the sound of the slappbass is much to ´plastic´. On the other side their enthousiasm had a good influence on the audience so the first wreckers appeared on front of the stage.
The organizer of the festival do have an own band as well, called the Lovesteaks. Their style isn´t exactly psychobilly, but more punk. Their sound is a bit comparable with bands like The Devil Dogs and The Hellicopters. Also with this gigs the pit was filled with wreckers. At the time more and more people entered the concert hall and the crowd was growing to 400 people.
After the Lovesteaks the Monsters entered the stage. In short time they have become really popular around the scene. Their frontman, also known as Lightning Beatmen, has a great voice and stagepersonality. His guitar was plugged in with two amps what gave him a really dirty sound. With a mix of garage and psychobilly they really made a great show. The highlight of this show was a solo appearance by the singer, doing a really well known song (I forgot the title, does anyone who was there know it?). The Monsters made the crowd warm for a great evening.
Next to them the proudness of Eindhoven was coming on stage. Bang Bang Bazooka already exists from the early eighties and the guys still know how to rock. Their sound is a mix of early psychobilly, country and blues-a-billy which can´t be compared to another band. The audience reacted enthousiastically to the band. Unfortunatelly they haven´t written any new material so to me it was more a reunion to the early day, which by way tasted fine.
The Godless Wicked Creeps appeared next. I´m sorry for their fans, but I thought their appearance wasn´t really impressive. They started with some 240 mph songs which the singer couldn´t even follow. Only when a banjo and yakalile player came on stage to join they sounded great. The mix of hillbilly and psychobilly really sounded ok. After they left the quality of the band improved a little bit, but to my opinion, the singer has to join lessons with the guy from Chibuku.
They can get lessons of Humunges of the Coffin Nails. Even after all those years his voice is great. To me, their gig was the best of the evening. However the drummer missed a few hits their show is brilliant. They had the greatest wreckingpit of the evening and Humunges thanked them by showing his impressive belly. When they played classics like ´psycho disease´ and ´Uncle Willy´ the crowd went really crazy. Over 500 psychominded people were already inside and the athmosphere was really great.
The closing act of the evening was Demented Are Go. As always they brought up a really professional show starting with their classic ´Human Slug´. Mark Phillips is one of the best perfomers around the scene and with his spastic way of moving and his develish voice he really made up a great gig. Their new guitarist played like he played in the band for ages.
So nothing more than great. A ´funny´ thing happened when some guy entered the stage. Phillips kicked him on his leg and the security (The German Wrecking Crew, who did a great job by the way) came up to grab the guy. Before that, the guy tried to hit Phillips but didn´t succeed. Phillips took his chance when they grabbed him to hit the guy on the face and came back on front of the stage yelling that he did a great job. You should see the evil grin on his face doing that. It gave him inspiration to do some frantic songs like ´Cast on Iron Arm´ and ´Be bop a lula´.
At 1.00 a.m. the festival was finished. Most of the people left home, some others bought some vinyl or ceedees with their last money. I had a great time and most of the people did I think, according to all the happy faces in the wrecking pit. Much better than the festival in Antwerp.
I hope next time more people will come to Eindhoven. The festival was nearly costless for the organizers, but more people are always more than welcome. In this way more qualitively good festivals can be organized for a reasonable entrance-price (and not 70 guilders as in Antwerp)
So that´s it for now.