Tagged: joe elliot

AMAZING PERFORMERS – the best of the best

The times they are certainly a changin’.
The record industry is struggling with poor record sales and illegal downloads, but there is one thing that they can still cash in on, something that will never go out of style: The magic of LIVE SHOWS.

No hi-tech technology in the world can ever recreate the real deal – forget the live-DVD’s, HD-YouTube, advanced sound systems, 3D or whatever stuff there’s out there – you can NEVER copy the experience and the KICK you get from a great live show. 

That’s why arenas and festivals are still attracting thousands of people all over the world. Some of us have even made it our lifestyle to travel everywhere to get our “fix” of loud guitars, thundering drums and bass and fantastic musician- and showmanship. Nothing can beat the natural “high” you get from that!

The YouTube-clips can’t substitute a live show. It just gives you a hint of what you might have missed or what you’re about to experience.

So these days it’s more important than ever before to have something that impresses a crowd, to stick out and present something that separates you from the competition. Which led me to the topic “amazing showmen“….

I go to shows all-the-time, to say the least. And I go see bands/artists for different reasons. Sometimes solely because I love their music. Sometimes because they impress me with their musical skills. Sometimes because I’m simply curious – and sometimes because the artist or the band has that unique talent to get my attention and keep it for two hours straight.

There are some absolutely amazing artists out there, on ALL levels. It doesn’t have to be well known superstars.
There are people in less famous bands and in local bands that “have IT” : that spark, that natural ability to work a stage and a crowd, that makes you come back for more time and time again.

It’s not a competition and you can’t really compare musicians because they are all so different – it’s not the Olympics of Rock – but these are some of my personal favorites.

Note that this is 100% a list of people who I think are outstanding LIVE PERFORMERS (which is not necessarily the same as favorite musicians or bands)

INDIVIDUAL ARTISTS – in no particular order

David Coverdale (Whitesnake)
When this man walks out on a stage – he OWNS every single person in the crowd.
He has a unique quality of making every individual feel noticed and a part of the show. Although he is a larger-than-life rock star who works best on the biggest stages of the world, he always makes it feel like he’s playing just for YOU. 

He mixes a sense of humor and self-distance with sex, confidence, authority and pure professionalism. Not to mention the way he moves on a stage like a rock’n’roll-emperor, using the micstand as his #1 tool. There is only one David – Coverdale be thy name. :)

Dee Snider (Twisted Sister)
When he’s about to hit the stage, he’s like a missile! The man oozes of pure, raw energy and rock’n’roll, nothing and nobody comes even close…! I’m not the biggest Twisted Sister-fan in the world, I don’t even have all their records, but watching this man on stage is a kick beyond belief! He is genuine and a real punch in your face. 
If you could take everything that rock’n’roll is all about, and transform it into human shape – Dee Snider would be IT!
Sebastian Bach
The ULTIMATE frontman. The one and only King of the Stage. The energy and the raw frenzy is beyond what I’ve seen ANY other artist produce on a stage – ever! He is the only frontman I can think of that was truly BORN to do this. If you took it away from him, he would languish, stop breathing, cease to exist. In 23 years I’ve only seen him suck ONCE. Don’t even ask how many shows I’ve seen with either Skid Row or Baz solo, but it’s more than enough to state that this guy is very unlikely to let you down if you’re looking for an action-packed show.

David Lee Roth (Van Halen)
Entertainment personified. It’s enough to just mention the name David Lee Roth and people will immediately start thinking of a rock’n’roll strutter with his body as his main tool. He was THE sex-symbol back in the day, moving in a way that would make the ladies blush.
He would impress us all with the martial-arts high kicks while at the same time looking like a kid in a candy store who LOVES what he does. His sense of humor is contageous, and even to this day he hasn’t lost much of all that. He’s never been the world’s greatest singer, but it’s safe to say that he’s most definitely one of the world’s greatest entertainers!


Yngwie Malmsteen
The one and only ULTIMATE guitar hero – and probably the only one who turns a prolonged guitargasm into a show unlike anyone else! He was (and still is) WILD on stage! 
Like a super-model, he will strike 30 different poses in one minute, yet continue playing that guitar like nobody’s business. How can you do all that running and posing and headbanging and still play making it look like a piece of cake??? The man is a guitar god and a top notch live performer in every sense of the word!

 

Those are my Top 5 live performers, but the list goes on – and on…

Joe Elliot of Def Leppard had an amazing charisma on stage, he just caught your attention from the word go and kept it there for as long as it took. I was mesmerized the first time I saw Def Leppard. Fantastic frontman. I don’t know what happened though, because the last few times I’ve seen Def Leppard, the magic wasn’t there. I guess there’s a peak in every band’s career and a fall – sooner or later. After 30 years of kicking ass on stage, I guess they are entitled to lose the spark.

Same goes for my #1 hero Rob Halford (Judas Priest). He was never a “run-around-the-stage-like-a-marathoner” type of singer, but he had “IT”. All he had to do was stop and LOOK at his crowd and they would go freaking CRAZY! He just had what most entertainers don’t, it’s within your personality and he would make me forget that there was even a world outside whichever arena Judas Priest would be playing….

However, just like Joe Elliot, Rob Halford has lost some of his magic. I can still see it when he’s with his own band Halford, but it’s like he’s a parody of himself when he’s with Priest nowadays. 

And then, there’s of course – Ozzy!
There is a reason why this man has been on the top for more than 4 decades! It’s not because he’s Pavarotti, but because he has this wonderful way of truly loving what he does, just being OZZY.
He might have changed his style onstage through the years, but the past years he’s been better than ever. I would pay for ten more shows just to see that sincere SMILE and his boyish enthusiasm when he hoses the crowd with that firehose, or sticks his head in a bucket of ice-cold water like a mischievous kid. There’s something liberating about Ozzy and his total disregard of rules for men “his age”. He doesn’t give a fuck and we love him for it!

Watch this and try NOT to smile! :-))

Speaking of Ozzy automatically leads me to another, fairly new, aquaintance and favorite performer: Gus G (guitarist w. Ozzy & Firewind, in case you’ve managed to miss it)

I was stuck after the first time I saw him with Ozzy. He walks onstage and becomes a true old-school Rock Star! 
He owns the stage in a very natural sort of way, with a charisma that few “new” musicians possess. This guitar wiz handles Madison Square Garden just as well as the smallest, tiniest little dark club in the middle of nowhere.
The posing, the hair-fan, the guitar-hero moves all that stuff makes Gus a true arena-entertainer.

Another kick-ass live-performer is Kevin Rothney (Circle II Circle, JOP) who played bass with Jon Oliva’s Pain on the 2006-2010 tours, when I saw the band countless times.
Jon Oliva might be the songwriting genious, but Kevin was the one who brought rock’n’roll to the live performances of JOP.

There was nothing he wouldn’t do to give the crowd a good live-experience, I remember him even getting injured a few times in the process. He could be sick as a dog, yet when it was time to get onstage, he would rock till he dropped, sometimes literally.
I’ve always been impressed with Kevin. When you see musicians like that, you realize that the music business is all about being in the right place at the right time, there are amazing showmen (and -women) out there that don’t get the recognition they deserve. 

 

Moving on to a more local level, where singer Andy Pierce (Nasty Idols) without question, makes it to my list of favorite performers. It was his natural talent as a frontman that made me notice the band in the first place – 25 freaking years ago! He was a real rock star before people even knew it and he will be till they have to roll him out on stage in a wheel chair!

 

PART TWO – THE BEST LIVE BANDS!

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