Live Review : Midnite City + Continental Lovers @ Waterloo Music Bar, Blackpool on April 27th 2024

There’s a single mic stand centre stage.

Draped with a leopard print scarf, it’s a striking visual in its own right, but it also means that at a glance you immediately know what to expect from tonight’s first band, Continental Lovers. Like the best band you were too young to see back in the day, Continental Lovers appear to have been cryogenically frozen in a trash can in an alley at the back of CBGBs sometime in the seventies or eighties, only to be reanimated for the 21st century. Wearing their tattooed hearts on their decadently debonair sleeves, the band fire off a riotous salvo of beautifully barbed two-or three-minute glitter punk anthems.

Live Review : South Of Salem + The Nocturnal Affair @ The Waterloo, Blackpool on April 16th 2024

“We have such sights to show you”, said the monstrous Pinhead in the 1987 movie Hellraiser. And just like Pinhead, so too do South of Salem, roaring into Blackpool, and showing a breathlessly expectant capacity crowd, just why they are such an electrifying and seemingly unstoppable force of nature.

Live Review : Fury + Bastette + Pulverise @ The Ferret, Preston on April 12th 2024

There seems to be something of a rock renaissance in the Preston live music scene with this the fourth gig ROCKFLESH has reviewed in the town in recent months. At the forefront of the charge is The Ferret, long a bastion for live music and until recently under threat of being lost, but now fighting back with a vengeance. And tonight, it plays host to a three-band bill encapsulating three very different branches of the rock family tree.

Live Review : Spike of The Quireboys @ The Vinyl Tap, Preston on March 23rd 2024

Back in the Middle Ages, a Troubadour was someone who turned up in town, told stories, played music, instigated singalongs and entertained the people. Fast forward a few hundred years and things haven’t really changed that much, as tonight, in Preston’s Vinyl Tap, Spike proves he is probably the closest thing to a modern-day Troubadour that the 21st century has to offer.

Live Review : Jared James Nichols + McHale’s Permanent Brew @ The Waterloo Music Bar, Blackpool on March 21st 2024

Blues rock, just like any musical sub-genre is a many headed beast, one where bands are often pigeonholed together into a single category for ease, often having little in common other than a shared musical DNA. And so it is with McHale’s Permanent Brew and Jared James Nichols. Whilst both are firmly rooted in the blues each has a very different approach and sound, and it is their contrasting interpretations of the form that make this evening’s gig so intriguing.

Live Review : GUN @ Waterloo Music Bar, Blackpool on February 28th 2024

Thirty-five years is a long time in music…

Cast your minds back to the end of the eighties (if you can remember that far) and the musical landscape of the time was very different. Grunge was yet to come along and cause the sea change in the rock world whose ripples we are still feeling to this day, and nu-metal and the genre mutating new styles that would characterise the new century were still more than a decade away.

And it was at the tail end of that most glorious of decades that GUN released their debut album, the acclaimed “Taking on the World”, spawning the first of a run of chart bothering singles with ‘Better Days’, numerous Top of the Pops performances and increasingly successful tours.

Live Review : Stone Broken + A'Priori @ The Waterloo Music Bar, Blackpool on February 1st 2024

At the start of last year, I’d never seen A’Priori play live; by the time twelve months had rolled around I had seen them numerous times, and they ended 2023 as the band I had seen the most during the year. And whether filling a support slot, appearing on a festival bill or headlining their own shows, the one thing that is blindingly clear, is that regardless of the venue or event, A’Priori are a ferociously entertaining and excitingly dynamic live proposition. Something they proved once again tonight.

Live Review : Ginger Wildheart + Ben Marsden & Carol Hodge + Baz Francis @ The Ferret, Preston on January 27th 2024

It’s a rare hometown gig tonight as Ginger hits Preston’s The Ferret. Only the second gig reviewed by ROCKFLESH in the town in the last twelve months, with gigs on the horizon in the coming months from Fury, Spike and Acid Reign to name but a few, hopefully that trend is set to be reversed in 2024. And with a capacity of only a couple of hundred in The Ferret, the first Preston gig of the year promises to be an opportunity to witness one of the mainstays of the scene for over three decades, up close and personal.

Live Review : Buckcherry + The Treatment + Rubikon @ The Waterloo Music Bar, Blackpool on January 24th 2024

It’s January, it’s cold, it’s miserable and the temptation is to just stay indoors and hibernate. So what better way to combat those mid-winter blues than with a three band sold out rock n’ roll show?

Openers Rubikon deal in a dense, throbbing, swampy sound that certainly makes an immediate impact. Somewhat constrained by the restricted stage areas, they make the absolute most of both the time and space afforded them.

Live Review: Tyketto + This House We Built @ The Waterloo Music Bar, Blackpool on December 3rd 2023

It’s very busy early doors at the Waterloo, seemingly with much of tonight’s Sold-Out crowd having already claimed a premium spot long before openers, the unusually monikered This House We Built, have played a single note. I must confess to being unfamiliar with this Yorkshire four piece before tonight’s gig, so wasn’t sure what to expect, but whatever those expectations might have been they would have been unexpectedly (and pleasantly) confounded by tonight’s performance.

Live Review : The Supersuckers + Warner E Hodges Band @ The Waterloo Music Bar, Blackpool on October 6th 2023

It’s Friday night at the Waterloo and there’s a real buzz in the air for tonight’s co-headline show, that delicious electric anticipation you get before a night of rock n roll, this time round with a Southern edge.

Two of the most precious commodities in the rock world are credibility and authenticity. Ephemeral but vital, like trust they’re hard to gain and easily lost. Warner E Hodges has consistently had both across his entire career, whether it be with Jason & The Scorchers, Homemade Sin, The Bluefields (still in the top ten of all the gigs I’ve witnessed) or, as tonight, with his own band.

Live Review: VEGA + Kim Jennett @ The Waterloo Music Bar, Blackpool, 5 October 2023

I last saw Kim Jennett a mere couple of months ago on this very stage, supporting local Blackpool legends A’priori. On that occasion it was a much more understated acoustic set, but tonight backed by a full band, she seems firmly in her natural environment of full-on rock star and relishing every second.

Taking to the stage with a ferocious intensity, Kim is a whirling dervish, a blur of movement, colour and vocal histrionics. The Myke Gray penned ‘Psycho’ is an apt opener, Kim’s almost manic energy firmly in line with the lyrical content. It’s a heavy riffing number, Kim snarlingly delivering the lyrics, whilst poised on and over the barrier, pulling the audience into her orbit almost literally at times as she is within touching distance of the front row.

Live Review : Romeo’s Daughter + White Skies @ The Waterloo Music Bar, Blackpool on September 16th 2023

A thudding drum beat and great washes of keyboard herald the arrival of White Skies to the hallowed Waterloo stage. A band I’d never seen before, (or to be honest, knew a great deal about), they are purveyors of melodic rock in the grand tradition of soaring vocals, big riffs, and even bigger choruses. ‘What Do You Know About Love’ is a great start to the set with all of those three elements firmly present and correct, with tonight’s crowd very receptive and obviously firm devotees of the genre (as becomes even more apparent later on when Romeo’s Daughter perform).

Live Review: Gypsy Pistoleros @ The Pub, Lancaster on September 8th 2023

A suitably cinematic sunset is casting its final rays over Lancaster as I finally set foot in The Pub (despite the best efforts of Friday night M6 traffic and Lancaster’s circuitous one-way system). The only things that could have made it even more appropriate would have been a pair of swinging saloon doors, a spittoon by the bar, a table of disreputable poker players and a dodgy honky-tonk piano player, for an evening spent in the company of the Gypsy Pistoleros.

Gig ReviewAuthor : Craig Wilkinson12 September 2023The PubGypsy Pistoleros, The Pub, Lancaster, 2023, Live Review, Craig Wilkinson, Darren BirchComment

Live Review: Mike Tramp + Dan Byrne @ The Waterloo Music Bar, Blackpool on Wednesday 30 August 2023

One guitar and one voice.

Sometimes that’s all you really need to deliver a great set, and that’s precisely what Dan Byrne delivers tonight. Proving once again, that he possesses one of the finest new voices in rock today, his performance tonight is an exercise in control, power and delicacy.

Live Review : Ricky Warwick & The Fighting Hearts + Beth Blade & The Beautiful Disasters @ The Waterloo Music Bar, Blackpool on July 27th 2023

Beth Blade is in fine form tonight, but really is that a surprise? I’m not sure Beth and her merry band of Beautiful Disasters are capable of performing at less than 100%. Always endearing the Beautiful Disasters’ front woman and her band bring a charm and contagious enthusiasm to any show they play, exemplified by opening number the uplifting ‘Tonight I’m With You’.

Live Review : The Damn Truth + Empyre @ The Waterloo Music Bar, Blackpool on July 23rd 2023

This is the third experience I’ve had of Empyre (the first time being in a Library of all places) and like a fine wine they seem to be improving with each year. Constant touring and hard work has honed them into the tightly disciplined and impressively together band that grace the Waterloo’ stage tonight.

Live Review: Geoff Tate + Daxx & Roxane @ The Waterloo Music Bar , Blackpool on Wednesday 21 June 2023

According to popular stereotypes, the Swiss are known for, amongst other things, Toblerone, Cuckoo Clocks and a calm neutrality. I don’t know about the first two, but no-one seems to have told Daxx and Roxane about the last!

When before they’ve even played a single note they are knocking back shots from a square bottle, you know this is a band that’s here for a good time not a long time. A delightfully madcap confection of classic rock riffage and eighties excess, they are a blur of energy, colour and fun from start to finish! Cal Wymann on lead guitar is a veritable dynamo, careening from one side of the stage to the other, vaulting from the riser with scant regard to logic or indeed safety.