After The Deep Eynde some geezer in a tigerstriped Elvis suit appeared on stage and started singing Elvis songs, very nice indeed.
After The Deep Eynde some geezer in a tigerstriped Elvis suit appeared on stage and started singing Elvis songs, very nice indeed.
Sometimes things can happen incredibly fast. A good example is when you recieve an e-mail from Effenaar telling you you’re on the guestlist for the ‘Where The Bad Boys Rock‘ festival, organised by the German based People Like You records. So what do you do? You e-mail your friend Tamara. Luckily she was also interested in a night with the bad boys. We agreed to meet in the train in Utrecht. We had no real plan, but I brought a warm sweater in case we had to spend the night on the station. So we travelled off to the beautiful ‘light city’ of Eindhoven. When we got to the venue we received a promotional sampler with songs by the bands that would be performing that night. I noticed the venue was decorated nicely with all the familiar rockabilly icons, such as pin-up girls, hot-rods and lots of flames and skulls. I knew this was gonna be good.
Los Angeles’ The Deep Eynde opened the evening with a fantasic blend of (horror) punk, deathrock, and even some new wave. They prefer the label ‘Southern California devil punk’ themselves. People that say ‘Gothabilly’ deserve to be shot. The band is newly signed to the label and played a real nice but unfortunatly short set. I didn’t know all songs but other than Superstition they played their big hit Dead Alive from their debut album Suicide Drive. After The Deep Eynde some geezer in a tigerstriped Elvis suit appeared on stage and started singing Elvis songs, very nice indeed. We later found out his name was the Ski King. Generators, also from the City of Angels, were the next band. To my shame I never heard of The Generators before but their performance was enough to get me interested in this band. They played a really slick blend of rock’n roll and punk. I managed to grab a playlist. To prove that feat of bravery, I can now tell you that they played the following songs: Summer of Unrest, Roll Out The Red Carpet, Murder, Down in the City, 30 Seconds, Hijacked, Here I Go and Skeletons. I for one really liked this band and I promised myself to dig myself into their discography as soon as I could.
After half an our the band left the stage and the Ski King, this time dressed in a pair of dungarees and singing Johnny Cash songs. He urged everybody to sing along, but unfortunatly most people didn’t know the lyrics, not even to Ring of Fire. After the Ski King covered two or three of The Man In Black’s great songs it was time for the next band to appear. Deadline was also previously unknown to me, but they had a large bunch of very devoted fans. Deadline really got the party going, a lot of people started to dance and sing along to the catchy melodies and the sexy singers’ voice. After Deadline the Ski King appeared on stage again and covered some various popular rock’n roll songs, like JL Lewis’ Great Balls of Fire, Motorheads’ Ace of Spades and some White Stripes song I didn’t know. The next band, US Bombs, was one of the headliners was one of the headliners of the evening. Fortunate for them, unfortunate for me, because I didn’t find them the least bit interesting. It’s kinda hard to explain why, because it involves personal opinions and stuff, suffice to say that I didn’t find the extra ‘edge’ all other bands that night had. But it didn’t bother me, it gave me time to see some of the other interesting parts of the Effenaar, such as the merchandise stands and the bar in the back.
When the US Bombs stopped bombing, the Ski King climbed the stage one more time, to perform Nine Inch Nails’ Hurt, but it sounded more like he wanted to sound like Cash’s version. Either way, Mad Sin had to provide the climax for that evening, and hell, they did. A rude, fat, scary looking German who sang and spat agressive lyrics and of course the always wobbing sound of that awesome contrabass manifested in a explosive performance. They opened with Class Warpath, and among others they played Nothing’s Allright and Speak no Evil (unfortunately without the ‘Morricone’ intro.) Soon everybody was dancing, slamming or having a good time in some other way. They also brought a greasy looking fire artist to breathe some fire in the air. The sound wasn’t perfect at all, but who cares when you get a bucket of psychobilly whoop-ass opened on you?
After the show I had a little chat with the Deep Eynde singer, Fate Fatal, who was kind enough to sign a cd for me and gave me a poster. After the DJ spun a few records we still had the problem of transportation. Luckily Tamara met a nice fellow who offered us a place to crash. Who could say no to that? (me. – ed) So after we had a brew at a bar and met some of the locals, we took a cab to his place. The next morning I woke up battered, bruised and with a major headache. But I wouldn’t want it any other way.
Words Wouter van Heuvelmans.