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L.A. Guns / Baton Rogue Morgue

One thing is clear – you should not attend a concert after a 4h tattoo session, and especially not one which is overcrowded. Still you are not to miss the US veterans L.A Guns and the probably coolest band in Finland, Baton Rogue Morgue. As it´s still a work day, even in Finland they began to reconsider their schedules and start at 21h already.

Baton Rogue Morgue
indeed use every second of their show to play every one of their songs and to try to warm up the audience for the headliners. It´s the first time I see this band, and they indeed know how to inspire people. Their catchy songs and their styling go appeal in an instant, and this combination of high quality US rock plus using all those cliches should be enough to conquer hearts also overseas.

I´m simply fascinated by guitarist Domino and his style – he IS pure Rock’n’Roll: Plateau boots, custom made leather pants that display “Baton Rogue Morgue” – his appearance sticks out. His colleagues seem a bit more humble in their classic Rockers outfits.

Singer Lee Angel Morgue uses his voice in a proper way to add the special something to the songs. Unfortunately they only have 35min stage time this evening, but it´s clear that we haven´t watched those guys for the last time. I will surely visit a concert of this band again.

After some rearrangements on stage and some time of waiting finally L.A. Guns take the stage, without much of a fuzz. First without his instrument, singer and guitarist Phil Lewis takes on the microphone and gets the Tavastia crowd going. It seems that the audience has indeed been longing for this band, Phil mentioned that they had been in Finland previously, but 21 years ago. Things should change, he promised that the band would come back every year in the future. Naturally they had to comment on “all those beautiful Finnish ladies” although some of those guys might be close to 60 by now. And astonishingly some young girls in the crowd seemed to like this comment.

I have to admit that musically I am not familiar with this band – sure you have heard the band name, but not much more. The show itself was top-notch, I missed some variety in the vocals, though. Anyway, I felt entertained throughout the whole show, despite the fact that I did not know much about the songs. Certainly there had to be a drums solo and also bass player Scotty had a solo part. The highlight was Stacy Blades´ solo who played a guitar and also an electronic device named Theremin. L.A Guns delivered a 1,5 h program of new but mainly old songs, which contained only 1 ballad “Ballad of Jayne” and also gave 2 encores. All in all a great show, still Baton Rogue Morgue impressed me a bit more.

Sandy Mahrer

Fresh Act editor, reports, reviews, photos - - - Favorite genres? - Hard Rock, Heavy Metal and Pop-Rock etc. Less Death, Black, Grind Core