Music Blog

Though I love Jazz Fest, after nine days and over 1,000  miles staggered and stumbled throughout the East End, it was time for me to get some of the jazz juice jitters out of my joints and re-up the necessary amount of rock 'n' roll that runs through my bloodstream. So me and EMMY Award-winner, The Tin Man, headed down to the Main Street Armory's basement to get some relief. Our rocks had been on for waaaaay too long. And the bawdy and boisterous Buckcherry was just the band for the job.

It's shocking, the attention this band doesn't get. With every album it has put out, there has been at least one hit or riff in the band's psycho-sexual brand of hard rock that I would think is gonna be huge. Yet Buckcherry can't draw flies. And it's a show like last night's Armory basement extravaganza that just adds to my confusion. There were barely 200 people in the place; 200 for a skull-crushing, hip-shaking show that opened with Buckcherry ripping into Nine Inch Nails' "Head Like A Hole," playing as if they owned it.

Singer Josh Todd has one of the best rock voices of this generation. It's rumoured that he was offered the Bon Scott slot in AC/DC. And his performance last night only worked to solidify his qualification. Todd positively roared rough, ragged and strong right up there with Kevin Roentgen's brutal lead guitar, from "Lit Up" to Dead Kennedys' "Too Drunk To Fuck" — plus a medley that hysterically punctuated the hit "Crazy Bitch" with tunes including the theme to "Footloose," "Proud Mary," and the tail riff on the last chord of the night that was unmistakably borrowed from "Love Gun."

The band came off sincere, profane, vulgar, and reckless and satisfied my rock jones — and that of 200 other lost souls — to the max.