THE DEAD DAISIES + THE TREATMENT + THE BITES @ CHALK, BRIGHTON, 6TH SEPTEMBER 2024
Tonight is the first night of The Dead Daisies Light ‘Em Up Tour, promoting the album of the same name. It is the first time that the original line-up of the band has toured the UK for six years. Support comes from The Bites and The Treatment.
When The Bites take the stage, it appears that they are missing a member. It turns out that one of their guitarists is on hiatus for a while. This is something of a shame, as one of the selling points of the band for me was the interplay between guitarists Dustin Coon and Jono Richer.
However, whilst that element of the band’s stage show is missing, they still sound incredibly good. We get a good dollop of classic rock with a side order of glam. The bulk of the set comes from their album Squeeze, released a year ago. It’s a cracking record with not a duff track on it. However, set closer Do Me A Favor is an absolute classic. It was ringing around my head for the rest of the gig. Awesome stuff!
I last saw The Treatment supporting the original line-up of Status Quo at Hammersmith Apollo in March 2013, and I must confess that I’m a little surprised to see them still in a supporting role. Still, look at the pedigree of the band that they’re supporting! I remember thinking that the band was very much harking back to the New Wave of British Metal. That is still very much the case.
Set opener Let’s Wake Up This Town from the current album Wake Up The Neighbourhood is a case in point. It wears its NWOBHM influences proudly on its sleeve. However, this doesn’t matter as the song is a real crowd-pleaser, and the audience loves it. At the end of When Thunder And Lightning Strikes, vocalist Tom Rampton repeatedly beats his chest. It’s a bit Tarzan-ish, and I’m not sure whether it should be encouraged!
Man On A Highwire is a new song, and tonight is the first time that the band have played it live. They’ve clearly rehearsed it well, and it sounds really good. Certainly, there’s nothing to fault anyway. It sounds like a mid-1970s Status Quo with Bruce Dickinson on vocals.
It seems that The Treatment have reached a particular level and stayed there, which is rather unfortunate. They seem to be the perpetual support band. This seems rather unfair, as they are a really good band. Admittedly, they’re not doing anything new. Indeed, seeing them play live is a little like stepping into a time machine and being transported back 45 years. However, there are a lot of people who would like to make that trip! It could be argued that their music is a little cliched. Perhaps it is, but blimey, they make a damn good job of it!
The Dead Daisies take the stage to Led Zeppelin’s Rock And Roll and stake their claim to a similar level of rock classicism for the next hour-and-a-half. This is the first time that the band have toured with their original line-up for some years, and it is obvious that many people have been waiting to see this particular line-up again. The band get straight down to business with the title track of the new album Light ‘Em Up. Guitarists Doug Aldrich and David Lowy are both playing Gibsons: a Les Paul for Aldrich and an SG for Lowy. This is music that demands the Gibson crunch! Aldrich plays a coruscating solo that even Jimmy Page would be proud of.
The last time that I saw the band, they had Glenn Hughes on bass and vocals. Tonight is arguably better in that we’re getting more Dead Daisies material. When I saw the band three years ago, they were in grave danger of becoming a Deep Purple tribute act! They play the title track of 2016’s Make Some Noise, an absolute riff monster! It may not have the best lyrics that I’ve ever heard, but it sounds like it was designed to lift the audiences in the world’s arenas and stadia, which is a job that it does to perfection here.
Vocalist John Corabi introduces I Wanna Be Your Bitch from the new album as being “about a crazy bitch that I used to date”. A guy next to me is offended by the use of the word ‘bitch’. Artists really should be aware that times are changing, as are people’s values.
There is no substitute for seeing a ‘proper’ rock band, but I could have done without Tommy Clufetos’ drum solo. It was by no means bad, but it seems that its only real purpose was to allow the rest of the band to go offstage for a breather. Besides which, I’ve seen drum solos by Neil Peart, in comparison with whom other drummers’ solos tend to pale into insignificance.
A little later in the set, we get the band introductions. Now, these can be a little awkward in most bands’ sets because the crowd wants the band to get on with some more music. The Dead Daisies have a rather inventive way of getting around this. For each musician’s introduction, they play a snippet of a cover, sometimes instrumentally. So we get Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap by AC/DC, Seven Nation Army by The White Stripes, Children Of The Grave by Black Sabbath, Whole Lotta Love by Led Zeppelin and Join Together by The Who. Honestly, it’s absolutely thrilling to even hear snippets of these songs live.
The covers don’t stop there. The Dead Daisies will release a blues album in the not-too-distant future, so they cover Muddy Waters’ I’m Ready. That’s followed by an absolutely storming cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Fortunate Son, which is not only my favourite Creedence song but is one of the most righteously angry songs ever recorded. Mexico (from 2015’s Revolucion album), which follows, demonstrates how easily The Dead Daisies’ material sits with older stone-cold rock classics. Mexico does have something of the flavour of AC/DC, but more than that, it sounds like The Dead Daisies. The main set finishes with an ace (and unexpected) cover of Midnight Moses by The Sensational Alex Harvey Band. Proof, were it needed, that not only are The Dead Daisies superb musicians and songwriters, but they are also huge classic rock fans. If that weren’t enough, they are also capable of doing absolute justice to any of their heroes’ material that they choose to play.
The band returns quickly for Long Way To Go from the Make Some Noise album before another unexpected cover: The Beatles Helter Skelter. They give the song a good kicking, but I’m sure that Paul McCartney would appreciate their version. It rocks, and then some. They insert a snippet of Led Zeppelin’s Nobody’s Fault But Mine into the middle of the song as well. This as been an utterly awesome gig. Indeed, it’s been not so much a gig, as a celebration of a genre. Bloody marvellous.
Words Mark Kelly, Photos Cris Watkins
The Dead Daisies new album ‘Light ‘Em Up’ is out now, grab it HERE
The Dead Daisies Gallery
The Treatment Galley
The Bites Gallery
