Friday, July 11, 2008

Rocklahoma Day 2 - 2008

Yesterday started with a morning of rain making for very muddy grounds. Fortunately the clouds kept the temperatures down. I'll keep this brief and will detail sets later. We arrived during the middle of the Vain set. I had never heard any of Vain's music and their singer looked like an emo kid that was 20 years too old. The last few songs of the set were decent and Eddie Trunk was rocking out on the side of the stage for most of the Vain set. One of the few times we've seen Eddie enjoying a band on stage. With that said I don't see myself buying any Vain material.

Next up was Enuff Z'Nuff with Donnie Vie back out front. This was a highly anticipated set since last year didn't feature Donnie Vie, but they didn't deliver during their main set. Donnie looked healthy and had fun with the large crowd but the band didn't seem to have the band camraderie you hope to see. The changed things up by bringing out Steven Adler from Guns 'n Roses to play covers of The Beatles' Revolution and Dylan's Knockin' On Heaven's Door played GnR style. Joe Leste and Tracii Guns joined for the last song.

L.A. Guns came out next and played the best show of the day. They had a new singer, Marty Casey, from Rock Star:INXS fame. He had a great voice and lots of energy. They even did one of Marty's songs, Trees, which may have been the highlight of their set. I'll have to see this line up when they play LA again in the future. Let's hope they can keep this lineup in tact. They announced their new album would be out in March of 2009.

The band I was most looking forward to seeing was Dokken. Don came out with only the same guitarist as last year. It was odd to see Dokken without Mick Brown on drums. Dokken delivered a spectcular set last year but they were not able to deliver this year. It wasn't bad but it wasn't magical like it was last year. I had spoken to Don Dokken earlier this year after a show in Anaheim and he said last year's Rocklahoma was a 1 in a 1000 for them.

Next up was Sebastian Bach who earned the hardest working front man of the night. The sound guy was asleep during Bach's set so the mix wasn't great but that didn't stop Sebastian. Sebastian closed with Youth Gone Wild which has got to be one of the best hard rock songs from the late 80s. The new material he played off Angel Down went over well but I'm still hoping for a full on Skid Row reunion. Sebastian is in top form and ready for it.

The last act of the night was the Bret Michaels Poison cover band, I mean the Bret Michaels Band. They sounded like a sloppy Poison and other than playing the unnecessary Bret Michaels solo material the set was nearly identical to Poison's tour last summer with a couple of different covers thrown in. We only stayed for about 1/2 of Bret's set and headed back to the hotel early.

We are off to get some lunch and headed to Rocklahoma Day 3 and get to see a full day of acts that weren't part of last year.

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