( 12:02 AM )
Damone
Live @ The Club at Water Street
Rochester, New York
June 16, 2006
photos by Brian Ferrigno
Damone: Coming To Help You With Yer Math Homework
Named in honor of the ticket scalper from Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Damone is a cool little rock band that just might serenade you with Cheap Trick songs to make a sale.
And I’m totally buying.
For three rather tumultuous years, this scampy outfit from Boston has found it’s way through ex-guitarists, legal & label issues, comatose bassists, and dealt with being buried at the bottom of music bills.
But now Damone is getting a chance to headline in support of their new album Out Here All Night---the guiltiest goddamn pop-metal pleasure since rainbow colored spandex killed off the genre two decades ago.
It sort of sounds like Motley Crue without the vehicular manslaughter and kinda like Skid Row without all the hairball aftertaste.
At first glance Damone may seem like kid stuff, but I swear it’s just good solid rock & roll. The instant attraction is frontwoman Noelle LeBlanc, a 20 year-old Joan Jett reincarnate that exudes the same throwback charm of Happy Days’ Leather Tuscadero. Not only is she a competent guitar player, but she also possesses this great silvery rock voice.
A lively and protective cast nicely compliments Noelle-- bombastic drummer Dustin Hengst, lanky brain hemorrhage-surviving bassist Vazquez, and flamboyant guitarist Mike Woods, who proudly showed off a vintage pink guitar after the show (a new purchase from Rochester’s legendary House of Guitars earlier that day).
Oddly enough, Damone should also be commended for helping save rock & roll by recording a public service announcement:
Damone Save The Rock
Yeah, so anyway, the show. Damone opened with the fist-pumping anthem “Now is the Time,” and proceeded to burn through a hot and sweaty hour-long set pretty much without stopping. Sidenote for fans of Veronica Mars: eagle-eared listeners might recall that “Now is the Time” was used to perfection during a pivotal first season episode.
After running through older favorites “At The Mall” and “Frustrated Unnoticed,” Noelle’s black leather jacket must’ve been frying her, so she poured bottled water over her head to cool off. For a moment she had that open-nostril look of someone surprised by a cold garden hose. From then on it was all new songs written by the four of them as a complete band. It was readily apparent they were all excited to show them off.
Highlights include the searing title track “Out Here All Night,” “On Your Speakers,” “You’re the One,” and for an encore, a furiously fun cover of Lita Ford’s “Kiss Me Deadly.”
A true all-ages show, the wandering audience of about fifty was comprised of skate rats, cute lesbian rocker chicks, and a few beer-swilling twenty-something guys that might still drive around looking for suburban keg parties on Saturday nights.
Seeing Damone play live certainly wasn’t anything beyond earth shattering, but it sure as hell was completely satisfying. Now you’ll have to excuse me, I’ve got the hankering to dust off my Priest, Maiden, and Halen records like you wouldn’t believe.
Setlist
1. Now is the Time
2. Get Up And Go
3. At The Mall
4. Frustrated Unnoticed
5. On Your Speakers
6. What We Came Here For
7. Stabbed in the Heart
8. Out Here All Night
9. You’re the One
10. Tonight
11. When You Live
12. Outta My Way
Encore
13. Time and Time Again Noelle solo
14. Kiss Me Deadly (Lita Ford)
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( 11:58 PM )
A heavy metal haiku that’s not really a haiku since it’s not in seventeen syllables, in three lines of five, seven, and five. Still, it rocks so hard.
On a Scorpions Black Sabbath
Billy Squier, Iron Maiden and a Judas Priest
Rush into a Cult bar.
Grim Reaper and Motley Crue KISS, see Cinderella
drinking Ratt Poison and yell Loudness—
“Dokken, it’s a Cheap Trick--that’s Anthrax!”
A Celtic Frost Loverboy Foreigner on Skid Row
Dio is a Quiet Riot Bon Jovi that 24-7 Spyz
Whitesnake’s XYZ down. Metal Church Voivod,
The Red Hot Chili Peppers Clutch to Faith No More
Butthole Surfers with White Stripes Nirvana
Radiohead Fugazi Plasmatics Mastodon.
Song of the Day:
“Metal of the Night” Hanover Fist 1984
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( 7:47 PM )
Math Rock 2
Mick Jagger is eating peanut butter on a train traveling like really fast from Boston to NY, while Keith Richards is eating chocolate on another train traveling from NY to Boston. The brakes on both trains fail and they collide. Besides getting Keith’s chocolate in Mick’s peanut butter, at what point do they stop fathering children by supermodels and falling out of palm trees fucking the tour all up?
A. a glorious combination of tastes that taste great together is never a bad thing
B. it’s just like those damn Rolling Stones to wreck two perfectly good trains
C. falling down and fathering kids as old rock farts exhibits a Chaplinesque virility
D. wait a minute-- these answers don’t even make any sense
Song of the Day:
“Shattered" 1981
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( 10:28 PM )
Math Rock
It’s 1974 and The Who is partying hard after a sold-out show in Cleveland. If drummer Keith Moon snorts 8 grams of coke, downs one case of Coors, 5 bottles of wine, and injects 12 cc’s of a powerful horse tranquilizer, how many brain cells will he destroy?
A. 62,000—the number of gross intoxicants divided by the square root of pi
B. 76 million—coincidentally the same number of albums The Who have sold
C. 12 really important ones—like the ones that might prevent Keith from driving cars into swimming pools and uncontrollably pissing himself when excited
D. None, since he already burned them all by 1974
Song of the Day:
“Won’t Get Fooled Again” The Who 1971
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