Euphoric Haze CD Release Party @ Token w/Flophouse, Steppdogg - Back when my wife worked for an industrial tool supplier in Redford she noticed that one of her co-workers often sa

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Re: Euphoric Haze CD Release Party @ Token w/Flophouse, Steppdogg (Score: 1)
by Mitch on Sunday, March 02, 2008 @ 10:01:00 MST
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I guess this is just as good a place to put a review as anywhere else.

The Black List were already thrashing by the time we got to the Token. Seemed competent enough but we didn't really get a chance to focus on the performance, what with all the "hi-howya-doin's" and getting drinks and a table, etc... The guys in Euphoric Haze seemed happy enough with them, so there you go.

I've been meaning to get out to see Flophouse for some time now and I wasn't disappointed. They were funky, they were bluesy, they were great when they were playing their own music in my opinion. The singer sounds a lot like Steve Winwood from back in his day, so I dig that. THey also remind me a lot of Joey Bowen's old band, General Clusterfunk. Flophouse is a good band to see if you like shaking your ass on the dancefloor. That said, I have to say that their closing cover of Chic's "Good Times" was kind of a dissonant miasma and it flopped - no pun intended.

SteppDogg is a hard rock & metal cover band composed entirely of seasoned pros including drummer Stever Fiernino (Nasties, FACE, etc..), singer Chris Gillen from heavy-metal homeboys OVERLOADED (myspace.com/overloaded), a chrome-domed bassist who looks familiar (but I just can't place the face) and the metal-shredding five-fingered frenzy of guitarist Jeff Williams who I'm told was considered THE SHIT when he played lead for a local band named SCARLET back in the hair-metal heydey of the 80's. Well let me tell you something, twenty years hasn't slowed that dude down one bit! It was a fret-tacular display of digital dexterity that you must see to appreciate.

SteppDogg nailed all the music you might expect from a heavy-metal cover band, such as covers from Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Van Halen, Ronnie James Dio and more. But what I found particularly interesting was the unexpected metalization of songs like Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Fortunate Son" and Chicago's "25 or 6 to 4" - awesome! First-class cover band.

I gleaned some gossip from a dude who says he plays with Overloaded (not sure which one he is - not Kluiber, though he was front-stage-center as always) and he said Steve Fiernino was playing drums for The Brian Shcram Band until recently but couldn't go on tour with him due to the recent birth of a child. Schram's loss is our gain. Congrats and condolences. Go see SteppDogg - you'll dig it.

Euphoric Haze's set began with kind of a goofy, contrived video of the band members slogging out of bed, over to rehearsal and finally dragging their tired asses to parking lot of The Token Lounge ("Losing Sleep"- get it?) which was kind of cool to see on a video intro of the venue you're actually sitting in. It would have been a great segue, but as almost always is the case with video introductions (at least in my experience), things did not go as planned; the video screen stayed down for like the first minute of the first song - which was a bit distracting.

EH's new music is much more punk than I remember. Singer Howard Whitaker (my wife's old workmate) was bouncing and bounding all over the stage, a bundle of frenetic energy screaming into the mic. He did pause between songs to pass out Pez dispensers (he's a collector my wife tells me, she also noted he was also wearing a Pez t-shirt) and made a feeble attempt to elicit audience participation - very un-punk-like behavior unless you're looking for a slam-dance in a candy store. That's what EH's music is to me - good music for slam-dancing.

Being nearly, if not THE oldest people in the room, we split a bit early, about 1:30am. Rock on.