Review of Euphoric Haze's CD Relase party @ The Token 3/1/08

Posted: Sun Mar 02, 2008 12:18 pm

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.

Newbie Joined: Mar 04, 2008 Posts: 1

Hey hey hey now, don't you think that punk rock could do without people posing as "punk experts" and pointing out which actions/behavior are "punk" or not? I think that only serves to further the trendiness of an idea that's always been about something different altogether. Please don't do that, it's so gay that it makes me feel uncomfortable.
A few other things:
- "slam dance in a candy store" was a really dumb reference.
- it sounds bad when refer to yourself so many times and also to your wife's opinion and relationship with the singer in the band you're writing a music review about.
- I think that pun WAS intended, because the rest of the article is quippy and pretentious also, much like a pun would be Wink

The only reason I'm being so critical is because I was at the show and, although I had a great time, anyone could have had negative things to say about it (or any other show for that matter). You just critiqued things that didn't matter much, hardly said a thing about the music itself, and ended up sounding like a middle school kid writing a book report.

Congratulations (pfffffffffft!)

Posted: Wed Mar 05, 2008 12:27 pm

"Me thinks the lady doth protest too much." - is that gay enough for you?

Hey, I just called it like it happened to me and how I saw it - a completely subjective opinion as all reviews are. At least I bothered to provide some context.

If you wanted to contribute a different opinion of the show without attacking me personally this might be a productive thread - but you didn't. Congratulations on your only contribution to this site.

Oh, and I certainly admit I'm no expert on punk (sounds like a contradiction in terms to me) but I will take this opportunity to exercise a very old punk tradition:

FUCK YOU

Groupie Joined: Apr 09, 2006 Posts: 11

Hey, I was at that show, too! Just kidding. Thanks for the kind words, yeah, we do a Chic/Rapper's Delight hybrid thing, and it can be hit or miss. It wasn't on the setlist, but, P-Dog started the bassline, and we jumped on it. The people up front were digging it, but, I can see it might not be the right song to play at the Token. Oh, well. I was having a blast (I'm the drummer), not, too, wasted while playing.

I was real happy for Euphoric Haze, that place was packed and I purchased a cd before I blew all of my money at the bar. Give it up for EH! I thought the first band (The Black List) were pretty tight. I told the drummer he works way too hard and should ask for a raise. Steppdog were smoking ,and I love "Sweet" Stevie Firneno on the drums. I get a private drum lesson everytime he plays! I had a blast. Pretty cool that someone from this site checked it out and did a review. Thank you.
(picture of Flophouse at this show)

Posted: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:04 am

Thanks Flophouse - I enjoyed the show - ok, most of it. Wink

Oh, and thanks for the pic.

Now that my ego has recovered from smokin'niles attack Evil or Very Mad

, I should say that when I wrote that Howard was "bouncing and bounding all over the stage" that I should have simply said it was an energetic performance. It was an energetic performance - from all the members of Euphoric Haze. They gave the audience their all. I was just looking for a better way to say it - so my apologies to the band or anybody who misunderstood my 'middle school...book report' and have to suffer my penchant for alliteration. You get what you pay for.

I also didn't get a chance to listen to the new record before the show. That can be a good thing or a bad thing. It's a good test for the music if you don't hear it first because if you walk away from the show with a hook doing loops in your head after the very first time, that's a very good indication that the songs are strong (I didn't, btw).

But if you hear the record first, the songs tend to be reinforced at the show, thus predisposing you to enjoying the performance - provided the musicians and the guy at the mixing board are all competent. They were.

Anyway, that's why posting a review in a forum could be a good idea. You can clarify what you didn't in your ten-minute blog. I usually spend much more time on these things and torture myself for a week - but those days are over.

Groupie Joined: Apr 09, 2006 Posts: 11

Mitch wrote:

Thanks Flophouse - I enjoyed the show - ok, most of it. Wink

Oh, and thanks for the pic.

Now that my ego has recovered from smokin'niles attack Evil or Very Mad

, I should say that when I wrote that Howard was "bouncing and bounding all over the stage" that I should have simply said it was an energetic performance. It was an energetic performance - from all the members of Euphoric Haze. They gave the audience their all. I was just looking for a better way to say it - so my apologies to the band or anybody who misunderstood my 'middle school...book report' and have to suffer my penchant for alliteration. You get what you pay for.

I also didn't get a chance to listen to the new record before the show. That can be a good thing or a bad thing. It's a good test for the music if you don't hear it first because if you walk away from the show with a hook doing loops in your head after the very first time, that's a very good indication that the songs are strong (I didn't, btw).

But if you hear the record first, the songs tend to be reinforced at the show, thus predisposing you to enjoying the performance - provided the musicians and the guy at the mixing board are all competent. They were.

Anyway, that's why posting a review in a forum could be a good idea. You can clarify what you didn't in your ten-minute blog. I usually spend much more time on these things and torture myself for a week - but those days are over.

I think it's cool that you wrote a review of the show, it wasn't like the old Jam Rag reviews.."Everything was great, great, they were great, great, oh, my, it was great, just great". A reviewer has to be objective and tell the story, warts and all. I have talked to Sean, from Euphoric Haze, and he was real cool about the review. You have to have a thickskin and try to take constructive criticism for actual improvement in one's craft. With us (Flophouse) this review was a godsend. We had a setlist that we practiced, to be as tight as possible, yet, out of nowhere, we throw out a song, not practiced, nor on the setlist, to close our show. If we didn't do this, the reviewer (Mitch) would have given us a GREAT review, and we probally would have made a stronger impression on the audience. I sent the review to the whole band and I got an immediate call from our guitarist, Mike. Mike was the one on stage saying "No, let's not do that song", but, the three of us (me included) vetoed him, and we played the song. Mike was right, and he was glad someone out there took the time to make the same observation. We practiced a set, play the set, simple, right? So, again, thanks, Mitch, you've done more good for us, than, 100 people blowing smoke up our ass, saying how great we are.

Groupie Joined: Nov 15, 2007 Posts: 76

Really, I prefer stark honesty when seeing stuff like this. If a reviewer is all sunshine, lollipops and rainbows all the time, a good comment from a source like this doesn't mean much, at best, and at worst, has a look of just some part of a promotion spin machine of some kind, neither of which means jack diddley to me...

I've seen erroneous spin the other way, too, where some source comes out "neg" about some band, only to find that the source is just allied strongly with some other competing band, which has an interest in the assessed band failing. This is equally useless (and small on the reviewer's part!)...

But, allegences aside, one must be careful about egotistically reporting one's opinion as fact, especially when it comes to the judgement of art, which is so subjective anyway... It can be done right, though.

So in this way, I think you help local music and its scene MORE by calling it how ya see it. False praise doesn't help any party in the longer run; Bad music is eventually found out about!...

Posted: Sat Mar 08, 2008 1:05 pm

Quote:

I think it's cool that you wrote a review of the show, it wasn't like the old Jam Rag reviews.."Everything was great, great, they were great, great, oh, my, it was great, just great". A reviewer has to be objective and tell the story, warts and all. I have talked to Sean, from Euphoric Haze, and he was real cool about the review. You have to have a thickskin and try to take constructive criticism for actual improvement in one's craft. With us (Flophouse) this review was a godsend. We had a setlist that we practiced, to be as tight as possible, yet, out of nowhere, we throw out a song, not practiced, nor on the setlist, to close our show. If we didn't do this, the reviewer (Mitch) would have given us a GREAT review, and we probally would have made a stronger impression on the audience. I sent the review to the whole band and I got an immediate call from our guitarist, Mike. Mike was the one on stage saying "No, let's not do that song", but, the three of us (me included) vetoed him, and we played the song. Mike was right, and he was glad someone out there took the time to make the same observation. We practiced a set, play the set, simple, right? So, again, thanks, Mitch, you've done more good for us, than, 100 people blowing smoke up our ass, saying how great we are.

Flop, I'm really glad to hear that and thanks for taking the time to say so. It means a lot.