X and X Live

I was fortunate that a friend got tix to last night’s King’s X/Extreme (in that order) show at NYC’s Fillmore Irving Plaza. Follow is my “review” — just my experience, really — but the bottom line was that both bands were very good.

King’s X opened and they were awesome as usual. What a great, musical, unpretentious, unique band — if that’s enough adjectives for you. They played for an hour, a few new tunes, the rest “old.” I have not heard the new XV CD yet but hear it’s good — and the new tunes they played were good.

If you’re unfamiliar with the venue, Irving Plaza is a small place. The show was sold out and I’d be surprised if even 1,000 people were there. I mention this because the best part of the King’s X set was, for me, Doug singing Music Over My Head with the crowd, nobody in the band playing. It was like being part of gospel music, very organic. Doug was off the mic, but you could clearly hear him. he also took out his in-ear monitors to hear the crowd. Very cool.

It also really struck me this time (I’ve seen them several times before) how Doug has that rock star presence and the other guys, whom I like and are good, sort of are in the background by comparison. Don’t know if it matters, but I felt it and so did my buddy.

Guitar gear-wise, Ty had some kind of two-humbucker Tele-shaped guitar with a Les Paul-style hardtail plugged into Egnater amps. As usual, he had a heavily processed signal. He mostly played chords — not much riffing or lead work. But when he did fire a few shots, they were head-turners. More, Ty, more!

Extreme was great, and in saying that bear in mind I have high standards — meaning ’80s standards! They were tight as hell — vocals, harmony vocals, new drummer is better than the old one to my ears, and Nuno hasn’t lost a thing. In fact he might be even better.

It was great to see a guitarist who is so rhythmically oriented and who has EVH-of-old-like chops. One time during a nutty run Nuno faked yawning, just having fun. It was amazing to see again how tough some of the Extreme stuff is to play — last time I saw them was in the ’90s.

And how about playing that stuff and singing flawless backing vocals?! Holy crap!

It was almost a relief to see that getting older doesn’t mean you have to lose or tone down your chops. Thanks Nuno!

Gary sang great (even though he was sick, apparently), Kevin Figueiredo is a good drummer and in a year of unsung bassists (Michael Anthony, anyone?) Pat Badger deserves a big shout for being a hell of a musician. He plays some of the same runs as Nuno does and is a damn good singer too.

The band played about five songs off the new CD, which I bought there and have now listened to about four times. It’s good, and somewhat diverse, which has been a calling card for Extreme. “Saudades de Rock” has funk-rock, ballads (couple piano or acoustic guitar tunes) and even a country quick-pickin’ tune.

Here’s the Wikipedia definition of Saudades — bear in mind that Nuno is of Portuguese heritage: “Saudade (singular) or saudades (plural) (pronounced [sawˈdade] in Galician, pronounced [sawˈdadɨ] in European Portuguese) is a Galician and Portuguese word for a feeling of nostalgic longing for something or someone that one was fond of and which is lost. It often carries a fatalist tone and a repressed knowledge that the object of longing might really never return.”

At the show, Nuno played only his N4 through what I take it are his new signature Randall amps, not yet out on the market. The sound was very good, old-school, very raw — Plexi-like instead of JCM 800-like. One could, and would, say: Woody! Couldn’t see his effects, but his favorite was a flanger. Heard what sounded like an MXR Blue Box-type effect a time or two.

If Nuno isn’t on the cover of one of the guitar mags soon, it will be a crying shame. I’ve read stories about Satch and Slash and Zakk being the “last of the guitar heroes.” Nuno better be on that list too.

Category: Egnater, Extreme, King's X, Nuno Bettencourt, Slash, Ty Tabor, Washburn/Randall