Live Review : Vain + Shyyne + The Clan @ Tivoli, Buckley on August 30th 2019
First band tonight The Clan I have mentioned in these hallowed pages previously. They are a local 3-piece, competent, who play pub rock. Dad rock even. They have all the clichés (waistcoats, raccoon tails, synchronised guitar necks, songs about rock and motorbikes) but they do it with a smile. They are easy on the ear, they won’t set the world on fire but I bet they play at an awful lot of bike rallies.
Shyyne on the other hand are right up my street, or maybe down my alley. They are a big-haired big riffing glam rock band from the Midwest. Erm OK, technically Wolverhampton is the West Midlands but that doesn’t have quite the same ring to it although being the home of both Slade and Roy Wood, it certainly has the glam credentials! Shyyne play hair Metal, glam Metal, party Metal! However you want to label it, their music is fun, infectious, happy. I like it a lot. There’s a new album called “Out Of The Sun” due out soon so a lot of tonight’s set came from that, and it sounded pretty good to these ears. My notes say that frontman Toni is “a bit like Vince Neil, only with a better voice and not a dickhead” so with that in mind you know what to expect. It’s 80s sunset strip, there’s lots of woo-woo backing vocals, there’s massive power chords and driving drum beats and there’s a lot of lyrics about sex, drugs and sausage rolls. No, rock and roll. Definitely Rock n’ Roll. The band are really good, very together, but all eyes are on Toni as he romps about on the stage belting out the songs as if they were weapons. Boom, bash, splat, pow! Old skool rock that you can dance to – loved it.
They were the perfect warm-up to headliners Vain, who are one of the original sunset strip bands and back in the 80s were pretty much everything Shyyne are still striving to be. I don’t know if there was an issue (apart from Davy Vain being, as he later explained, “very jetlagged”) but they seemed to take an age to actually get on stage. Once on however things warmed up pretty quickly with ‘Secrets’ followed by ‘Love Drug’. Davy’s band have been with him for many years now and it shows, they are a tight cohesive unit and the music is blasted out with style. However, there is no doubting that this is Davy Vain’s show. From his bare feet via his awful old red trousers (that I suspect are older than some members of the audience) Davy holds the crowd in the palm of his hand as he belts out a greatest hits set.
There’s ‘Greener with its singalong chorus, ‘Down For The 3rd Time’ from the first album, ‘Edge Of Time’ which is a bouncy pop-rocker with wailing guitars, the haunting slow-burning emotion of ‘1000 Degrees’. There’s banter with the crowd, banter with the band, Davy never stands still as he owns his stage. There’s a slow and dirty groove with the song called ‘Smoke and Shadows’, and the bouncy party rock of ‘Who’s Watching You’. The main set finishes with ‘No Respect’, the title track from Vain’s first album which is 30 year old this year. 30 years, bloody hell where did that time go?
Of course, that’s not the end and after a brief wipe with a towel, they are back to finish on a high with their That Song. In Vain’s case that would be ‘Beat The Bullet’, a song I remember very well from the dancefloor at Jillys/Rockworld back in the day. So 30 years on from those glory days are Vain still relevant, still worth a watch? Oh hell yes!
Nice & sleazy, glam & cheesy