Sad news: The music world mourns the loss of Ray Manzarek (74), founding Member and keyboarder of The Doors, White Zombie drummer Phil Buerstatte (44) and Uriah Heep bassist Trevor Bolder (63). R.I.P.!
German Hardrockers BERSERKER will donate 18.000€ to the Berlin cancer charity for children on May 25. November 2011 BERSERKER front man Schröder was diagnosed with cancer, now he is cancer-free. In 2012 the band collected money for this charity at their concerts and will also continue to do so in the future. Slayer´s Jeff Hanneman is dead: he passed away at about 11AM on May 2nd near his Southern California home because of liver failure due to an infection after a spider bite. R.I.P. Jeff!
The Siberian Jay music video "I´m Holding" featuring Mikko Sirén from Apocalyptica on drums - we reported about the videoshoot in our "1h with" Special - can be watched here: http://youtu.be/C-hSNurZVcs
It was only a matter of time until the organisers of the "Hair Rock Special" would put THE shooting stars of the Finnish Hard Rock scene - Santa Cruz - on their stage. Nevertheless the fourth edition of it was mainly confusing in the run-up: First it was said all the time that the second band will be announced soon just to tell us a few days before that there won`t be any other band at all. The fact that Santa Cruz are playing quite often in Helsinki makes the whole thing a bit pointless. There´s absolutely nothing „special“ about this events series if it only offers the STALKER Fresh Act of September 2010. So no wonder that "On The Rocks" is almost empty tonight...
At least a DJ hasn`t been forgotten this time either and so we have Ben Varon at the turntables who usually serves the guitar for Helsinki`s Death-/Thrash Metal band Amoral. But, no: he plays the Hard Rock everyone is expecting here...
Talking about expectations: The "Cruz Boys", how they call themselves every now and then, fulfil them as usual. No matter where they are playing and no matter how many people are in front of the stage: Santa Cruz are always doing their best! And so the setlist contains all the songs we know from the guys from the Finnish Capital so far: Ranging from almost all songs of their EP "Another Rush Of Adrenaline" like "We`re Aiming High", "Sweet Sensation", "Screamin` For Adrenaline" and "Still I`m High" over newer tracks like "Massive Overload", "Over The Limits" and "For The Sin" to the well-tried cover versions of Billy Idol ("Rebel Yell") and The Ramones ("Blitzkrieg Bop"), they have everything covered. With the beautiful semi-ballad "Don`t Get Away From Me" the guys even present a brandnew song and with every gig they whet our appetite for more `cause even though the songs of their EP are great: Their next release will be even better... much better!
If we would only rate the gig of Santa Cruz, it would be the full ten points once again, without any doubt, but we rate the whole "Hair Rock Special" and there something must have really gone wrong this time. Both, the concert series and Santa Cruz gigs are usually always well attended so it must have something to do with the missing second band. Potential concert goers must have felt fooled and thus, rather stayed at home. It`s a pity `cause they seriously missed something, whether with or without a second band...
