The support band for the evening were Pinski, but to be honest I didn’t like them at all. I thought they were really boring, and they really got on my nerves (possibly because they displayed no stage presence at all). Their music (a mixture of new wave and pop rock or something) didn’t reach me even for one second, although they seemed to be good musicians to be fair.
When The New Roses hit the stage the club was crowded, but the 300-capacity venue was not sold out. They got the audience from the very first second. (And I had the feeling I was the only one who had never seen them before). The band has an amazing stage presence and they know how to rock. So much in fact that I can’t believe they are Germans… they sound very American.
Before they launched into Hoochie Coochie Man they said a “blues is best if it is accompanied by a blues harp/harmonica” and that they were lucky they had a friend with them who brought his harmonicas with him and was going to join them on stage. His name is Frankie – I talked to him after show and he told me he is friends with TNR. He is not playing in a band himself, but when he is around and it just fits he joins them on stage every now and then.
The band play an entertaining set but perhaps the biggest talking point comes around in the shape of first encore What If It Was You. Singer Timmy Rough came back on stage (only with drummer Urban Berz) and said he had to tell us something about the following song… He told us that they had written this song after the terror attacks at the Bataclan, in Paris. Actually The New Roses were touring and the came from Switzerland to go through France for tours in Spain and France. (They had actually been confirmed to play at Bataclan on December 8th). They were stopped at the Swiss-French border. They spent almost the whole night at the border and then heard about what had happened in Paris. They decided to cancel all the dates, due to respect of the people who died there, their own shock and some other, less important logistic reasons, because to get all their equipment to Spain, they had to travel through France which was impossible at that moment. First the people in the audience didn’t say anything and then a girl shouted “Don’t give terror a chance!” Damn right she is.
I was touched by the song and of course I thought about the words. But then the rock n’roll party went on. Closing the set finally Timmy told us, it was definitely their last song, and our last chance to party with them and everybody in the crowd did party, bringing a great night of heavy rock n’roll to a close in great style.
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