By Andrew Bansal
March 13th 2015, Bardot, Hollywood CA: Motorpsycho Club, a series of rock ‘n roll events highlighting Los Angeles’ local talent, moved to its new location at the Bardot in the heart of Hollywood, and held its first event last Friday March 13th. Ten bands performed across two stages, and Motorpsycho Club regulars were in attendance for this free show. Despite being familiar with only two of the ten bands on the bill, I ventured out to the Bardot to absorb the scene and get a taste of what this series of events brings to this venue.
Doors opened at 9, and within minutes, there was already a sizable gathering as people lined up and filled the place at a rapid rate. The stages were in two rooms, the smaller Spider Lounge and the main Bardot Room, although the one in the Spider Lounge wasn’t as much of a stage, with bands playing on the floor at the same level as the audience. This room carried a strong herbal fragrance throughout the evening, almost as if it was piped in through the air-conditioning itself. In all honesty, the atmosphere inside the Spider Lounge turned out to be far more enjoyable than that of the main room.
First to perform in the Spider Lounge at 9:20 was hard rock quartet Void Vator, featuring in its ranks former White Wizzard/Gypsyhawk guitarist Erik Kluiber. Taking into account the musical styles of those two bands, he seemed to be quite at home playing Void Vator’s tunes. He reveled in his role, handling rhythms and leads with ease and combined excellently with guitarist/vocalist Lucas Kanopa, who ripped some sweet solos himself and delivered solid clean vocals. Meanwhile, the rhythm section kept things heavy and dictated the tempo. Void Vator’s music came across as extremely easy to enjoy for anyone even remotely a fan of hard rock. One hopes that this band is in it for the long run because they have the potential to rock all kinds of stages in LA and beyond.
I found it strange that bands on the two stages were scheduled to play at the exact same set times, which made it impossible to catch all of them. By the time I made it to the Bardot Room after Void Vator’s set, the first band there was already done and Downtown Attraction were next to take that stage. They played a tremendously impressive set, overflowing with endless amounts of energy as singer Jack Cash ran himself wild all over the stage and in the area in front of it. But, as entertaining as their set was, for the most part it was hard to see what they were doing, with the stage being less than two feet above the floor and a multitude of photographers with gigantic cameras crowding the front row, shoving their devices in the band members’ faces and giving us all a taste of daylight at night with their carefree, uninhibited usage of flash guns. But based on whatever little I was able to see, Downtown Attraction were great and hopefully I can catch them again soon, sans the paparazzi.
In general, bands on the main stage were taking a little too long to set up, which meant at least one of them playing on it later would have to suffer. That band was Mad Temple. They were putting on a righteously smooth exhibition of quintessential hard rock, even as the avalanche of the camera flash guns was gaining momentum with every passing moment, but their set was cut short just when they were hitting their peak, which was a real pity as their performance could have potentially been the best of the night. To prevent such a thing from occurring again in future Motorpsycho Club events, a stronger effort is needed from the bands, promoters and everyone involved to ensure that the set times are adhered to.
Following Mad Temple’s curtailed set, I walked across to the Spider Lounge, where Lords Of The Damned had just started their set. The quintet put on a compelling performance, led by singer Shaun Kama who went out of his way to interact with several members of the audience and really pulled them in towards seeing the band’s entire set. He definitely has a little bit of Alice Cooper about him, and the band’s musical style can be generally described as Alice Cooper-like classic rock combined with elements of old-school goth and punk. Thanks to Kama’s antics, they certainly carried more of a visual aspect to their show as compared to any of the other bands that played this gig, and left a strong impression as a result.
And talking of Alice Cooper, the final act of the night was a salute to the legend himself, courtesy of the tribute band Nightmare in the Bardot Room. A few minutes past midnight, we started hearing announcements from the singer that Nightmare were ready to take the stage, as he repeatedly instructed people to leave the other room and get close to the stage. I felt it was not only highly unnecessary but also slightly disrespectful to the band playing in the ‘other room’ while he made these Magic Mountain-style announcements. Plus, a band, specially an Alice Cooper tribute band, should be confident enough in their own act that they’d pull people ‘close to the stage’ when they start playing, without telling them to do so. They aptly started with ‘Welcome To My Nightmare’, singer Nick Fuoco was doing the Alice Cooper thing quite well in terms of the singing voice, and even though the huge number of stage props and performers the band brought out a la an Alice Cooper show was appreciable, this stage was perhaps too small and low to do justice to a show of such visual magnitude. And it goes without saying that with so many things happening on stage, flash photography was running most rampant during this peformance, at all times. Despite the solid vocal delivery from Nick Fuoco, it felt like the band lacked the overall musical conviction to play these Alice Cooper tunes, as Fuoco’s band mates were largely sloppy and didn’t sound like they were up to the task. Another turnoff was Fuoco’s constant urges to the crowd to ‘make some noise’ and ‘party’, certainly not part of the Alice Cooper vocabulary. With that said, even as I couldn’t help but notice these flaws in Nightmare’s performance, I do respect and appreciate what they do in general, because no amount of tribute to Alice Cooper will ever be too much.
Overall, it was an entertaining Friday night of local rock ‘n roll at a pleasant new venue, and attending Motorpsyco Club events here is highly recommended.