By Andrew Bansal
August 23rd 2016, The Whisky-A-Go-Go, West Hollywood CA: The 75th edition of the Ultimate Jam Night event, held weekly at the Whisky-A-Go-Go in West Hollywood, was announced to be a special tribute to recently rock n’ roll legend and Motörhead frontman Lemmy Kilmister, and took place last Tuesday August 23rd 2016 to serve as a precursor to the unveiling of the Lemmy statue at the Rainbow Bar & Grill on August 24th. On Metal Assault’s previous visits to Ultimate Jam Night, these events have served high-quality musicianship and fun-filled evenings for attendees, in turn receiving glowing positive reviews, and readers were strongly recommended to attend this edition. But, on an occasion that demanded the absolute best, Ultimate Jam Night #75 came across as a majorly half-hearted attempt to pay tribute to a fallen great, and left a whole lot to be desired.
Where to begin? First of all, there was no thought or effort put behind choosing the opening acts to precede the 21-song all-star jam. A nu-metal Linkin Park ripoff band called Dirty Machine started proceedings at 8:55, and regardless of whether or not they successfully execute their chosen style of music, it was hard to understand why they would be placed on a Lemmy tribute show. The sight of a singer jumping around in backwards hat and hoodie nu-metal attire and a Linkin Park-style DJ on stage wasn’t exactly how a Lemmy/Motörhead fan had envisioned or imagined this show to begin. Next up was a rock band called Kraterface, musically more in line with what the show required from an opener, but extremely generic, and when their original tunes were making no impact on the audience, they busted out a run-of-the-mill AC/DC cover. It was beyond appalling to witness such lack of quality on display, because as you may have read in Metal Assault’s past reviews of these events, Ultimate Jam Night has invariably chosen great openers. But this was a highly cringeworthy start to this show.
After these openers were finally done and off the stage, it was time for the all-star jam to begin, and one hoped for things to take a turn for the better, but it wasn’t to be. Before the live music began, it was time for host/MC Paulie Z to introduce the event, list the sponsors and get the crowd ready for what was to follow. A personality like Lemmy is widely known among metalheads and musicians alike, and anyone going up on stage to speak about him at an event billed as a tribute to the guy should be able to deliver a few sentences on his or her own, instead of reading a string of lines from a pre-written script. The Ultimate Jam Night always has a script and it’s understandable when it comes to introducing jam musicians onto the stage, but to introduce Lemmy in this manner came across as very hollow and completely devoid of any heart or spirit. Not only that, the script had Lemmy’s date of passing completely wrong.
This probably was not Paulie Z’s fault as he was just doing what he was asked to do, plus he redeemed himself quickly after, as he fronted the UJN house band to open the all-star jam set with a rendition of ‘Motörhead’ (the song), and not only excelled in his Lemmy singing voice impression, but used a Lemmy-style high microphone stand, which was a heart-warming touch. Besides, his sense of humor and comedic timing (not part of the script) has always been good while hosting these events, and with everything he does on stage, he certainly makes himself hard to dislike. But following this initial spark thanks mainly to him, the all-star jam went downhill rather quickly and never recovered.
‘Overkill’ was the second song in the set list, and its performance was a complete embarrassment, thanks to the singer not even knowing the lyrics, trying to read from a lyric book placed in front of him on stage and still getting it wrong. Even the experience and expertise of longtime LA transplants Mayuko and Tsuzumi Okai, who nailed this song on guitar and bass respectively, and Tim Yeung on drums, could not save it from being a total failure. Members of the audience, those that were not intoxicated beyond coherence, were miffed at this performance, to say the least. Next was ‘No Class’, where the bassist was busier head-banging than realizing that the sound coming out of his rig was crackling very badly. There were a few silver linings in this dark cloud of a set, such as the ever-incredible and ageless Dug Pinnick, the supremely talented and versatile Debbie Holiday, three-fifths of The Iron Maidens, and the always flawless Matt Starr. But other than that, it was a random hodgepodge of musicians wherein it seemed like there was little to no collective practice and rehearsal put behind the songs they eventually played. As is usually the case at UJN, the show also had the talking hand-puppet ‘Trippy The Clown’, annoying at the best of times, and even more so when the live music isn’t up to scratch.
To make matters worse, the set list was not well-compiled in the least bit, comprising some songs that have nothing to do with Lemmy or Motörhead, which was surprising, as the great man and his band wrote more than enough number of great tunes to fill a 21-song set with their discography. The flow was also wrong, as some tunes came in far too early in the set and others came too late. Another aspect completely disturbing whatever semblance of flow the show had left, was Paulie Z’s banter between songs getting constantly interrupted by random on-the-spot interviews being held upstairs and shoved down the audience’s throat. What’s more, this event was being broadcast via a live stream, which wasn’t the brightest idea of all time by any means, because the performances and overall on-stage appearances, movements and mannerisms of most musicians made it seem like they weren’t even aware of the live stream going out. If witnessing it firsthand at the venue was this bad, one can only imagine how much worse it would have been to watch the train wreck at home.
Not only did this edition of the Ultimate Jam Night fall very far short of paying a fitting tribute to Lemmy Kilmister, who is most likely rolling in his grave uncontrollably, but came across as more of an afterthought than a conscious, wholehearted tribute, and to the extent of being deemed as false advertisement, wrongly used the deceased legend’s name to attract a capacity crowd, some of whom waited several hours outside the venue, only to be treated to such garbage. Ultimate Jam Night has provided the Los Angeles rock/metal community with some memorable shows, but in complete contrast, this was an utterly forgettable one, and was absolutely not worth going to.
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Set List:
01. Motörhead
02. Overkill
03. No Class
04. Hell Raiser
05. Silver Machine
06. Born To Raise Hell
07. Killed By Death
08. Crazy Train
09. I’m So Bad …
10. Ace Of Spades
11. Green Manalishi
12. The Trooper
13. Iron Fist
14. Jailbreak
15. Mama I’m Coming Home
16. We Are The Road Crew
17. Damage Case
18. Wheels Of Steel
19. R.A.M.O.N.E.S.
20. Goodbye To Romance
21. Sympathy For The Devil