It was Friday the 13th on a week that had begun its assault with a full moon. A volatile scent was in the air, making us all a little wilder, a little more instinct driven. Put plainly: we were ready to rock out with our Balls Out. What a fitting week for Steel Panther to take to the stage of the Commodore Ballroom for two sold out shows in a row and show us what happens when we let ourselves sweat.
Michael Starr and his band of oversexed apes took the stage on a snowy night and allowed all the beasts in attendance to get good and naked despite winter arriving to put a damper on the party like that AA friend you can’t NOT invite. The chest pounding was almost louder than the kick.
Steel Panther, the galling and full frontal performance piece on glammy cock rock is something to behold indeed. The crowd is a game sausage fest sprinkled with girls who came ready to unleash the twins the minute they are asked to. Together with the depraved characters on stage, they created a scene not unlike that in every Quiet Riot fan’s wet dreams about what life inside a hair metal band is like.
When the band emerged, draped in glittery spandex and various shades of animal print, they brought with them this kind of excess-laden douchebaggery that comes from a long line of bands who took that kind of shit REALLY seriously. Michael Starr is THE PERFECT front man for such a project. He does the David Lee Roth jog from one end of the stage to the other and has the absolute perfect dirt rock face for bobbing along, tongue out, to the fist-pumping opening riffs that occur after his title calls. Lexxi Foxxx, the “pretty one” and bass player fawns over a bejewelled mirror and occasionally offers pearls of wisdom springing from his fourth grade educated wit. Pretty but dumb; a constantly amusing rhythm section character. Satchel, guitar prodigy and confessed fat-girl lothario, spends his time shredding and attempting to engage women in the front row to agree to inferred backstage fellacio. And then there is drummer Stix Zadinia. Nuff said. The name….my god the name. How I loved it.
The punch line with this band is well crafted and delivered with conviction and a cheeky limit testing that never seems to cross any lines. It’s overwhelmingly refreshing to have an artist on stage that is engaging in bad taste humor and blissfully getting away with it like dancing demons. At one point, they asked for the lights to go up so they could point out a rare Canadian black guy in the crowd, following it with “now you guys know where to buy crack from”. Unreal. Being in a crowd of people who all know the score enough to laugh at something like that is borderline orgasmic, especially in a town that takes itself very seriously on a whole, almost to the point of humorlessness. This was followed by the pointing out of two women who looked mildly Hispanic in the front row, they were subsequently referred to as “Mexican” and the tip was given that they are the best b.j.’s to get because they’ll clean your house after. Hoo boy, does it ever feel like a candy-coated evil to laugh at something like that.
And then there are the references to hair metal plot points. When discussing how much better blowjobs are when stoned, Satchel reminisced about a night when he was really high on weed and snorted Oxy and how he received the best blowjob he had ever had. He followed it with:
“Thanks Lexxi, that was amazing”. Much laughter. To which Lexxi replies “I was passed out! That wasn’t fair”. Zing!
It wasn’t always elbow to the rib stuff, at one point Lexxi brought it down to give a solemn shout out to “the brave men and women who risk their lives every day to bring illegal drugs into our country”. Not just a pretty face, that Lexxi’s got a conscience.
When they weren’t telling us that “sleep is for when you are out of coke”, they were proving to not just a tongue in cheek homage; these guys can really play their instruments. Whether you are into metal of this ilk or not, you must admit that these guys are remarkable tight live. This must come from being something best experienced live; a band that should be seen in the flesh to truly appreciate. Like Spinal Tap, its good times to rock out to songs about fat chicks and blow job worship on CD, but it’s quite another to watch the whole story take shape on stage.
Satchel’s guitar solo was pure and glorious glam rock indulgence. He shredded until you started to worry the windows would all shatter and it also became impossible not to notice how something comes over the male mind when shredding is happening; it’s like what happens in the female mind when they hear the theme song from Sex and the City. He then played a series of well known riffs while also operating the kick drum with almost flawless results. Impressive shit. But it was when Flight of the Bumblebee came out of the six strings that I was really caught up in it. That stuff ain’t easy.
After the solo was done, Starr emerged and remarked on how great it would be if bands still soloed out like that, proving that though these guys are crystallizing a type of music and a type of band with their delivery, it comes from a place of deep devotion. These guys really dig metal fundamentally and long for the glory days as much as the fans in attendance do….though that was kind of obvious with the not-so-lampoony “Death to All But Metal”.
They blasted out one quality rocker after another, pulling women up on stage to beseech booby flashing (a pitifully low number of them were actually game enough to do it which was disappointing), and getting the crowd to a fist-pumping, shirt-removing, head-thrashing pit of disciples. When they left the stage before the encore, the venue erupted into a powerhouse “Panther” chant that was the largest in unison noise I have ever heard out of a crowd at the Ballroom.
The heroes came back out and laid “Community Property” on us, revealing that when the album first came out, the Vancouver crowd “sang the shit out of it”, showing the early kindred love this band developed for Vancouver, one of their favourite haunts and consistent sell-out crowd stop. And we didn’t disappoint this time either; taking over for Starr, whose voice was nearly depleted, the crowd filled in the blanks and helped lead the night to a very large close.
Steel Panther has got it perfectly down. They know who they want to portray, they know what they want to emulate, they know what they love, and they know what they are doing. It looked like a lot of fun too. A lot of fun was had and my ears were ringing for 24 hours afterwards. Success. Howling at the moon success. They owned that crowd like an Asian Hooker. Just like Tiger Woods.
Review by: Jennie Orton
