(Live Review) STEEL PANTHER - Chicago, IL (11/26/24)
By
The Beard & Little Johnny
Greetings friends, fans, and followers and welcome to the final metal show of our long 2024 season. This was stop #73 and bands #237-238 as Little Johnny and the Beard headed to the House of Blues in Chicago, IL for an evening with L.A.’s glam metal/comedy act Steel Panther, with support from east coast Maryland swamp blues rock act Stone Horses.
Fortunately, the Beard has a connection at House of Blues and so we were able to get excellent seats right in the center of the second-floor balcony (within the VIP section.) A plate of nachos and a large Don Julio Paloma later, we were ready for the opening act, Stone Horses.
STONE HORSES
Stone Horses were a four-piece act that loosely worshipped at the altar of The Black Crowes. Bluesy crunchy swamp rock music. Formed in 2016 by singer John Allen and, (at that time 19-year-old guitarist) Teddy Merrill, Stone Horses were supporting their newest release Redemption Chronicles.
Merrill was a graduate of one of the School of Rock institutions, so at least some of those guys make it to the real stages. Along with the few originals, Merrill threw in a nice “Heartbreaker” riff, and their bassist, (Anthony Arambula) also laid down a decent solo.
Stone Horses were essentially a nice nondescript non-threatening warm up band. One criticism, they only played a thirty-minute set, yet it still had a lot of “filler material.” I would have thought with a new album release, (along with at least one EP), that Stone Horses ought to have had at least thirty solid minutes of music.
Honestly, it felt like about two real songs and then a bunch of vamping. I didn’t dislike it, but seriously you couldn’t give us thirty minutes of original stuff? I will go 75/100 because they were the opener, and I did like their Black Crowes type sound.
STEEL PANTHER
Steel Panther live
From their infancy (in the early 2000’s), when singer Michael Starr, (Ralph Sanez) and guitarist Satchel (Russ Parish) worked the L.A. scene as Atomic Punk (a Van Halen tribute band), until joining with Travis Haley (Lexxi Foxx) & Darren Leader (Stix Zardinia) and doing weekly originals (plus covers) shows at the Viper Room, Steel Panther discovered a niche in parodying the glam metal bands of the 1980’s, but adding bawdy lyrical content.
In 2009, they would release their debut album Feel the Steel and find success with such songs as “Community Property” and “Death to All but Metal.” This led to steady touring and eventually a second album release in 2011 with Balls Out which actually charted ahead of Megadeth and Metallica that year. (To be fair, though, Metallica was promoting Lulu that year and frankly a Little Johnny solo album might have charted higher than that mess of a release.)
In any event, the boys in Steel Panther landed successive tour support roles with Def Leppard, Motley Crue and Guns & Roses, (so that is certainly going to get your music in front of a LOT of listeners.) By 2012 they were playing the main stage at the Download Festival in front of 100,000 people. A notable ascension for what was essentially a Van Halen tribute act just a decade before.
Three more Steel Panther albums would follow before a significant band change in 2021 as longtime bassist Lexxi Foxx left the band for “other pursuits.” Foxx was replaced by Joe Lester (Spyder) who was both the band’s tour manager and had formerly played in the Atomic Punk tribute act alongside Parish & Sanez. The loss of Foxx created a visual incongruity as the Lexxi Foxx character, (in playing off the look of many glam era bands), presented as hugely androgynous. Musically though, Spyder was very up to the task.
In 2023, Steel Panther released their sixth album On the Prowl which has since gone gold.
Steel Panther was celebrating fifteen years since their debut album and after a lewd “announced introduction,” the band hit the stage with “Eyes of a Panther” from that Feel the Steel release.
“It Won’t Suck Itself” was next before some band/audience banter, (which is the Steel Panther way.) As usual, with Steel Panther, there were no sacred cows. Drummer Stix pulled his shirt over one arm to perform an imitation of one-armed Def Leppard drummer Rick Allen. Satchel provided most of the one-liners like introducing singer Michael Starr as “a man that inspired innumerable first graders to want to drop out of school and F%$k strippers for a living.”
The band invited two Asian woman on-stage for the racially insensitive song “Asian Hooker”. “Friends with Benefits” and “Shocker” would follow before the band exited the stage setting up Satchel’s guitar solo portion.
While not extraordinary, Russ Parish is an entertaining guitarist who can imitate very well. After a couple minutes of traditional solo work resembling Eddie Van-Halen style playing, Parish went behind the drum kit and did make his solo more unique by also playing the bass drum with his foot while laying down riffs from The Scorpions, Slayer, Metallica, GNR, Black Sabbath and Judas Priest.
“Girl from Oklahoma” was performed as a ballad from Starr to an audience member who was called up (largely for her looks and stand out stripper shoes), then placed on a chair in the middle of the stage. The “obliging” young lady chugged a beer and listened in amused fashion as Starr sang the song which was about banging a girl after a Steel Panther show. After the songs conclusion, Starr asked the young lady if SHE in fact liked (sucking @#$*), and when the woman replied, “all the time.,” It received the expected audience applause.
For the next song “Seventeen girls in a row,” the band invited every girl on the floor up onstage. Most took them up on it and eventually the stage was filled with dancing and gyrating woman of all shapes and sizes. Again, this played directly into what this band does in creating a party as much as a musical show.
“Eating ain’t Cheating” and “Community Property” would close the initial set before the band returned for expected encores “Death to All But Metal” and “Gloryhole.”
To even the casual onlooker, it was easy to see that Michael Starr both used backing tracks AND was just lip synching to some of the songs. On “Death to All but Metal” Starr was far more obsessed with playing hat frisbee with fellow band members and stagehands than in even trying to look like he was actually singing that song.
Now, I have remarked over the last few shows, WASP, Loverboy, etc. that the “backing track” craze has become increasingly prevalent in live performances. Honestly, we can’t stop it any more than we can limit A.I. in almost everything now. That said, even though I know Steel Panther is more about the show than the actual musical/vocal performance, I am dinging them anyway because, for me, (and this is JUST the Beard's personal opinion), either “try” to look authentic, or else just play the CD really loud and go hang out with the audience during the show.
Michael Starr has great charisma, facials, and audience interactions. He is charming and honestly does have a good David Lee Roth style voice, but once the lip synching is THAT obvious, then musically this performance was scantly different than just projecting an A.I Ronnie James Dio holographic imagine, pumping in the music and pretending Heaven & Hell were back together again. A.I. is not the future, it is the here and now but there just has to be some limits up there on the stage.
In the end, I am giving Steel Panther a 90 for the schtick and rapport that are their calling cards, but only a 70 for the singing and an 83 for the rest of the musical performance. That resulted in an 81 for the show. Then I kicked it up two more points because Little Johnny had a good time watching the chaos. Final score 83/100.
So, that wraps up 2024 for The Beard & Little Johnny. We are going to enjoy the Holiday season while working diligently on our Best of 2024 Live Concerts Countdown articles, (which will run all of January on The Mighty Decibel.) Little Johnny and I always have some huge discrepancies on what we think were the best live sets of the year, so you will want to read all eight parts.
As always, you can check out videos of all the bands we reviewed in 2024 by searching out our TikTok site at thebeard0728 and of course continue to friend and follow Mark McQueen on Facebook for all the non-metal reviews. Combined we produced over one hundred different reviews this year covering just about everything.
As we wrap up 2024, both Little Johnny and I want to thank The Mighty Decibel (and owner Chris Tighe) for allowing us a platform where once again we were able to have fun covering a lot of shows and bands. Since becoming Mighty Decibel employees, we have covered over 900 bands in only four years.
We also want to thank all the promoters and artists that granted us their time and space this year, (Remember Doro if you change your mind the marriage offer still stands.), and finally without question we want to thank everyone who took even a moment out of their day to read our stuff and become new friends, fans, and followers. The Beard AND Little Johnny greatly appreciate all of you.
So, as 2024 draws to its inevitable conclusion, we say to everyone one more time, “Live Life.” “Stay Heavy.” And as always “Horns Up.”
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